Untestable Realities

[Boetie]

Who get's credit for consciousness?

To answer our question let's start out with these three components, the Sun, the Earth and Consciousness aka Life.

The Sun and the Earth together created Life. The Sun and the Earth together over time is responsible for the viability of Life. The credit for Consciousness therefore goes to the Sun and the Earth. Why is it that the Sun and the Earth doesn't see this?

A visual understanding for this would require for you to stretch your arm out. Use your shoulder as the starting point of the Sun and Earth and the tip of your middle finger the point where we are at right now. Reach over and wipe the fingernail on your middle finger, good you have just wiped out the whole human history.

What this means is that science cannot answser questions about many things because the thing talked about will require being tested and the whole human race will not be around long enough to test the validity of certain questions.

How many know that there are what are called untestable realities in our existence? And in trying to understand those untestable realities you quickly realizes metaphor is the only way to talk about it.

It is said that if you study Nature you will know her secrets. But knowing her secrets doesn't mean you will know her answer to them. Knowing her secrets only means you know the untestable realities.

What is Nature's secret to that spark? We will never know because according to science we will have to do a number of things such as remove the sun to see if a spark would still result. Like wise remove the Earth and other combinations. Experiments we cannot possibly do or repeat over and over again.

We live in the face of untestable realities.

[gallo]

I wonder, does any of that actually have meaning to you? It's pretty much incoherent babble to me.

[Plasma Snake[D]]

for a very little bit of life to exist everything had to be in order. not only did the sun and earth need to exist, but also the entire galaxy that houses the solar system. Our solar system also orbits something else. I mean, so many different things have to be in the right place at the right time for that little spark to come to be. Maybe even the galaxy itself is part of a larger structure.

[Boetie]

Plasma Snake,

I like your post. I like the way you kept God out it. It gave me goosebumps.

As for gallo,

If you picked up an Alchemy book, opened it and read it. You will soon ask yourself if that book really makes sense to anyone because it sounds like babble to you.

Just as you will have to live with the fact that there are untestable realities, you will also have to live with the fact that some knowlege requires one to go through a labyrinth with the possiblity of getting lost and lost forever.

Are you willing to go through a labyrinth of such a nature that once you get lost, you remain lost?

For many the answer to that question depends on what is at the other end.

Some have said if given the choice between spending all their time going through the labyrinth or spending all their time making money, they would choose spending all their time going through the labyrinth, of course those whom say this has already made it through the labyrinth.

I wouldn't dare subject you to the risk, especially when I can see you have in your hand that which you call babble. Count yourself lucky that's all that you have in your hand. Hate to see what happens to your brain if I put in your hand something that is everywhere and yet nowhere.

One would be under a big illusion if one thinks that Judaism, Chrisitanity and Islam will remain with us far into the deep future.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam should be spending time on contemplating their own mortality. For they too will die and rot in their graves as mankind goes on living without them.

Not only will Judaism, Christianty and Islam not exist far into the deep future, there won't be any evidence that any of those three religions ever existed. Getting pretty deep here aren't we?

With no religion as a means to explain untestable realities and Science left out of the discussion, because untestable realities is regared as unscientific. What will be the metaphor?

[SteveA]

Science can only prove things statistically for a person who believes in this methodology. A physical reality to one person might appear a "magic", unexplained coincidence, or simply incoherent "noise" to someone else.

Science can't prove the existance of individual subjective experiences because, by definition, these can't be repeatably demonstrated to others. Science is also something defined subjectively by individuals. What's "science" to one person may not be considered so to someone else.

Also, science should be more in regard to observations and predictions than models. The value of science is in its predictive ability. Models can be useful but often prove misleading and limiting.

