The Philosophy Thread


mali said:
Btw, what's your first language? Mine is German.

I am your neighbor, Dutch. Congrats on your English :)

mali said:
The last statement I have in mind is that roughly 70% of human behaviour is inherited and 30% is learned.
The brain is mainly prebuilt. The most interesting and also slightly scary discovery is, that even our decisions are made before your "self" becomes aware of those decisions. The work is done by the brain and from time to time someone from the brain guys slides a note through the bars of your cell and informs you what happens outside, exaggeratedly speaking :lol:

Damn... i was planning to use this as an example as well :) I have read/heard this as well and thought this was an astonishing discovery. Not really convinced that everything is determined, but is sure looks like there are a lot of decisions made "for us" by our inner self.

mali said:
I had some interesting experiences fitting in that scheme. When I was around 15 years old, I was able to solve mental math without actually calculating in a classical way. The result was suddenly there. I lost this ability, though. Maybe those large amounts of alcohol that followed at that age were at least part of the reason.

An interesting experience is also thinking something while doing something else. I've trained that ability by starting to think about the next step I want to do while still doing the previous step. When you do this long enough, you come in a weird state of mind, extremely concentrated. It's possible to raise the possible difficulty level of actions and parallel thoughts, that way. If I have a good day, I completely lose parts of what I do while thinking about complex stuff. It's nice to fill a workday with thinking something else while doing a different thing ;)

I started a blog a while ago, where I wanted to describe these experiences. I never made an entry and stopped training that stuff though, because I really had the feeling I could go insane that way. It was like being a person living in someone else.

I think everybody knows the feeling of eating a bag full of potato chips without realizing it happened. Or just going somewhere and then realizing... what the f@ck am I doing here... Funny it now appears that even happens when you "think" you are fully aware of a decision.

I am not a 100% determinist though, chaos is preventing me from becoming one.
 
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mali said:
b_o_b said:
Ha, that is an easy one ;)

Suppose you have brain surgery and someone randomly cuts incisions in your brain. After surgery it is very likely your mind has been altered, you might even behave completely different. There are examples of people becoming much more extrovert or introvert after a brain surgery. You might have difficulties in talking, counting or thinking logically. That means changing the flesh, changes your mind.
This for me pretty much proves that there is no such thing as a spirit. Flesh is you, flesh gone, you gone.
Yes, that's a very good point :) Strokes can be mind-altering, too.
But, what are "you", in this case? Strokes and brain surgeries only change the way we think and the way we perceive the world. But of course, we can argue that we *are* our thoughts, and that permanent Amnesia basically kills our old self and creates a new being inside of our body.

But it is equally valid to argue that we *aren't* our thoughts, but instead are that which *perceives our thinking*, e.g. that if we were computers, we wouldn't *be* our hard drive/RAM (memories) or the CPU (way of thinking) but that we instead would be something else, that which "watches our thoughts from the outside".

Picture this: If we were to take a human and clone this human, cell-by-cell, atom-by-atom, electron-by-electron, we would get a creature with the same memories, the same way of thinking and the same self-perception as the original human. And, this human would act as if it were self-aware and as if it were the original human; in fact, it would wonder which of the two copies (when looking at the clone) is the original and which is the copy. Now, if you argue that you *are* your thoughts, then have you just distributed yourself across two beings, and more importantly; which of the beings is now "you"? In which being will *you* wake up after having been cloned, and what about the other guy; what *is* he, afterwards?

This line of argument quickly shatters because of the many paradoxes. The only way it is possible to argue about being is to assume that a being is something immutable, that cannot be copied or changed, and that the body is separate from that being. Whether this is true or not, it is a way to argue, at least. You can think of it as a "tag" every being has, and nothing more, if you wish.
Mr.Confuzed said:
dflemstr said:
Now, mathematically speaking (and mathematics has been quite good at modelling the world so far), it is impossible for a dimension to *end*, and we don't observe any dimensions in the rest of the universe that *have* ended, so it is rather improbable that life our experience of the universe will end, ever.
How's this for a contradiction: If, as you say, life is a dimension and dimensions cannot end. Then how do you explain the start of life?
Every axis has an origin. A dimension does not necessarily have to be defined for negative numbers. I would argue that negative numbers are an invention by humans to be able to use dimensional offsets; the world can be explained without them (e.g. if we define the origin of the spatial dimensions to be at the edge of our perceived universe, we won't ever be able to move any object into a negative location. Problem solved.), and it is even necessary to omit them to explain certain phenomena (e.g. what was before T=0? Or how big is something that has a height of -N cm (which according to the theory of relativity things have once they have been sucked into black holes IIRC)?)

