New Proof of the Existence of God

[Dontaskme]

Everything had to come from something, except consciousness which couldn't have come from anything; either it doesn't exist or it has always existed.

Nothing and Something exist NOW in the same NON / DUAL reality...the two seeming opposites are ONE

Unconsciousness and Consciousness exist NOW in the same NON / DUAL reality...the two seeming opposites are ONE



NOW is without beginning nor end. It's without opposite.

This is the divine paradox.

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I agree with you that life can only come from life.

Only life is known, death is an illusion.


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[Serendipper]

Everything had to come from something, except consciousness which couldn't have come from anything; either it doesn't exist or it has always existed.

Nothing and Something exist NOW in the same NON / DUAL reality...the two seeming opposites are ONE

Unconsciousness and Consciousness exist NOW in the same NON / DUAL reality...the two seeming opposites are ONE



NOW is without beginning nor end. It's without opposite.

This is the divine paradox.

.

I agree with you that life can only come from life.

Only life is known, death is an illusion.

If nothing and something are codependent pairs and consciousness and unconsciousness are codependent, then why not life and death? What meaning does life have without the context of death?

[Dontaskme]

If nothing and something are codependent pairs and consciousness and unconsciousness are codependent, then why not life and death? What meaning does life have without the context of death?

Life doesn't have any meaning, except what knowledge puts there..knowledge is illusory, it informs illusory reality.

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[Dontaskme]

Life at quantum level is light, but displays thought when perceived. Mind at quantum level is light, which is life as it is, but displays thoughts of life when perceived, which is not life as it is. A word at quantum level is light, but displays a meaning because of it's opposite when perceived.

Illusory does not mean that it does not exist. Reality as it is is quantum. It is neither a wave nor a particle (it is both in one moment)

And not wo/man, animal or any thing made this happen. Everything is a manifestation of light. No proof necessary. It's blindingly self evident.

[Greta]

If chaos is not random, but determined, then what is the difference between chaos and order?

Time. Over time orderly systems - areas of concentration - emerge in chaotic systems through probability.

But a chaotic system is an orderly system, right? A chaotic system is a deterministic system that is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. What is the difference between order and disorder? Are clouds ordered? The difference seems subjective. Mom used to think my room was disordered, but it looked ok to me

Chaos and order are two sides of the same coin. You won't find anything in nature that is entirely chaotic or orderly, but ordered to some degree.

Agree about the subjective side too, but it's not ALL subjective. For instance, your room was more ordered and less chaotic than a cloud, no matter what your Mum said

If results seem impossible to predict, then why assume that that will always be the case? Maybe predictive methods are not strong enough or less effective in the realm of the very small. Given that Planck scale entities are posited to perhaps be impacting on the quantum scale, and given that our knowledge of Planck scale entities is minimal and theoretical, then Bell has only provided practical guide, not an ultimate ontological position. Either that or he's presenting an educated guess as fact.

Well, there will be doubters for a while I suppose:

Some people continue to believe that agreement with Bell's inequalities might yet be saved. They argue that in the future much more precise experiments could reveal that one of the known loopholes, for example the so-called "fair sampling loophole", had been biasing the interpretations. Most mainstream physicists are highly skeptical about all these "loopholes", admitting their existence but continuing to believe that Bell's inequalities must fail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stew ... ntal_tests

What does Bell's inequality mean, in layman's terms? https://www.quora.com/What-does-Bells-i ... mans-terms

Until someone provides reasonable objection, I suppose we're successfully working under the assumption that randomness exists.

I respect scientists more than many people on philosophy forums do. However, when physics experts discuss the ultimate nature of reality, I find them most convincing when they speak in terms of probabilities rather than feigning certainty, as the Quora writer did. The scientific mainstream once believed that the universe consisted of the Milky Way plus stars and the idea of extra galaxies was considered preposterous and naive, but the only preposterous aspect of the situation was the certainty of scientists at the time. The hypothesis was reasonable enough but the surety was not, given that they knew almost nothing about the extra-galactic lights in the night sky and simply reduced them to a black box assumption.

No one knows if subatomic particles are the baseline of reality in the same way as no one knows how large the universe is, or if there are others, impossible far away or in another dimension (which might effectively be the same thing, for all we know). Even if randomness exists, there could still be plenty of unknown effects causing at least some of what's perceived as random.

True randomness - the breakdown of cause and effect - makes no sense because that implies an extra actor in reality - God - which may be so, and also may not. The positing of God as certain and true is a game, generally one to reassure oneself that one's posthumous prospects don't seem so bleak.