I had an almost religious experience recently while trying to find a model that unified gravity and quantum observations. There's little way to "prove" something to someone else with the same certainty that comes when you search for something you believe should exist and eventually find it on your own. I believe there's only 1 absolute to the universe - change/transience. Existance is difference/contrast and non-existance can't exist with a contrast. It simply takes the possibility of anything else to create a universe of possibilities, and we're in the middle of it all. (For fun I actually simulated the idea of the universe being created from a decision between 2 choices, and using this selection to further seed the possible universes and the growth progressed like the "Golden ratio"/PHI, the same as seen in galaxy arms, hurricanes, seashells ... it's a number that never repeats, like pi). Spacetime is a memory of what's happened, to keep things from repeating - you can't calculate an endless number without potentially infinite storage (hence why we see space expanding). Energy is the source of possibilities - once we examine something, we find we can't ever repeat the exact same observations. This is why time goes in one direction - no loops are possible. The speed of light is less of a real barrier than a necessary protection. There are many experiments that demonstrate that as long as we isolate something being affected by faster than light actions, other things can operate effectively faster. Without the speed of light limitations, and on average conservation of energy there would be nothing protecting existance from a division by 0 and starting over (a division by 0 is in a way how things started ... the Big Bang for example). Maybe some universes have experienced this ... but those would obviously not be ones we currently inhabit, just as we can't inhabit a planet inhospitable to life.

Anyway, I see things in these terms but there are so many analogies that exist saying effectively the same thing. I can't describe the number of things that just clicked into place. There's a common theme to so many thoughts but basically we're all part of the same thing ... we're every part of it, from the mind of God to the most frozen particle of dust in the void. From as simple sunlight to as complex as a fractalize representation of 24th dimensional leech space. The whole thing is our playground and we only see the surface of what's possible. I've found a pattern to science - everytime we try to prove why you can't do something, we instead succeed in showing how few limits truly exist.

The next "big thing", in my opinion, is the recognition of a fractalized universe. They've been failing to unify observed phenomenon, because they see the universe as detached and flat whereas it only takes one single recognition to realize this is almost impossible. Everything is composed of wave energies and the interference patterns alone from these would create the appearance of multiple objects from a single one. If you want to witness this first hand, grab a laser pointer and shine it on a white surface. Hold steady and look closely at where the beam hits the wall. You'll see black dots floating in space ... real or imaginary? Either way you answer this says the same thing - what we see doesn't agree with our typical internal view of things and just like a fish in water, it's hard to realize what things are like until you've exerienced the air above it.

I noticed a fractal pattern, sort of like the Fibonacci sequence to the elements and had tried putting together a table for this and found someone else already did it:



Notice the self-replicating shape. You could likely extend this below hydrogen to find traits of subatomic particles,(though this shape could repeat at stellar and galactic scales, to give an alchemy of the universe)and use "chemistry" to predict interactions of quarks or planetary bodies or interactions in the weather.

Similar characteristics for magnetism etc. would likely hold true over at least some scales.

But why is this pattern to the elements overlooked? Because we prefer straight lines, whereas nature uses fractal curves.

I've seen pictures of galaxies colliding that look just like the orbital shells of helium. There's even a claim, things scale well too:

http://www.amherst.edu/~rlolders/NOF.HTM



http://www.fractaluniverse.org

How could galaxies look so much like storms on Earth unless they followed a very similar process? There's an "absorption spectrum", just like absorption bands for light in elements to asteroids in our solar system (I couldn't find the graph but it shows asteroid orbital periods versus Jupiter rotation and makes sense why some periods are unsustainable) It seems extremely unlikey that such complex phenomon don't share similar key functions and topologies. If you altered your viewpoint a bit (to shrink horizontally the storm on Earth), these two would be almost identical. Considering if there's a small set of principles by which the universe operates, then it seems almost impossible to see anything but such fractalized versions of things. Consider the spirals of a storm in themselves are fractal in that the arms extend in greater and greater circles, just as the elemental characteristics do. There's a simple math to the universe that just needs to be unfolded.