Mr.Confuzed said:
Also, I think mali was saying this: Dimensions are always independent of each other, are they not? So how do things change along the life dimension?
Well, I don't say that life (or rather: existence) is a dimension. This is more accurate:
mali said:
Life evolves interdimensionally. [...] Maybe life is just the crossing point of all dimensions.
Ergo: Our personal existence is a point in the 10-dimensional world, and it travels along a congregate axis through all of the other dimensions.

polyroy said:
(P.s. dflemstr: chaos == entropy)
I always thought that

chaos ~ 1/entropy

...but it depends on how you define chaos I guess. I think that I'll go with your definition from now on polyroy, aka that the most chaos would be when all matter is distributed evenly across all of space.

Mr.Confuzed said:
dflemstr said:
So, you could assume that Quantum Mechanics also is deterministic, but that we don't know enough about it yet to be able to make predictions.
I agree with this. But hey, I think the universe could be expressed as a single function. If the function was approximated well enough, it could be used to see what is likely to happen in the future and what is likely to have happened in the past. To me, this explains conciousness as an invocation of the universe function.
Yes I agree, assuming that the universe function is a mathematical function and not a 4-line Perl hack (although some claim that the universe was written in Lisp...)
 
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b_o_b said:
I am your neighbor, Dutch. Congrats on your English :)
I like Holland :) A friend of mine lived in Leeuwarden and I went there from time to time.

Damn... i was planning to use this as an example as well :) I have read/heard this as well and thought this was an astonishing discovery. Not really convinced that everything is determined, but is sure looks like there are a lot of decisions made "for us" by our inner self.
Tbh, I don't think it has something todo with determinism. This discovery leads to great possibilities of interpretations of what the "self" is. Maybe it is possible to somehow train the self to utilize the brain better if we start to treat our "self" as an entity of its own.

I think everybody knows the feeling of eating a bag full of potato chips without realizing it happened. Or just going somewhere and then realizing... what the f@ck am I doing here... Funny it now appears that even happens when you "think" you are fully aware of a decision.
I think you can compare the working of the brain by taking breathing as a similar action. You can breath actively, vary how much you inhale, hold a breath etc. And when you let lose and do something else you brain continues breathing without the "self" controlling it. So you can imagine that even making decisions is like breathing. There are certain rules the brain bases the decisions on without the "self" needing to intervene. The "self" says:"Brain I need a decision" and the brain obeys. The "self" doesn't know how to make a decision, it just gives orders to the brain, like breathing. The "self" says:"breath deeper" and the brain obeys by controlling the necessary muscles.

edit:
Great to see you back, dflemstr :)
I've got to go to bed now, so I'll check tomorrow if I'm able to follow your thoughts :D

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dflemstr said:
But, what are "you", in this case? Strokes and brain surgeries only change the way we think and the way we perceive the world. But of course, we can argue that we *are* our thoughts, and that permanent Amnesia basically kills our old self and creates a new being inside of our body.

But it is equally valid to argue that we *aren't* our thoughts, but instead are that which *perceives our thinking*, e.g. that if we were computers, we wouldn't *be* our hard drive/RAM (memories) or the CPU (way of thinking) but that we instead would be something else, that which "watches our thoughts from the outside".
The above example of the "self" being "imprisoned" inside the mind would fit here, I think.

I'd like to go back to the basics a bit. The questions that remains circling in my mind/self/brain is: Are we _really_ fully conscious? I have this problem with time, I already explained. The fleeing present is a real problem, imo. Our whole concept is built upon _reaction_ and not action. _If_ we could go back in our own lifetime, we could act by turning reactions into actions. One could argue that even those actions would be reactions to former reactions.
If we now put the multidimensional theory back into these thoughts, one could argue, that the way we perceive time isn't the way "it's meant to be perceived". The 4th dimension that looks like a (life)line to us will have a completely different effect in the 4th dimension and going back and forth in time wouldn't mean mastering the 4th dimension.
 