My theory is that randomness is not uncaused, but caused by things we cannot know and that's most likely because we are continuous with the universe and therefore cannot make an observation without affecting what we're observing. Due to infinite regression, we cannot make a prediction.

Agreed - there's feedback coming from all directions. At our scale, much of it is trivial but at the subatomic scale, everything we know of will buffet the most minuscule entities around.

There was probably a time before quantum foam too. Everything had to come from something, except consciousness which couldn't have come from anything; either it doesn't exist or it has always existed.

That reminds me of Michio Kaku putting forward his hypothesis for measuring the consciousness of objects, and the example he used was that a thermostat, which only monitors temperature, would be one unit of consciousness, and then he worked up from there.

It's clear to me that biological life is not the only living state. By our current definitions, living systems like stars and planets are "dead", nonliving objects. So I'm a panvitalist these days, taking into account that all living systems need "space" to survive - to be surrounded by less animate things (otherwise they would be consumed by competition), but that's not to say these other things are "dead" as such. So, unlike almost everyone. I don't see rocks as "dead", rather dormant entities within living systems (like minerals in one's body).

Where there are rocks, watch out! Because the rocks could come alive

I thought we'd already agreed that they probably are alive in their slow and subtle way

[Serendipper]

Time. Over time orderly systems - areas of concentration - emerge in chaotic systems through probability.

But a chaotic system is an orderly system, right? A chaotic system is a deterministic system that is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. What is the difference between order and disorder? Are clouds ordered? The difference seems subjective. Mom used to think my room was disordered, but it looked ok to me

Chaos and order are two sides of the same coin. You won't find anything in nature that is entirely chaotic or orderly, but ordered to some degree.

Agree about the subjective side too, but it's not ALL subjective. For instance, your room was more ordered and less chaotic than a cloud, no matter what your Mum said

So what is order?

If I throw 5 coins in the air, they will land in an essentially random pattern; so we'll say the first toss is a scattered pattern and the second toss results in a straight-line formation. Now, why is one considered ordered and the other not? Is that consideration considered natural or artificial?

If results seem impossible to predict, then why assume that that will always be the case? Maybe predictive methods are not strong enough or less effective in the realm of the very small. Given that Planck scale entities are posited to perhaps be impacting on the quantum scale, and given that our knowledge of Planck scale entities is minimal and theoretical, then Bell has only provided practical guide, not an ultimate ontological position. Either that or he's presenting an educated guess as fact.

Well, there will be doubters for a while I suppose:

Some people continue to believe that agreement with Bell's inequalities might yet be saved. They argue that in the future much more precise experiments could reveal that one of the known loopholes, for example the so-called "fair sampling loophole", had been biasing the interpretations. Most mainstream physicists are highly skeptical about all these "loopholes", admitting their existence but continuing to believe that Bell's inequalities must fail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stew ... ntal_tests

What does Bell's inequality mean, in layman's terms? https://www.quora.com/What-does-Bells-i ... mans-terms

Until someone provides reasonable objection, I suppose we're successfully working under the assumption that randomness exists.

I respect scientists more than many people on philosophy forums do. However, when physics experts discuss the ultimate nature of reality, I find them most convincing when they speak in terms of probabilities rather than feigning certainty, as the Quora writer did. The scientific mainstream once believed that the universe consisted of the Milky Way plus stars and the idea of extra galaxies was considered preposterous and naive, but the only preposterous aspect of the situation was the certainty of scientists at the time. The hypothesis was reasonable enough but the surety was not, given that they knew almost nothing about the extra-galactic lights in the night sky and simply reduced them to a black box assumption.

You make a mighty strong case!

No one knows if subatomic particles are the baseline of reality in the same way as no one knows how large the universe is, or if there are others, impossible far away or in another dimension (which might effectively be the same thing, for all we know).

What about the fields? We have electric and magnetic fields, gravitational fields, Higgs field, gluon field and who knows what all. Do you think they are made of something or are considered fundamental?

Even if randomness exists, there could still be plenty of unknown effects causing at least some of what's perceived as random.

Well, if we suppose a particle is fundamental, then whatever that particle does would have to be random because there is nothing smaller that could determine it. Does that seem right? So unless there are an infinity of particle-sizes, then we're eventually going to find the smallest thing to be random.

True randomness - the breakdown of cause and effect - makes no sense because that implies an extra actor in reality - God - which may be so, and also may not. The positing of God as certain and true is a game, generally one to reassure oneself that one's posthumous prospects don't seem so bleak.

My theory is that randomness is not uncaused, but caused by things we cannot know and that's most likely because we are continuous with the universe and therefore cannot make an observation without affecting what we're observing. Due to infinite regression, we cannot make a prediction.