I was posting about this on another site and can't repeat everything here, but I think I've got a very simple model along the lines of the Higgs field that explains so much of this, but it seems to have so many implications along religious lines that mainstream science isn't likely to want to recognize the simplicity of it. (I listed about 13 observations that seem to have gone relatively unexplained in science and they all seem to match the idea that we're missing how interconnected everything is).

[gallo]

Quote by: Boetie Getting pretty deep here aren't we?

Yes. It's almost up to my knees and the stench from all of that bull crap is horrendous. To bad none of it makes any sense.

[Plasma Snake[D]]

It's tricky to try to represent reality in 2 dimensional graphic representations. I can see the pattern that develops in the periodic fractal of the elements thing. Also, considering the topologies of storms and certain galaxies, I learned that they all seem to operate in a counterclockwise manner. Spirals have been designs that humans have been drawing for thousands of years. I guess the individual atoms in nebulas eventually tend to form into a counterclockwise spiral because of whatever fundamental force that dictates reality. I wonder if this rule is constant or ever changing? Like will reality behave the same as it does now in a billion years?

[Matt W]

Gallo, if you're not interested in a topic, don't post.

Do not respond to me in this thread. PM myself or Sean with any questions.

[SteveA]

Quote by: Plasma Snake[D] It's tricky to try to represent reality in 2 dimensional graphic representations. I can see the pattern that develops in the periodic fractal of the elements thing. Also, considering the topologies of storms and certain galaxies, I learned that they all seem to operate in a counterclockwise manner. Spirals have been designs that humans have been drawing for thousands of years. I guess the individual atoms in nebulas eventually tend to form into a counterclockwise spiral because of whatever fundamental force that dictates reality. I wonder if this rule is constant or ever changing? Like will reality behave the same as it does now in a billion years?

That's an interesting idea. The direction of rotation would seem to depend on which direction you're viewing it from. If they don't all rotate in the same direction, it might be interesting to see if there's some transformation that would though.

If you look at images of subatomic particle collisions from particle accellerators, you'll see similar type spirals. Now we might be able to give an explaination of why we believe we see these (an electric charge passing through a magnetic field creates a lateral force etc.) but those same properties exist on the Earth. The earth has a spin, a magnetic field, mass and might even be seen as an electron orbitting the Sun ... who's to say we don't even have a net electric charge to some extent. You can't measure charge without a separate reference (for example, you can't tell the voltage of a single terminal of a battery, you can only measure the voltage relative to something else).

I admit being a bit skeptical of some astrological observations but here's some "pencil beam" observations they made showing the distances separating galaxies.



There's no way that's simply coicindence. Either they did the measurements wrong or there's courseness and detail on every level.

But in many ways this shouldn't be surprising. You can generate stars, black holes, spiral arm galaxies and comets from even a simple 2-D (not even 3-D which would be even more incredible) formula like this:



z(0)=c (a 2-D complex seed value)
z(n+1)=z(n)^2+c (and the only operation needed is to square a value. Squaring is a common operation in the universe)

The name of this type of fractal is Mandelcloud (There's a freeware program called FractINT that will let you play with these too as well as about 60 other types of fractals)

Here's another rather simple math forumla



The only reason why this image doesn't appear as a random collection of shapes is because we've grown up with fractal concepts since day 1 and have become able to intuitively see them.

I made a 3-D game using a fractal landscape and have done some trees before as well. You can take a simply idea and create entire forests with it. Why would nature have missed it? We can look around and see it didn't.

It seems most everything in the universe shares some very basic concepts. Partly this is a result of our limited understanding and senses. We only see what we're capable of recognizing. Science isn't as cut and dry as most people are led to believe. Imagine what some of our technology now would look like to someone 200 years ago. An airplane would probably look like something alien to people then and walking around talking in little portable devices was seen as science fiction not too long ago.