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mali said:
An interesting experience is also thinking something while doing something else. I've trained that ability by starting to think about the next step I want to do while still doing the previous step. When you do this long enough, you come in a weird state of mind, extremely concentrated. It's possible to raise the possible difficulty level of actions and parallel thoughts, that way. If I have a good day, I completely lose parts of what I do while thinking about complex stuff. It's nice to fill a workday with thinking something else while doing a different thing ;)

I've had many related experiences, but here goes the "best" (or worst...) so far. I started to think about something intensively while eating (this happened a long time ago...). I finished eating, put the dishes to the dishwasher, walked upstairs, used the wc and walked in to my room, sat on my computer chair, and then suddenly, my only thoughts were "Why am i here?/What did just happen?". It took me some time to deduce that i had done all those things. The only thing i had memory of (during that time, from the "real world") was of me flushing the toilet... That was a bit worrying experience, as if being on autopilot or something. I did have some memories of what i was thinking of during that time when i "woke-up" but even those vanished as if it had been just some dream.

Just wanted to share this, as it seemed relevant.
 
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Thanks for sharing, urjaman :)

I suppose it all depends on the degree of concentration. Less concentration means less "self". When completely unconcentrated we act like robots sometimes and the "self" is lost somewhere inside the mind, I think. It was a long day and I'm barely "self" right now, lol.
 
What would timetravel look like?
A "thing" traveling "back" to a point in the universe overlaying itself with different points in time. Is it possible to subtract a quality from a "thing" to prove that it exists in different times?

To help my monkey brain thinking about it I start with a "thing" that moves "forward" in time so it becomes a thread. I take the end of the thread and fold it back to the beginning and let it move in the same direction "forward" in time.

Would it be possible to prove that it actually happens?
I don't talk about "reversing" time, but in fact removing time as a "two-dimensional"(that snake moving in the 4th dimension) effect.

edit:
To make it more clear, I want to have a better model for time and its effect. I still have the feeling that there is some important wisdom to gain when looking at this structure from the right angle.

edit:
dflemstr's explanation is still the best available, but too mathematical/objective for my liking. I want to slide into it as far as my mind allows it.
 
Well, when I want to argue about time, I have to have some model to work with because I can't imagine 6 dimensions at once.
mali, you're trying to argue with these 6 dimensions and without a model, which might be why I don't understand the problem you're presenting.

So, let's set up a model first before discussing problems!

The most common model for time is to use a 2D spatial, 1D temporal universe, aka. something like a roll of old-school movie film (with individual frames etc. - I don't mean those opaque video-cassette film rolls) and I get the impression that it is using this model that you're trying to present your problem.

↓ Why this model is insufficient in this situation
You can then determine which logical 'objects' exist in a given frame (say, a rectangle, triangle and circle), and go to a different frame and see how these 'objects' have changed compared to the frame you 'were at' before (they move around or whatever).

Using this model, the phenomenon referred to as "going back in time" could be realized by copying-and-pasting; an object moving back in time would simply be taken from one frame and copied into another frame (the spatial state being preserved). Looking at the "film", you would now realize that the travelling object would exist multiple times in some frames (Some frames would contain two rectangles instead of one), and that we've broken against the law of preservation of matter and other fun things related to thermodynamics. So we either have to give up every theory known to science or use a different model since this one clearly is insufficient for our needs of reasoning.

(Also - the frame analogy fails as well because there isn't a continuous time flow; we're using frames which are snapshots and not linked parts of a dimensional axis)
So, we need a different model; one that is much more simple but still is analogous to the real-world 6D thing. So let's imagine a 1D spatial, 2D temporal universe. Each "object" in this universe has to be a scalar number (a 1D object) and its location is also a scalar (1D number) - depending on the time, of course; we don't want our objects to have the same location forever.

One such universe is - for example - a piece of graph paper. Let me introduce you to the universe called The Lands of White, and its inhabitants:
Mr. Red of species:
gif.latex?red(t)=-\frac{2}{3}\times%20t%20-%201.gif

Mr. Blue of species:
gif.latex?blue(t)=e^{-t^2}\times%202-0.3.gif

and Mrs. Orange of species:
gif.latex?orange(t)=\sin(\frac{t}{3}-4).gif


(Because of intriguing, fascinating and no doubt complex theories of evolution completely unknown to us, there are no more than 3 species of 'animals' in this universe, and only three actual animals - one of each species)

Here's a map of their universe around the time of 0AD (Or at whatever time they started counting their time), with them going about their daily lives:
2yvlxrn.png

This map does only show one temporal dimension (T⁻¹), as we don't have 3D paper yet which would be required when showing two temporal dimensions.