Agreed - there's feedback coming from all directions. At our scale, much of it is trivial but at the subatomic scale, everything we know of will buffet the most minuscule entities around.

I think of it as a continuum with no separate things to affect each other. The answer to what causes a cause to have an effect is realizing there are no things to cause other things; it's just a process that we divided in half.

There was probably a time before quantum foam too. Everything had to come from something, except consciousness which couldn't have come from anything; either it doesn't exist or it has always existed.

That reminds me of Michio Kaku putting forward his hypothesis for measuring the consciousness of objects, and the example he used was that a thermostat, which only monitors temperature, would be one unit of consciousness, and then he worked up from there.

I think I remember that.

It's clear to me that biological life is not the only living state. By our current definitions, living systems like stars and planets are "dead", nonliving objects. So I'm a panvitalist these days, taking into account that all living systems need "space" to survive - to be surrounded by less animate things (otherwise they would be consumed by competition), but that's not to say these other things are "dead" as such. So, unlike almost everyone. I don't see rocks as "dead", rather dormant entities within living systems (like minerals in one's body).

Where there are rocks, watch out! Because the rocks could come alive

I thought we'd already agreed that they probably are alive in their slow and subtle way

It must be true then

So the first lifeform to evolve probably couldn't reproduce because how would it know how to? So that means there must have been lots of lifeforms popping into existence until eventually one discovered how to replicate itself and eventually dominated the scene. And if that is true, then it's still happening today.

About 5 years ago I put some various dirts into jars with water so I could see the soil profile. I left the jars sitting all this time and now there is green stuff growing inside. Did it evolve or did it come from some kind of seed? I want to repeat the experiment with sterilized dirt. My bet is eventually life will spring forth.

[Greta]

But a chaotic system is an orderly system, right? A chaotic system is a deterministic system that is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. What is the difference between order and disorder? Are clouds ordered? The difference seems subjective. Mom used to think my room was disordered, but it looked ok to me

Chaos and order are two sides of the same coin. You won't find anything in nature that is entirely chaotic or orderly, but ordered to some degree.

Agree about the subjective side too, but it's not ALL subjective. For instance, your room was more ordered and less chaotic than a cloud, no matter what your Mum said

So what is order?

If I throw 5 coins in the air, they will land in an essentially random pattern; so we'll say the first toss is a scattered pattern and the second toss results in a straight-line formation. Now, why is one considered ordered and the other not? Is that consideration considered natural or artificial?

First thought is that that's pareidolia. However, the things we encounter in reality display objective order - actual patterns, eg. planets really are more systematised than the space around it.

No one knows if subatomic particles are the baseline of reality in the same way as no one knows how large the universe is, or if there are others, impossible far away or in another dimension (which might effectively be the same thing, for all we know).

What about the fields? We have electric and magnetic fields, gravitational fields, Higgs field, gluon field and who knows what all. Do you think they are made of something or are considered fundamental?

To the best of my limited knowledge those are bosons. I think of subatomic particles as different kinds of dynamic wrinkles in the quantum foam, of different energy level, mass, shape and spin. Why those particular configurations? https://www.123rf.com/photo_24987995_di ... and-4.html

We necessarily run into a hard barrier when exploring either the quantum realm or the cosmos because we don't know how large or small reality can be, thus we tend to focus on relativities rather than absolutes. Absolutes may well be there (unless there's some odd dimensional situation) but anyone who claims to know these things with certainty is more engaged in the field of entertainment than science or philosophy.

Even if randomness exists, there could still be plenty of unknown effects causing at least some of what's perceived as random.

Well, if we suppose a particle is fundamental, then whatever that particle does would have to be random because there is nothing smaller that could determine it. Does that seem right? So unless there are an infinity of particle-sizes, then we're eventually going to find the smallest thing to be random.

Okay, brainstorming: In terms of randomness, theoretically all one might need is the first change for everything to cascade via cause and effect rather than continued random effects (still begs the question of origins). If that's the case then the fundamental particles may be completely orderly in themselves, but buffeted by feedback from larger domains.

However, string theorists would say that the Planck scale "point" is an observer effect, with the rest of a string residing in other dimensions (as is often hypothesised about gravity because it's so much weaker than other forces). After all, if a closed or opened existed in our dimensions then what dimensions are within the curls?

Personally, my guess is there's some weird time-y-dimensional-y things going on in reality that our augmented ape brains are incapable of grasping - certainly mine is not

... there's feedback coming from all directions. At our scale, much of it is trivial but at the subatomic scale, everything we know of will buffet the most minuscule entities around.