Anyway, we see people as being similar but I think these similarities extend further and go deeper than we currently recognize and that most analogies you could draw are based on a core of truth and that these are simply reflected in many different ways through the universe. I've always been skeptical of holistic type views but have to admit I've found my own view that seems to make many of the pieces fit together and it's along those lines but my guess is that once we unravel that, there'll be another more incredible layer, but there's no hurry because we've got all the time in the universe to do these things and we can enjoy the sights along the way. If you do a little math on most any flower you see, you'll find these same properties mirrored in it. There're two ways of looking at it - 1) We're able to conceive of these ideas so we mentally put nature into a perspective we recognize, understand and ideas simple enough to communicate or 2) these traits truly exist in nature. In either case though, what we see is what we understanding. How's that for a Theory of Relativity? (Observations are made relative to the knowledge and perspective of the observer.) I think if you dig down you'll recognize religion and science aren't as different as people assume.

[gallo]

Well, since the moderators don't seem to want to actually moderate and move this sort of claptrap out of the science forum to some other more appropriate location, and since they think that it's OK for someone to address me specifically but not OK for me to respond without posting a page or two, I guess I'll post a page or two.

Quote by: Boetie Who get's credit for consciousness?

I think we should give credit to the flying spaghetti monster. That's if you believe that some sort of "credit" is actually due. It's pretty much a non-starter as a meaningful thought right from the beginning. By the way, "get's" would be the contraction for "get is" if you could actually construct a sentence where that made sense. The 3rd person singular present tense of the verb "to get" is "gets".

Quote by: Boetie To answer our question let's start out with these three components, the Sun, the Earth and Consciousness aka Life.

I've got news for you. Consciousness is not also known as life. Perhaps you aren't aware that there are things that are alive that are not conscious. No. I guess you don't know that.

Quote by: Boetie The Sun and the Earth together created Life. The Sun and the Earth together over time is responsible for the viability of Life. The credit for Consciousness therefore goes to the Sun and the Earth. Why is it that the Sun and the Earth doesn't see this?

Let me see if I have this right. You are saying that the sun and the earth are responsible for the capability of life for living. Have I got it? And the sun and the earth can't see this. What a shock!

Quote by: Boetie A visual understanding for this would require for you to stretch your arm out. Use your shoulder as the starting point of the Sun and Earth and the tip of your middle finger the point where we are at right now. Reach over and wipe the fingernail on your middle finger, good you have just wiped out the whole human history.

Now you've got me. That was supposed to be an analogy for something (a visual understanding for "this???") I think. The problem is that I don't see what that has to do with the "capability of life for living."

Quote by: Boetie What this means is that science cannot answser questions about many things because the thing talked about will require being tested and the whole human race will not be around long enough to test the validity of certain questions.

Nonsense. Whether or not science can answer questions about many things has nothing to do with wiping your finger nail. You don't seem to have any understanding of what science is or how it works.

Quote by: Boetie How many know that there are what are called untestable realities in our existence?

Sure. Now name 10 and show that they are real and explain how you determined it.

Quote by: Boetie And in trying to understand those untestable realities you quickly realizes metaphor is the only way to talk about it.

Could be. But the danger is that you will fall into meaningless, mystical sounding, unintelligible babble as you have.

Quote by: Boetie It is said that if you study Nature you will know her secrets.

Really? Who said it?

Quote by: Boetie But knowing her secrets doesn't mean you will know her answer to them. Knowing her secrets only means you know the untestable realities.

Nature isn't an entity that has answers. And there you go with the untestable thing again. What untestable realities are you talking about and what conclusive evidence do you have for their existence?

Quote by: Boetie What is Nature's secret to that spark?

What spark? A minute ago we were talking about untestable realities and answering questions. Now suddenly we have a spark.

Quote by: Boetie We will never know because according to science we will have to do a number of things such as remove the sun to see if a spark would still result.

That's pretty silly and meaningless. What does the sun have to do with your mythical spark? What spark are you talking about?