So, we've got our model set up and ready; as time goes by, you'll see that our universe's inhabitants will move either "up" or "down" in our universe and all is well.

No interesting time-related stuff is happening, since all of the objects in our universe are moving in the same time direction (specifically (1, 0) or 1+0i if you're into that sorta thing) - at the same speed too, of course - similar to the real 6D space-time world (I'm skipping the other dimensions 7-10 because they're irrelevant) that we live in.

So what can theoretically happen in our universe?

We have one spatial dimension, which means that our creatures can move only upwards or downwards; we've already established that.

And we have two time dimensions which makes it possible to have "universe splits" like some claim that we have in our real world; if one creature makes a decision, it will change its temporal direction and move off in, let's say, (1, 0.2123) and live a completely different life compared to if it had made a different decision and moved off in, say, (1, -3.1415). Notice that the first time coordinate always stays at being 1, because the creature might change its 'causality' direction, but it'll always travel through time at the same speed. Anyways; this universe-splitting phenomenon is insignificant when talking about time travel and so is the fact that we have 3 time dimensions; 1 time dimension is sufficient to create a time travelling system.

So let's say that one creature (red) decides to travel back in time (and that orange and blue decide to start their time counting in honor of this grand event). Using the current established idea that you "travel" through time and don't jump around in it, you won't see red disappear in one time period and appear in another. Also: we have to have a universe split at the point in time when red decides to travel, because the other inhabitants (orange and blue) cannot live in a universe from which mass suddenly has disappeared (constant mass/energy law). So, orange and blue and "a different version of" red continue living as seen in map #1, while red changes his time direction to, let's say, (-2, 0.1) and he does so when he is at time t=0 on our map above, thus starting his time journey.

The effect? He will live exactly the same life as before, only backwards and twice as fast (no, red's not been smoking something).

Oh and as a side note: red might "stop travelling" at some point - meaning that he goes back to travelling, say, at a speed of (1, 0.1) and "lives his life at normal speed in the past" - but let's not care about that for a second.

Let's visualize this turn of events first: (dflemstr brings out his mad copy-pasting skills - DON'T ZOOM IN there are no gaps I swear!! ;) ):
2s7gqc1.png


NOW we can start discussing paradoxes.
Mathematically speaking, this could happen, and the phenomenons described below would apply as soon as the "primary time axis" (in our situation, the first time axis that we changed to have a direction of -2) becomes negative.

The paradox is that two instances of red exist at the same time and we basically have the same problem as above (described in the spoiler), but now we can actually *solve* the problem because we have a *point* at which red goes from travelling at a positive time-speed and starts travelling at a negative time-speed (in our universe, this would be when someone reaches the speed of light and passes it - the point when time starts moving backwards) and we can say that something happens at this time.

So there are two obvious solutions to the problem for what could happen at the time of direction-change:
  • The previous version of red (when he moved at (0, 1) speed) ceases to exist, and the further back in time red moves, the more he's going to delete from his own history. So expressed simply, he will remember living a life at positive time speed, but what he remembers won't actually have happened in his (_, 0.1) version of the universe. When he starts travelling forwards in time again, he'll see his parents (let's say that they are blue and orange) live their lives, but they'll never give birth to him, and he won't be born. Or, if he starts travelling forwards again within his own lifetime, the "other version of him" that existed up to that point in the (_, 0.1) universe version will cease to exist somehow, probably by displacing the atoms (meaning: "inseparable immutable entities", not "protons and neutrons with electrons around them") of the old version to the new version. To red and orange, it'll seem like their son has been teleported to a new location and became somewhat older.
  • The new version of red ceases to exist, aka. the time travel doesn't succeed; red just disappears into a cloud of antimatter/black hole/(insert thing of energetic mystery here) when he reaches the critical point, or he just doesn't reach the critical point and won't be able to time travel. It seems like this is the limitation that exists in our own universe.

Dunno whether I actually contributed to the discussion that mali intended, but this did hopefully contribute to this discussion somewhat.
 
^ Thanks much, dflemstr :)
So, we wouldn't have a chance to verify if a "thing" traveled back in time, but time could be flowing in both directions, we wouldn't be able to tell. Yeah, that fits to the giant static tensor theory pretty well.

edit:
This is heading fast towards my inverted universe theory, where I don't want to go as it's a dead end.

edit:
I'm not up to date, is there any theory that allows particles faster than lightspeed?
 
mali said:
edit:
I'm not up to date, is there any theory that allows particles faster than lightspeed?
Yes. Particles move faster than light speed quite often, in fact.