I think of it as a continuum with no separate things to affect each other. The answer to what causes a cause to have an effect is realizing there are no things to cause other things; it's just a process that we divided in half.

Reality as a seething and vibrating undifferentiated "jello"?? I don't think it's us doing all of the dividing, I think it's ontic (barring dimensional oddities) - based on dark energy and cooling. The former is thought to drive everything apart and the latter solidifies them. For instance, it appears that many of the older galaxies that have been hurtling apart for billions of years are effectively becoming discrete universes. Any intelligent entities that evolved in a galaxy where other galaxies are too far away to see would consider their galaxy to be the universe. It's possible we are in a similar situation.

So the first lifeform to evolve probably couldn't reproduce because how would it know how to? So that means there must have been lots of lifeforms popping into existence until eventually one discovered how to replicate itself and eventually dominated the scene. And if that is true, then it's still happening today.

Yes, that's my impression, that things happened in stages. I also suspect that the first proto life forms would have lived for a matter of microseconds. Then an organism evolved from which we all came that persisted. Once it became established, it's easy to imagine how any fragile new instances of abiogenesis would have quickly ended up as food for our first (biological) ancestors.

About 5 years ago I put some various dirts into jars with water so I could see the soil profile. I left the jars sitting all this time and now there is green stuff growing inside. Did it evolve or did it come from some kind of seed? I want to repeat the experiment with sterilized dirt. My bet is eventually life will spring forth.

Yep, these would have come from microbes, seeds and spores in the soil.

My guess is that truly sterilised dirt, perfectly sealed to keep airborne microbes out, would remain sterile, even if heated and watered. The hard part is keeping microbes out in the long term. Maybe generations could theoretically keep your experiment working, ensuring the integrity of the system, but one day it surely break down and the soil would be returned to natural systems.

[Serendipper]

Chaos and order are two sides of the same coin. You won't find anything in nature that is entirely chaotic or orderly, but ordered to some degree.

Agree about the subjective side too, but it's not ALL subjective. For instance, your room was more ordered and less chaotic than a cloud, no matter what your Mum said

So what is order?

If I throw 5 coins in the air, they will land in an essentially random pattern; so we'll say the first toss is a scattered pattern and the second toss results in a straight-line formation. Now, why is one considered ordered and the other not? Is that consideration considered natural or artificial?

First thought is that that's pareidolia.

How on earth do you come across these words?

However, the things we encounter in reality display objective order - actual patterns, eg. planets really are more systematised than the space around it.

So it would seem, but what is objective order? How can we make objective statements without being subjective?

Is order simply synonymous with gravity; a force drawing inward? And disorder is a force pushing outward, scattering?

If reality is the interaction between subject and object, then order depends both on the object and the interpretation of it by the subject. And if that is so, then order isn't a thing unto itself, but relative to a specific reality. Do rainbows exist?

No one knows if subatomic particles are the baseline of reality in the same way as no one knows how large the universe is, or if there are others, impossible far away or in another dimension (which might effectively be the same thing, for all we know).

What about the fields? We have electric and magnetic fields, gravitational fields, Higgs field, gluon field and who knows what all. Do you think they are made of something or are considered fundamental?

To the best of my limited knowledge those are bosons. I think of subatomic particles as different kinds of dynamic wrinkles in the quantum foam, of different energy level, mass, shape and spin. Why those particular configurations? https://www.123rf.com/photo_24987995_di ... and-4.html

Is the quantum foam a collection of particles or a continuum? If a collection of particles, how do the particles affect each other?

We necessarily run into a hard barrier when exploring either the quantum realm or the cosmos because we don't know how large or small reality can be, thus we tend to focus on relativities rather than absolutes. Absolutes may well be there (unless there's some odd dimensional situation) but anyone who claims to know these things with certainty is more engaged in the field of entertainment than science or philosophy.

Yeah I see your point, but I think we can make deductive progress.

Even if randomness exists, there could still be plenty of unknown effects causing at least some of what's perceived as random.

Well, if we suppose a particle is fundamental, then whatever that particle does would have to be random because there is nothing smaller that could determine it. Does that seem right? So unless there are an infinity of particle-sizes, then we're eventually going to find the smallest thing to be random.

Okay, brainstorming: In terms of randomness, theoretically all one might need is the first change for everything to cascade via cause and effect rather than continued random effects (still begs the question of origins). If that's the case then the fundamental particles may be completely orderly in themselves, but buffeted by feedback from larger domains.

Yes but we claim a coin flip is determined, not because of larger domains, but smaller: we claim the nuances of the flip along with arrangement of air molecules, et al collectively determine the fate of the coin. If it is true that determinism is the result of something more fundamental, then either there is no absolute fundamental or randomness exists. If we can hash that out, then empiricism is circumvented by deduction.