Quote by: Boetie Like wise remove the Earth and other combinations. Experiments we cannot possibly do or repeat over and over again.

Nor is it necessary to do so. Just exactly what is it that you think that scientists do?

Quote by: Boetie We live in the face of untestable realities.

Name some.

[Jimmy the Pro]

Quote by: Boetie Who get's credit for consciousness? To answer our question let's start out with these three components, the Sun, the Earth and Consciousness aka Life. The Sun and the Earth together created Life. The Sun and the Earth together over time is responsible for the viability of Life. The credit for Consciousness therefore goes to the Sun and the Earth. Why is it that the Sun and the Earth doesn't see this?

Kindof, you are on the right track, and I agree with the fact that the sun and the earth have SOME part in creating consciousness, but not just the fact. Think of existing conditions that make up the earth and then think of this:

Just because life is singular, does not mean you may only apply it to one race. Sun and existing conditions on earth create OUR conciousness, and not the conciousness of other things.

Basically, it's not just sun and earth, it is existing qualities and conditions on earth.

Quote by: Botye A visual understanding for this would require for you to stretch your arm out. Use your shoulder as the starting point of the Sun and Earth and the tip of your middle finger the point where we are at right now. Reach over and wipe the fingernail on your middle finger, good you have just wiped out the whole human history. What this means is that science cannot answser questions about many things because the thing talked about will require being tested and the whole human race will not be around long enough to test the validity of certain questions.

First, let me explain what science is.

Science is merely an observation of how things work and their primary function with human life.

Now, if this is true, then science tested later, or as you say the rest of the distance between the middle finger and the shoulder, no longer have meaning, because if they do not deal with what effects us, then we really have no use for it, therefore it becomes something not science.

Quote by: Booti How can any know that there are what are called untestable realities in our existence? And in trying to understand those untestable realities you quickly realizes metaphor is the only way to talk about it.

It really doesn't matter if we're not around to prove it. We generally accept things as truth, but we have no reason to say they are not, just because we do not know what will happen. We apply postualted sciences to our existance, not if they will always be true in the rest of life time.

Also, you go off of the premise that if we were to live the rest of the distance to the shoulder we would see that there is indeed something wrong with our logic, and this is not true. There are somethings that if they were tested would perhaps be true and if cannot agree with this statement, then you accept all of our logic up to this point as false.

Quote by: bOTYE It is said that if you study Nature you will know her secrets. But knowing her secrets doesn't mean you will know her answer to them. Knowing her secrets only means you know the untestable realities.

This assumes that nature is a constant and cannot change. That nature has secrets and realities that are set in stone, and because of our megear and short existance, we cannot fully know them.

Wrong, if human thoughts and progression can change then nature will look different from our point of view. Then we look at nature as changing. Especially this is where your earth idea conflicts.

Okay, earth is always changing, so if earth is always changing then ouir conciousness is always changing, because according to your logic, without the earth, there is no conciousness. Therefore if our conciousness is always changing, then there is no determinable standard to judge nature with, and if we are always changing, then realities that we cannot understand cannot be far away, for surely we would have changed enough to find them. Therefore, if we cannot find some realities they change as well.

I shall clear up later.

[Boetie]

SteveA posts: Time is like an arrow

Time's arrow is the intelligibility of distinct and irreversalbe events, while time's cycle is the intelligibility of timeless order and lawlike structure. We must have both

Time isn't the only thing with two different interpretation, light too is interpreted in two different ways, light is like a wave, light is like a particle.

Is time is like an arrow? What if the universe does contract, explode, contract, explode, would this suggest order, and a lawlike structure thus giving weight to time's cycle?

Are there observations where it's easier to explain it using time's cycle and other observations where it would be easier to explain it using time's arrow?

By the way your bringing up fibonnaci is interesting. I think there is a book where someone demonstrated life's geometry by correlating the appearances of several species with the fibonnaci theory, for example the sea shell.

gallo,

The spark you asked about is another way of saying life. I called it spark because compared to the duration of the Sun and Earth, Life may appear to come and go so quick it would seem as if it were just a spark.