There are different speeds of light as you might know; the one we know as c is the one that applies for vacuum but like with the speed of sound, there are different ones for different materials, e.g. water has a much lower speed of light than vacuum.

So, as soon as a particle goes from a less dense material to a more dense material, it'll travel faster than the speed of light for a short while.

We can observe this phenomenon quite easily: ever wondered why radioactive stuff seems to "glow"*? It's because of Cherenkov radiation, where beta-radiation passes into a denser medium (water mostly) and, because of the "time erasure paradox" it *has* to slow down, causing parts of its energy to "be set free" (see my second solution above at the point of time-reversal - the particle basically creases to exist a little and gets converted into energy)

So particles travel back in time all the time and cause all kinds of havoc, namely blue glows. Scary shit ;)

* (not counting radiation emitters themselves; then it's the radiation itself that makes it glow because of gamma rays)
 
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^ Thanks again :D

A last question for today: What do you think is the best explanation why our universe accelerates while expanding?
 
mali said:
A last question for today: What do you think is the best explanation why our universe accelerates while expanding?
You want me to say dark matter but I won't. Einstein was wrong when he tried to support the static universe model by introducing the positive constant in his theory of relativity (basically introducing dark matter for the first time) as the solution for holding the stasis (See Static universe) because we know the Big Bang theory to be more correct today. Why the universe's expansion is accelerating? I think we have the wrong perception and are too earth-centered.

Yes, we observe the distance between galaxies to grow. Why could this be?
5 possibilities:
  1. The universe is expanding
  2. The theory of Tired light is correct and the distance isn't changing at all
  3. Our perspective view is getting distorted (there's something that introduces a "lense" between us and the universe that makes it *seem* to grow faster)
  4. Matter is getting smaller (the atom is shrinking) so things "veer away before our eyes" (more down below)
  5. Something completely different yet to be discovered
So, since #2 doesn't have any scientific evidence at all, and #5 won't lead us anywhere, we have to look at either #1, #3 or #4.

#1 must be correct to some degree, since we assume that the universe once was a single point and expanded from there, and this expansion can't have simply ended.
#3 is also a possibility; what if, when the universe expands, some laws of physics change as well. What if the speed of light changes when the universe expands? We can't measure whether this is the case, because since the universe expands, we do too and all of our measuring equipment, so if the speed of light increases it'll still take foo seconds to travel 1 meter, and still produce the same width distortion in the Double-slit/"Doppelspalt" experiment, because our meter has grown as well. There's actually a very high probability that the speed of light increases along with the expansion, *because* we haven't detected a change in the speed of light.
So what does this mean for the distance between galaxies? Well, we have up until now only used IORs to calculate optic distortion, but we have always just given vacuum an IOR of 1 and left it at that. Light that travels long distances, however, would have a different speed of light while unobserved (probably, I don't know because of the theory of relativity that states that the speed is relative to the observer). So who knows, maybe it's just things growing that causes this effect...
But I don't know the formulas for actually measuring this, so I've probably committed a fallacy somewhere in my line of reasoning...

tl;dr:
#4, finally, is what I think is the most probable reason because the formulas make sense and it would explain the phenomenon. (Yes call me crazy but hear me out on this one)
We are extremely self-centered in our reasoning. We think that the universe is expanding and growing all of the time, but why would it accelerate? There's another possibility: Matter is getting smaller. Think about it: we see that galaxies recede from us so they must be moving away from us, which makes sense because of the Big Bang theory, but it doesn't explain the accelerating expansion as you know. So what if our matter is constantly getting smaller as well? (Maybe to compensate for the expansion - the universe might need more actual space to expand and compensates for this by removing matter to keep the energy level constant) We and our galaxy are thus getting smaller, and because we judge the distance to other things by comparing them to our own size (foo is x light years away, and a year is the time it takes for Gaia to travel a certain distance; or: bar is y times as far away as Sirius, and Sirius has a certain distance from us) it seems like the other things are moving away at a faster rate, because our scale of measurement is shrinking all the time.
 