However, string theorists would say that the Planck scale "point" is an observer effect,

I don't think we need to determine whether a smallest point exists and the adding of dimensions is just another way of adding more infinitesimal.

with the rest of a string residing in other dimensions (as is often hypothesised about gravity because it's so much weaker than other forces).

My theory of gravity derives from the observation that space is expanding and relying on the assumption that space is not becoming "thinner", then I conclude that space is being created at every point and it is being drawn in by matter. The balance of the creation vs destruction of space determines gravity such as it is. In the case of the black hole, space is being sucked in so quickly that even light cannot outrun it.

A consequence of this theory is that gravity could be variable over time depending how quickly space is being created/recycled (as the case may be). If the creation of space were not as fast as it is, then gravity would be much stronger. I believe that is the dark energy everyone is on about.

... there's feedback coming from all directions. At our scale, much of it is trivial but at the subatomic scale, everything we know of will buffet the most minuscule entities around.

I think of it as a continuum with no separate things to affect each other. The answer to what causes a cause to have an effect is realizing there are no things to cause other things; it's just a process that we divided in half.

Reality as a seething and vibrating undifferentiated "jello"??

I guess. It's a continuum field containing continuously varying densities of energy which happen to have resonances due to relativistic conditions.

I don't care much for quanti. The electron can increase in energy until it finds a resonance that causes it to jump to the next quantized energy level. It's not discrete, but continuous.

Like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJAgrUBF4w

I don't think it's us doing all of the dividing, I think it's ontic (barring dimensional oddities) - based on dark energy and cooling. The former is thought to drive everything apart and the latter solidifies them.

Dark energy I theorize to be simply the creation/recycling/expansion of space and cooling is simply charges that vibrate against some resistance that then slows the vibrations. Slow vibrations is cool, and fast vibrations is hot. Temperature is a measure of kinetic energy and can't be a force drawing things together.

Matter has a propensity to attract and space tends to expand and the balance of the two determine what we see.

For instance, it appears that many of the older galaxies that have been hurtling apart for billions of years are effectively becoming discrete universes.

I see what you mean, but I still think the spacetime fabric itself is a continuum regardless if light could ever escape the new universe. Neil DeGrasse Tyson said what keeps him up at night is knowing that the universe is exanding and one day in he future there will be astronomers who are not able to see the galaxies that we see today, so he wonders what exists that we cannot see.

Any intelligent entities that evolved in a galaxy where other galaxies are too far away to see would consider their galaxy to be the universe. It's possible we are in a similar situation.

Yes, unless an offsetting force develops.

So the first lifeform to evolve probably couldn't reproduce because how would it know how to? So that means there must have been lots of lifeforms popping into existence until eventually one discovered how to replicate itself and eventually dominated the scene. And if that is true, then it's still happening today.

Yes, that's my impression, that things happened in stages. I also suspect that the first proto life forms would have lived for a matter of microseconds. Then an organism evolved from which we all came that persisted. Once it became established, it's easy to imagine how any fragile new instances of abiogenesis would have quickly ended up as food for our first (biological) ancestors.

Yup, I agree.

About 5 years ago I put some various dirts into jars with water so I could see the soil profile. I left the jars sitting all this time and now there is green stuff growing inside. Did it evolve or did it come from some kind of seed? I want to repeat the experiment with sterilized dirt. My bet is eventually life will spring forth.

Yep, these would have come from microbes, seeds and spores in the soil.

But how do you know? For the first 2-3 years it did nothing. Why would it take so long for a seed to sprout?

My guess is that truly sterilised dirt, perfectly sealed to keep airborne microbes out, would remain sterile, even if heated and watered. The hard part is keeping microbes out in the long term. Maybe generations could theoretically keep your experiment working, ensuring the integrity of the system, but one day it surely break down and the soil would be returned to natural systems.

Did you watch the video I posted about the clay particles providing the structure for assimilation of molecules? It can happen quickly! And the more they dig into fossils, the more evidence supporting the view that life evolved quickly on earth. I highly doubt this is complicated and all that's required is an electromagnetic energy source, such as the sun or radioactive decay from various elements.

Food canned in mason jars do not grow organisms, so they seem fairly sterile, just absent the clay. If sterilized mud and water is sealed in a mason jar, I'm confident nothing can get in to contaminate and I'm confident that if the jar were set on a window sill in the sun, it would eventually grow what we colloquially call life and I think it would be within the span of 5 years.

[AlexW]

Premise #1: Life was created from a completely random process.
Premise #2: No finite being can create anything that is completely random.
Therefore: Life was created by an infinite being.