As for your question about untestable realities. Other posters and myself on this thread explained it. An observation that doesn't repeat itself is an example of something that in untestable. Remember the arm stretch example? How wiping your fingernail wipes out the whole human history? Go up the length of that arm and stop at the elbow. How would you test that? How do you know the earth didn't progress like a hard boiled egg and what we are observing is one stage of that egg and the earlier stages are untestable. Does geology have observable laws?

Getting back on topic

Times arrow and Times cycle are simple ways for us to understand everything from the cosmos, geology, human history and even religion. But the truth of it is, it's more complicated than a simple arrow and cycle explanation. It's complicated to a point were all we can really do is explain things in terms of times arrow and times cycle. Because anything beyond that may well prove to be untestable. Time's arrow and time's cycle could both be myths.

[SteveA]

Regarding time, I do think it's a one way street. If reality came to exist from nothing and didn't lock up in the process, it seems unlikely it ever could.

If you stare at a black wall, you can't see anything. If you stare at a white wall you can't see anything. If you stared long enough at a checkboard pattern you wouldn't see anything either. Everything we know is relative to something else. A simple pattern that repeats forever provides no contrast either. If you put a lot of black and white dots close together, it's gray. If you string pulses together in a period fashion it makes the equivalent of a steady tone ... again, your ear would quickly learn to ignore it. When was the last time you noticed a ticking clock in your home? The only time you ever notice it is when your attention shifts but without anything to divert your attention to and from the ticking of the clock, you'd never notice any contrast.

The point is that we see nothing that truly repeats in the universe. We often speculate that it might repeat but I can't think of anything that remains truly constant, except change. You could live 5 years on Earth and never realize a solar eclipse was possible. You could live 10 years and have seen a solar eclipse but never realized earthquakes occured. From the evidence it seems both the speed of light and gravitational acceleration are variables. Even the rate at which time passes seems to be variable (depending upon how you decide to try to measure it).

So what I mean by time having a single direction is that I think it's unlikely existance repeats. I admit not being able to "prove" this but I believe inescapable reversals or loops seem impossible and at least from my own ideas of how the universe probably started, spacetime is the memory that's need to keep it from repeating 0,0,0,0,0.... you can't pick something different if you don't know what you already picked. And the ideas of every force being composed of two reactions as well as the Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics seem to indicate you can never truly do the exact same thing twice. Even if you could possibly get around those, at a minimum they would have to occur at different times which means the gravitational influences of the actions would be different and ultimately change things slightly other time. So it's like a vacuum. You can only approach 0 but you can't ever truly reach 0 (there's always a possibility some quantum wave will interfere, though you can get this probability to be minute).

Don't take that to mean we can't view events in the past and that these can't have an effect on us, as the past certaining effects everything around us (consider inertia alone), but there's no way to change the past except to try to reproduce it elsewhere (which isn't truly the past) and you'll never be able to reproduce it 100% indentically.

So lets say even if you could somehow travel 10 years into the past, your doing so would make the future of that past different and this would propogate along with you through time. So you wouldn't really be in the past of the future you left but in a separate past of an alternate future that wouldn't have any immediate on anyone in the future you left.

I have no idea what might be possible in the future, but at least I personally don't think there's really anyway to reverse the universe/existance. You could make something appear close to a reversion but from my perspective time still went forward all the while and something would always be a bit different. (Maybe it's more of a definitional issue but is there anything in science that suggests time can truly be reversed?)