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^ Very interesting thoughts :)
I lack the mathematical skill, knowledge and motivation to go through all the possibilities and would like to know your opinion about this thought:
Might it be possible that the "outside" of our universe is in fact the inside? Big Bang itself? I have this problem with time as you might know :p If we set big bang as place where time doesn't progress so that it is basically the present and the accelerating universe accelerates while losing gravity thus heading towards the present as well, couldn't both be the same "place/situation/whatever you'd call it"? The definition of "the present" follows from my thoughts on the first page of this thread.
 
mali said:
^ Very interesting thoughts :)
I lack the mathematical skill, knowledge and motivation to go through all the possibilities and would like to know your opinion about this thought:
Might it be possible that the "outside" of our universe is in fact the inside? Big Bang itself? I have this problem with time as you might know :p If we set big bang as place where time doesn't progress so that it is basically the present and the accelerating universe accelerates while losing gravity thus heading towards the present as well, couldn't both be the same "place/situation/whatever you'd call it"? The definition of "the present" follows from my thoughts on the first page of this thread.
Well this is a very valid theory, but it depends on what you define as "location."

Because, you say that the "Big Bang" is the inside of the universe, but it's always been the outside. Either that, or you might say that Big Bang *is* the universe but again, this is just a definition thing.

So let's forget about *where* Big Bang is for a second. Let's just stare into (really) empty space and look really dumb (stupid → "stupidus" aka "amazed" → "stupere" aka "to stare"), and while we're at it, let's notice the cosmic background radiation. Et voilà, you've found your Big Bang.

If we look at, well.. basically the edge of the universe, we see immense sources of pure energy; radiation that is 13.75 billion years old and amazingly simple (→ spread across all frequencies) and uniform. So this is basically the energy that came from the Big Bang.

About your theory, then: it would seem that the closer we come to the edge of our perceivable universe, the further back in time we come (I might have said this already in a previous post) so so far you are correct.

But there's one flaw: we aren't getting any closer to the edge. The universe isn't shrinking, it's expanding, remember? Also, the edge itself is expanding at the speed of light; the edge is only limited by how far we can see, and as new light arrives from the edge of the universe, the more we can see.

So if the edge is the present, we should be travelling towards it, not away from it.

Or, well, we might bring up the idea of cellular automatae again, saying that the universe was simple once (high entropy; everything was at one point and around it was nothing; can anything be ordered any better?) and that it has become a permutation of that cellular automata, basically a gigantic fractal, so time is just an indicator of the number of iterations away that the universe is from its original singularity and... no I won't go down this route, it'll just become too abstract and "Weltfremd."

I think that I need a better understanding of where you want to go before I can extrapolate your reasoning... Why, if the present isn't reachable, would we move towards it and not from it? Why are we abstracting from it and not towards it if it's supposed to be simple? etc.
 
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The location or the "where" in this case is the "when". The edge of the universe carries the present so does the center of the universe and existence is the part between it. Basically a flaw in the nothing(or the everything depends on the point of view). So when the universe accelerates while expanding it in fact tries to collaps. It's inverted and the suction seemingly comes from outside.
 
Well, first of all, there is no center of the universe. Why? Because it is very very likely (As likely as the "theory" of gravity) that we are on the "surface of a sphere" aka. the universe started out as a point and grew as a 4D sphere, and all of the stars and galaxies are on the 3D surface of the sphere. So if you travel in any one direction long enough (probably a couple of googolplex yottaparsecs), you will end up exactly where you started, whatever direction you choose (Imagine that the Earth was a perfectly round sphere; then you'd end up where you started independent of the direction you choose. The universe is like that, except that you can choose to go "up" or "down" and still end up where you started, because of the 4D nature, and except that you won't have time to go so far that you end up where you started. Ever. The universe will long ago have ended before you can say that you even managed to morally be allowed to dream of ever reaching a fraction of a part of what could be called a minuscule chip of beginning your journey towards the tiniest part of your goal)

When I said "the edge of the universe" I really only meant "as far as we can see into the space of the universe" not "where the universe ends and emptiness begins". There is no end of the universe, there is no beginning of the universe. The universe looks exactly the same in all directions and most most probably IS the same in all directions, and you'll never be able to find a location where you can say "Oh, this is the edge; the Big Bang explosion hasn't reached this point yet" because outside of where the Big Bang has been, there ARE no locations. That is what I meant when I said that Big Bang *is* the universe.
 