A "completely random process" is really no process at all - at least not a process in time as time looses its meaning in perfect random-ness.
Complete random-ness is thus only possible in eternity/infinity, which again leaves no room for finite beings - only the illusion/mental conception of such.
Life has not been created - it IS constantly created in the timeless now and is, as such, this "infinite being" (god) you refer to.

[Greta]

So what is order?

If I throw 5 coins in the air, they will land in an essentially random pattern; so we'll say the first toss is a scattered pattern and the second toss results in a straight-line formation. Now, why is one considered ordered and the other not? Is that consideration considered natural or artificial?

First thought is that that's pareidolia.

How on earth do you come across these words?

Haunting philosophy forums - you'd be surprised at the words people at these places come up with In this instance, "pareidolia" was being used regularly in the news when images from the Mars rovers were being interpreted by laypersons as aliens, animals and artificial structures. IMO the most perplexing of them was the "Martian crab" https://io9.gizmodo.com/nasa-totally-fo ... 1722449768

However, the things we encounter in reality display objective order - actual patterns, eg. planets really are more systematised than the space around it.

So it would seem, but what is objective order? How can we make objective statements without being subjective?

Is order simply synonymous with gravity; a force drawing inward? And disorder is a force pushing outward, scattering?

If reality is the interaction between subject and object, then order depends both on the object and the interpretation of it by the subject. And if that is so, then order isn't a thing unto itself, but relative to a specific reality. Do rainbows exist?

Good questions. It helps to think of objectivity and subjectivity as poles in a continuum than absolutes, ditto order and chaos. This seems to align more with what we "-jectively" observe.

In terms of knowledge, objectivity is the agreed subjective assessment of the experienced. In terms of nature, the objective is physically manifest and tends to be impossible to ignore or deny without mental callisthenics.

I think of subatomic particles as different kinds of dynamic wrinkles in the quantum foam, of different energy level, mass, shape and spin. Why those particular configurations? https://www.123rf.com/photo_24987995_di ... and-4.html

Is the quantum foam a collection of particles or a continuum? If a collection of particles, how do the particles affect each other?

The idea that reality is ultimately granulated is speculative, but generally well regarded in the scientific community because the math seemingly supports this notion.

Being a non physicist, all I have is the Dummies version of space / the quantum foam. The first thing to consider is that the entire universe is highly energetic, including the "nothingness" of space and the energy is not still, but constantly bubbling, infinitesimal fluctuations popping in and then immediately out of existence. Seemingly, one of these fluctuations did not immediately winkle out of existence and instead gathered all the surrounding energy into itself and inflating. Maybe the universe is basically one especially large and long-lived wrinkle in space?

with the rest of a string residing in other dimensions (as is often hypothesised about gravity because it's so much weaker than other forces).

My theory of gravity derives from the observation that space is expanding and relying on the assumption that space is not becoming "thinner", then I conclude that space is being created at every point and it is being drawn in by matter. The balance of the creation vs destruction of space determines gravity such as it is. In the case of the black hole, space is being sucked in so quickly that even light cannot outrun it.

A consequence of this theory is that gravity could be variable over time depending how quickly space is being created/recycled (as the case may be). If the creation of space were not as fast as it is, then gravity would be much stronger. I believe that is the dark energy everyone is on about.

Interesting ideas. I'll just clarify that the "thinness" I referred to comes from the lack of things like stars, planets, rocks, dust, magnetic or gravitational fields etc, not that the quantum foam thins out.

I think of it as a continuum with no separate things to affect each other. The answer to what causes a cause to have an effect is realizing there are no things to cause other things; it's just a process that we divided in half.

... It's a continuum field containing continuously varying densities of energy which happen to have resonances due to relativistic conditions.

I don't care much for quanti. The electron can increase in energy until it finds a resonance that causes it to jump to the next quantized energy level. It's not discrete, but continuous. Like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJAgrUBF4w

That seems to be a fair perspective. Alas, we must quantise to analyse.

Matter has a propensity to attract and space tends to expand and the balance of the two determine what we see.

I would say that matter is the same stuff as space, just much more concentrated, with the areas of density impacting on the thinner stuff around it - and it should be said, the thinner stuff having some smaller impact on area of concentration.

Yep, these would have come from microbes, seeds and spores in the soil.

But how do you know? For the first 2-3 years it did nothing. Why would it take so long for a seed to sprout?

It depends on the conditions that act as triggers for sprouting. Maybe it took a long time for those conditions to arrive? A horticulturist would give you a better answer.