I think gravity may actually be caused by time passing slower in one area than another or at least the two effects are likely tied together (which one is cause and which is effect, but my guess is that time is the cause). If you fly an atomic clock in an aircraft, the clock supposedly runs slower than on the ground. Light bends around gravity. Light propogates with wavelike characteristics which would move slower on the edge closer to slower time. There's also a matter would appear in areas where time passes slower that seems to agree with with idea of the matter we see being the surface of something denser. Anyway, I'm just throwing out thoughts, but if antigravity in any practical sense existed it still wouldn't be a reversal in time but changing the relative rate of time passing to make it slower elsewhere to be the equivalent of gravity pulling you there.

Look at it this way, if you truly reversed time, then all forces would be reversed as well - things would fall "up" ... but your thoughts would go backwards as well. So you'd still see balls falling down. You'd have to somehow reverse everything except conscious thoughts, but that seems impossible as our senses are tied to physical reality. So maybe time IS going backwards ... or maybe time flows both ways continuously and there's really know way of know it because we use time itself as a reference to measure other things. You'd need two points of reference for time and a way to determine whether time was going the same or opposite direction between the two references, and likely we'd simply explain things in terms of time going forward for both anyway with no possible way of physically sensing it anyway.

[gallo]

Quote by: Boetie Time's arrow is the intelligibility of distinct and irreversalbe events, while time's cycle is the intelligibility of timeless order and lawlike structure. We must have both

Time's arrow is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. What the rest is supposed to mean is anybodys guess. If it is intelligible then it certainly isn't order or structure.

Quote by: Boetie Time isn't the only thing with two different interpretation, light too is interpreted in two different ways, light is like a wave, light is like a particle.

Quote by: Boetie gallo, The spark you asked about is another way of saying life. I called it spark because compared to the duration of the Sun and Earth, Life may appear to come and go so quick it would seem as if it were just a spark.

So you refer to life as both spark and consciousness in the same piece and never make it clear that you are flopping around like that and never tie the various flights of fantasy together into any kind of meaningful statement? As for you assertion that life is consciousness, it follows then, that you are claiming that moss is either not alive or that it is conscious. I think you would have trouble defending either postition.

Quote by: Boetie As for your question about untestable realities. Other posters and myself on this thread explained it. An observation that doesn't repeat itself is an example of something that in untestable.

Name 10 that are meaningful. So I drop an egg and it breaks. I can't repeat that. How does that have any deeper, mystical meaning about life and untestable realities?

Quote by: Boetie Remember the arm stretch example? How wiping your fingernail wipes out the whole human history? Go up the length of that arm and stop at the elbow. How would you test that?

Test what? You haven't specified anything to test. Not even one of your untestable realities.

Quote by: Boetie How do you know the earth didn't progress like a hard boiled egg and what we are observing is one stage of that egg and the earlier stages are untestable. Does geology have observable laws?

Nonsense. What exactly is progressing like a hard boiled egg supposed to mean? Yes. There are observable laws involved in geology. Yes, things from the past can be tested.

Why didn't you post this sort of stuff in the philosophy forum instead of under science? There certainly isn't anything scientific or technical about your mystical musings.

[Athena]

Quote by: gallo Time's arrow is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. What the rest is supposed to mean is anybodys guess. If it is intelligible then it certainly isn't order or structure. So you refer to life as both spark and consciousness in the same piece and never make it clear that you are flopping around like that and never tie the various flights of fantasy together into any kind of meaningful statement? As for you assertion that life is consciousness, it follows then, that you are claiming that moss is either not alive or that it is conscious. I think you would have trouble defending either postition. Name 10 that are meaningful. So I drop an egg and it breaks. I can't repeat that. How does that have any deeper, mystical meaning about life and untestable realities? Test what? You haven't specified anything to test. Not even one of your untestable realities. Nonsense. What exactly is progressing like a hard boiled egg supposed to mean? Yes. There are observable laws involved in geology. Yes, things from the past can be tested. Why didn't you post this sort of stuff in the philosophy forum instead of under science? There certainly isn't anything scientific or technical about your mystical musings.