I was referring to the flat expanding universe. I know that theories say it might be a sphere, thus I try to reduce it to time. The progression of time is what describes our known universe(leaving out all that multidimensional stuff). So pretending big bang was a singularity spitting out all that matter, the edge of the singularity(our universe) is still timeless. It's the present. So the expansion of the universe started from that one singularity at "time 0". The edge of the universe is still "time 0" So the direction of the expansion is not "growing" but creating time disparity inside the present.
I had my second Weizenbier, so focussing won't lead anywhere now. Not that it ever led anywhere but it fun to think about that stuff :)
 
Back from the night, sober but still sleepy. The human brain is so annoying, why can't I imagine that stuff fully?
Another try. The universe must accelerate while expanding, cause this seems to be some kind of law, which I can't describe because of my lack of mathematical knowledge, which I refuse to gain anyway ;) When something explodes on earth, it expands faster when you are near the center of the explosion and slows down further away. This happens on the large scale of the universe too, but the explosion is seemingly inverted. On the "edge" of the universe big bang is happening right now and expanding quickly. From our point of view big bang has happend in the past and its location was in the "center" of the universe, but from the point of view of big bang it happens right now and is still the "center" of the universe. From a theoretical point outside of the universe(I know there is none) big bang wouldn't have happened.

edit:
Wouldn't it be somehow possible to create a model of an inverted universe? Taking some formulas, convert something from 1 to -1 so that it all makes sense? :D

edit:
Kombining these thoughts with my original thoughts I once again come to the conclusion that the future does not exist, the present is not tangible and world is filled with the past. The dead end. The human way of processing information is bound to the inperfection of the world that created us.

edit:
A demonstration of my amazing paint skills :p
jjbrzt.jpg


yet another edit:
The problem I see with other theories like expanding, slowing down, shrinking, creating another big bang etc. is that the time isn't correct in these models. The blue dot in the center of the circle above is the youngest point that exists, not the oldest point. Why should something shrink up into the youngest point? The same applies to the expanding and accelerating universe. It's not expanding when you look at it from the right angle. When we look at the center of that flat disc the universe is in the newest model, and we can prove that the center gets emptier it would mean that the universe collapses and not expands.
 
Well, I'll probably repeat myself now, but I'll still say this:
  1. An explosion is uniform; it "explodes" at the same speed everywhere. It's like blowing into a balloon: it'll grow at the same speed all of the time if you breathe evenly. What you're talking about is the scaling effect; if you draw dots on the balloon, it'll seem like the "center dots" will move slower compared to the "outer dots" but this is just a visual effect; the distance between all dots grows at the same speed.
  2. When we say that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, we notice this not at the edge, but everywhere. The distance between Alaska and Greenland grows at the same speed as the distance between Andromeda and the Pleiades. So the Universe behaves exactly like an explosion should, and not any differently.
  3. "On the edge of the universe", big bang happened 13.75 billion years ago. It's just that we see the energy coming from there about 13.75 billion years later, because that's how long light has taken to travel to us. Even if we were to travel to the edge of the universe, we would see that there are planets and stars and galaxies there just like around our own planet. There's no point, time-wise or location-wise, where we can say that "oh yeah, Big Bang's happening right there; this is where the universe is expanding". The universe is exactly the same in every location, and is only different time-wise (because at t=0, Big Bang happened, and the further we move away from t=0, the less Big Bang we see)

But if we set t=0 to be the singularity, and say that everything gets more unordered from there, THEN we don't get any conflicts. (So maybe the present is an illusion after all, and we're just experiencing a set of state iterations that "flaw" the universe?)
The universe does surprisingly behave a lot like the Mandelbrot set...
stuff1h.png

stuff2.png

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stuff4.png

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stuff10.png

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...much much later...

stuff170.png
 
Ah, stupid scaling effect :p
I'll think about it again later and put in the new info, thanks much for yor help :)
 
On a semi-related note, I've always wondered...

Smarter people then me believe that the universe is infinite. But, for the universe to truly be infinite, doesn't that mean that everything that can happen, WILL happen? (stole from the great movie Interstate 60)
And if everything that can happen, will happen, does that mean that everything that happens is INEVITABLE? It HAS to happen? (also from Interstate 60)

I've heard a theory that if a being (or computer) could know the exact state of every molecule in the universe, it could accurately predict the future. Meaning, everything that happens (including our decisions and actions) happens because of where every molecule is, what it's doing, and where it's been. Meaning, further, that we are all a product of every single experience, remembered or not, that has happened to us (and our parents and parents parents) since the beginning of time. So every decision we make (even if it's a coin toss) was GOING to be made that way, because of how things were before.

This actually makes sense to me. Thoughts?
 
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