My guess is that truly sterilised dirt, perfectly sealed to keep airborne microbes out, would remain sterile, even if heated and watered. The hard part is keeping microbes out in the long term. Maybe generations could theoretically keep your experiment working, ensuring the integrity of the system, but one day it surely break down and the soil would be returned to natural systems.

Did you watch the video I posted about the clay particles providing the structure for assimilation of molecules? It can happen quickly! And the more they dig into fossils, the more evidence supporting the view that life evolved quickly on earth. I highly doubt this is complicated and all that's required is an electromagnetic energy source, such as the sun or radioactive decay from various elements.

Food canned in mason jars do not grow organisms, so they seem fairly sterile, just absent the clay. If sterilized mud and water is sealed in a mason jar, I'm confident nothing can get in to contaminate and I'm confident that if the jar were set on a window sill in the sun, it would eventually grow what we colloquially call life and I think it would be within the span of 5 years.

Well, you'd better get an experiment going and check your hypothesis!

[Serendipper]

First thought is that that's pareidolia.

How on earth do you come across these words?

Haunting philosophy forums - you'd be surprised at the words people at these places come up with In this instance, "pareidolia" was being used regularly in the news when images from the Mars rovers were being interpreted by laypersons as aliens, animals and artificial structures. IMO the most perplexing of them was the "Martian crab" https://io9.gizmodo.com/nasa-totally-fo ... 1722449768

Yeah folks do come up with some sesquipedalian words So what about the crab? It doesn't look like a rock.

However, the things we encounter in reality display objective order - actual patterns, eg. planets really are more systematised than the space around it.

So it would seem, but what is objective order? How can we make objective statements without being subjective?

Is order simply synonymous with gravity; a force drawing inward? And disorder is a force pushing outward, scattering?

If reality is the interaction between subject and object, then order depends both on the object and the interpretation of it by the subject. And if that is so, then order isn't a thing unto itself, but relative to a specific reality. Do rainbows exist?

Good questions. It helps to think of objectivity and subjectivity as poles in a continuum than absolutes, ditto order and chaos. This seems to align more with what we "-jectively" observe.

Yes, probably so.

In terms of knowledge, objectivity is the agreed subjective assessment of the experienced. In terms of nature, the objective is physically manifest and tends to be impossible to ignore or deny without mental callisthenics.

I think it's good to keep in mind that it's still a collection of subjective assessments that happen to coincide.

I think of subatomic particles as different kinds of dynamic wrinkles in the quantum foam, of different energy level, mass, shape and spin. Why those particular configurations? https://www.123rf.com/photo_24987995_di ... and-4.html

Is the quantum foam a collection of particles or a continuum? If a collection of particles, how do the particles affect each other?

The idea that reality is ultimately granulated is speculative, but generally well regarded in the scientific community because the math seemingly supports this notion.

How could one particle affect another if they weren't part of a continuum?

Being a non physicist, all I have is the Dummies version of space / the quantum foam. The first thing to consider is that the entire universe is highly energetic, including the "nothingness" of space and the energy is not still, but constantly bubbling, infinitesimal fluctuations popping in and then immediately out of existence. Seemingly, one of these fluctuations did not immediately winkle out of existence and instead gathered all the surrounding energy into itself and inflating. Maybe the universe is basically one especially large and long-lived wrinkle in space?

So fundamental reality is like an ocean with waves where the crests are the particles "poppings into existence" and the troughs are the anti-particles. Probably they pop into existence as a density or resonance within a continuous field. A particle popping into existence from nothing and being disconnected from everything else seems harder to believe.

with the rest of a string residing in other dimensions (as is often hypothesised about gravity because it's so much weaker than other forces).

My theory of gravity derives from the observation that space is expanding and relying on the assumption that space is not becoming "thinner", then I conclude that space is being created at every point and it is being drawn in by matter. The balance of the creation vs destruction of space determines gravity such as it is. In the case of the black hole, space is being sucked in so quickly that even light cannot outrun it.

A consequence of this theory is that gravity could be variable over time depending how quickly space is being created/recycled (as the case may be). If the creation of space were not as fast as it is, then gravity would be much stronger. I believe that is the dark energy everyone is on about.

Interesting ideas. I'll just clarify that the "thinness" I referred to comes from the lack of things like stars, planets, rocks, dust, magnetic or gravitational fields etc, not that the quantum foam thins out.

If the foam doesn't thin out, and expansion is true, then foam particles are being created which pushes space outward.

I think of it as a continuum with no separate things to affect each other. The answer to what causes a cause to have an effect is realizing there are no things to cause other things; it's just a process that we divided in half.

... It's a continuum field containing continuously varying densities of energy which happen to have resonances due to relativistic conditions.