When plants are attacked they give off an ordor and their species recieves this order as a message requiring defensive action, which is then taken. Couldn't we consider this a form of consciousness? A person in a coma is alive, but does not have the same consciousness of those who are not in a coma. Has consciousness be clarified so there is no question of what it is?

Of our pool of intelligence? What of ESP? is there only a material reality and nothing else?

Whoo, I should have read the first post first. This thread is better than I thought. I do believe there is an exchange of information between the sun and earth. Unfortunately, the memory of this information is too weak for me to recall it properly. Something is emitted from the sun, that builds up on earth. When the build up is great enough there may be a reaction to this saturation point.

[Athena]

Quote by: Boetie Who get's credit for consciousness? To answer our question let's start out with these three components, the Sun, the Earth and Consciousness aka Life. The Sun and the Earth together created Life. The Sun and the Earth together over time is responsible for the viability of Life. The credit for Consciousness therefore goes to the Sun and the Earth. Why is it that the Sun and the Earth doesn't see this? A visual understanding for this would require for you to stretch your arm out. Use your shoulder as the starting point of the Sun and Earth and the tip of your middle finger the point where we are at right now. Reach over and wipe the fingernail on your middle finger, good you have just wiped out the whole human history. What this means is that science cannot answser questions about many things because the thing talked about will require being tested and the whole human race will not be around long enough to test the validity of certain questions. How many know that there are what are called untestable realities in our existence? And in trying to understand those untestable realities you quickly realizes metaphor is the only way to talk about it. It is said that if you study Nature you will know her secrets. But knowing her secrets doesn't mean you will know her answer to them. Knowing her secrets only means you know the untestable realities. What is Nature's secret to that spark? We will never know because according to science we will have to do a number of things such as remove the sun to see if a spark would still result. Like wise remove the Earth and other combinations. Experiments we cannot possibly do or repeat over and over again. We live in the face of untestable realities.

Are you questioning if life exists without the sun? Some bacteria get life energy through a chemical reaction with rock. However, humans are solar powered. We don't get our full solar energy directly from the sun, but from plant life which we eat. Those plants would not have life without the sun.

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: Boetie Time's arrow is the intelligibility of distinct and irreversalbe events, while time's cycle is the intelligibility of timeless order and lawlike structure. We must have both ... Times arrow and Times cycle are simple ways for us to understand everything from the cosmos, geology, human history and even religion. But the truth of it is, it's more complicated than a simple arrow and cycle explanation. It's complicated to a point were all we can really do is explain things in terms of times arrow and times cycle. Because anything beyond that may well prove to be untestable. Time's arrow and time's cycle could both be myths.

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

But, on the topic, this isn't really true in regards to irreversible events. Even reversible events are seen as having a function in time. In fact, there is no inherent irreversibility of the breaking of an egg, but you can't put a broken egg back together (Humpty Dumpty).

Not too long ago I read (ok, I lied, my wife and I listened to it on CD on a long road trip) a book by Brian Greene that discussed, in at least one chapter, the "arrow of time". From a physical point of view there is no evidence for its existence in the laws of physics. This is a major stumbling block of modern physics.

The stuff you are getting into here is so far beyond what can currently be discussed using physical laws that it is truly getting into the area of philosophy. Sure, physicists are trying to understand these things, but, so far, they haven't had much luck.

Keith

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: gallo Time's arrow is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Yes and no. In the basics of the concept, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics defines the "arrow of time". However, this law isn't really recognized as a "law" in modern physics. If you could apply the right energy in the right directions with the right timing, you could put that broken egg back together again. It becomes a control and information issue, not a specific law of physics any longer.

When the egg breaks, energy is released, structure is destroyed. If the energy could be put back in, the structure could be restored.

In theory, the egg could be reassembled. In reality, it can't. Why is there an arrow of time that makes that impossible?

That is a question that currently has even the most brilliant physicists stumped.

I think SteveA is heading in the right direction with his posts, but I doubt he could come up with answers that are eluding Hawking and Greene right now.

Keith