The Ultimate Search

Chris S wrote: Very interesting view re Spike. I love your observations on his routes, my cats have made a very obvious weathered paths around the house, creatures of habit Reading your above comments, recommend you watch the now dated film " Contact" with Jodie Foster. Great concept.I am sure you must have seen it.

The "creature of habit" thing is another curious thing that peaks my curiosity, because habit is a bad thing to have in the wild - the reason hunters can catch prey is because they can predict their habits and anticipate what they will do in any given situation. And therein lies a problem for the predator because their habits are dictated by the habits of their prey, which in turn makes their actions predictable. They rely on simply being smarter than their prey and hope that there isn't a smarter predator in the area. Which is were we come in - we were by no means top predator in our environment, but we were the smartest - this meant we could outmanoeuvre and out-predict better, fiercer and more aggressive predators than ourselves and not become their prey. Being smart is simply a survival instinct and a hunting tool, that it is capable of philosophical arse-scratching is just a co-incidence.

i also feel that we do not need to exist, in order that other things do
            and if there was no life or physical matter at all, time and space would still exist, and always will, i feel

What is the meaning of life?

That is an absurd question. I'm absurd, you are absurd. No person knows, or should care.

Say NO to new philosophies! YES to pre-89 heroes!

presdoug wrote: i have been doing some further thinking, and          it could very well be, as hard as it is even to conceptualise it, that the physical universe, and everything in it, has no creative force or reason behind it at all, -possibly, matter and even life itself can appear in an infinite void of time and space without any previous volition of any sort               this is , i admit , hard to fathom, but it very well could be, and if true, would actually explain alot-man, if i have ever learned anything, it is to remain open-minded!

The simple answer is we just don't know and perhaps we never will. For any hypothesis to be viable it has to work, and by "work" I mean it has to be able to explain all the existing knowledge and observations mathematically not just philosophically - the current working hypothesis predicts that before the appearance of matter there was no time and there was no space. Space and time are defined by matter - without matter you cannot measure space or time so you cannot observe its existence.

Any Colour You Like wrote: Say NO to new philosophies! YES to pre-89 heroes!

 
I am disappointed With your avatar, I would have expected a pre-59 standard. No structuralisms and all that bullsh*t that came from it.






Edited by harmonium.ro - August 22 2010 at 06:10

[the End Of The Film]
Lady Presenter: Well, that's the end of the film. Now, here's the meaning of life.
[Receives an envelope]
Lady Presenter: Thank you, Brigitte.
[Opens envelope, reads what's inside]
Lady Presenter: M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations. And, finally, here are some completely gratuitous pictures of penises to annoy the censors and to hopefully spark some sort of controversy, which, it seems, is the only way, these days, to get the jaded, video-sated public off their f**king arses and back in the sodding cinema. Family entertainment? Bollocks. What they want is filth: people doing things to each other with chainsaws during tupperware parties, babysitters being stabbed with knitting needles by gay presidential candidates, vigilante groups strangling chickens, armed bands of theatre critics exterminating mutant goats. Where's the fun in pictures? Oh, well, there we are. Here's the theme music. Goodnight.


/watched it last night

I'll add the little bit of insight I've got from running down the rabbit hole since Dean started going there.

presdoug wrote: But does the fact that space and time not being able to be observed and measured mean necessarily that they do not exist? i don't know about that. i think it is still possible that time and space are infiniite, and if so, do not rely on the existence of anything else to make them so. Who knows for sure?             As you mentioned, we may never know              This also begs the question, how was matter initially made? That really is a hard one to understand. If one believes that time and space are infinite, then i guess it is possible that the building blocks for matter have also been around forever. I guess i wouldn't rule this out

i see nothingness and space as the same thing-the void
                 to the extent that matter "relies" on space is simply the "playground" for matter to appear in and manifest itself
             that is as far as i can go with reliance
             if there was no such thing as nothingness, then it would be hard to explain anything, though -i guess i am coming around to seeing space or nothingness as an actual environment for the existence of matter and life
               but i still feel that space can exist without anything else involved with it, and before space, there was space
                 remove nothingness, and what do you have left over?  Nothingness
                    the biggest hurdle for me still is the creation of matter out of nothingness-that concept boggles my mind, but i do not outrule it
                 either matter always existed or it did not-if it suddenly appeared, then it either had a creator or it did not