I don't care much for quanti. The electron can increase in energy until it finds a resonance that causes it to jump to the next quantized energy level. It's not discrete, but continuous. Like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJAgrUBF4w

That seems to be a fair perspective. Alas, we must quantise to analyse.

It's like calculus: the quanti are infinitesimal.

Matter has a propensity to attract and space tends to expand and the balance of the two determine what we see.

I would say that matter is the same stuff as space, just much more concentrated, with the areas of density impacting on the thinner stuff around it - and it should be said, the thinner stuff having some smaller impact on area of concentration.

Seems right.

Yep, these would have come from microbes, seeds and spores in the soil.

But how do you know? For the first 2-3 years it did nothing. Why would it take so long for a seed to sprout?

It depends on the conditions that act as triggers for sprouting. Maybe it took a long time for those conditions to arrive? A horticulturist would give you a better answer.

Usually seeds go bad during that time. It's just a green fuzzy stuff growing from the dirt.

My guess is that truly sterilised dirt, perfectly sealed to keep airborne microbes out, would remain sterile, even if heated and watered. The hard part is keeping microbes out in the long term. Maybe generations could theoretically keep your experiment working, ensuring the integrity of the system, but one day it surely break down and the soil would be returned to natural systems.

Did you watch the video I posted about the clay particles providing the structure for assimilation of molecules? It can happen quickly! And the more they dig into fossils, the more evidence supporting the view that life evolved quickly on earth. I highly doubt this is complicated and all that's required is an electromagnetic energy source, such as the sun or radioactive decay from various elements.

Food canned in mason jars do not grow organisms, so they seem fairly sterile, just absent the clay. If sterilized mud and water is sealed in a mason jar, I'm confident nothing can get in to contaminate and I'm confident that if the jar were set on a window sill in the sun, it would eventually grow what we colloquially call life and I think it would be within the span of 5 years.

Well, you'd better get an experiment going and check your hypothesis!

I knew you would say that

[Greta]

In this instance, "pareidolia" was being used regularly in the news when images from the Mars rovers were being interpreted by laypersons as aliens, animals and artificial structures. IMO the most perplexing of them was the "Martian crab" https://io9.gizmodo.com/nasa-totally-fo ... 1722449768

So what about the crab? It doesn't look like a rock.

I don't know. The information online about it is tragic - split between gormless Reptilian-believing tinfoils and "science-y" articles saying speaking sagely about pareidolia and providing even less argument or evidence than the conspiracy crew! No analysis of how such a structure may be geological. No comment about its size. They just say "NASA is certain it's geological", yet NASA has been certain about many things and been wrong.

There should have been a concerted effort to understand the structure - to take a closer look, if only for public interest's sake (who's paying for it?). Even if the feature was geological, it may have been a fossil or an unusual crystalline formation or an indicator of unusual geological or chemical activity. This is not something you tend to see on Earth. The other claims - faces, people, mammals - are often absurdly obviously rocks and shadows, but this one is very strange to me. I've looked at numerous photos of Earth rocks presented as being similar to the "Martian crab" and they are not even remotely close. Nope, "just a rock" and move on, which was distressingly incurious and simply abysmal science.

It's this kind of arrogance and shallowness in parts of the scientific community that reduces credibility.

Is the quantum foam a collection of particles or a continuum? If a collection of particles, how do the particles affect each other?

The idea that reality is ultimately granulated is speculative, but generally well regarded in the scientific community because the math seemingly supports this notion.

How could one particle affect another if they weren't part of a continuum?[/quote]
I admit defeat http://www.physicscentral.com/experimen ... estion.cfm

If the foam doesn't thin out, and expansion is true, then foam particles are being created which pushes space outward.

But they are annihilated immediately. Maybe they are tiny explosions? Maybe everything that exists is an explosion of sorts? fast ones and very slow ones

But how do you know? For the first 2-3 years it did nothing. Why would it take so long for a seed to sprout?

It depends on the conditions that act as triggers for sprouting. Maybe it took a long time for those conditions to arrive? A horticulturist would give you a better answer.

Usually seeds go bad during that time. It's just a green fuzzy stuff growing from the dirt.

https://askabiologist.asu.edu/content/h ... nderground

Well, you'd better get an experiment going and check your hypothesis!

I knew you would say that

Oh dear, I am becoming predictable

[Serendipper]

In this instance, "pareidolia" was being used regularly in the news when images from the Mars rovers were being interpreted by laypersons as aliens, animals and artificial structures. IMO the most perplexing of them was the "Martian crab" https://io9.gizmodo.com/nasa-totally-fo ... 1722449768

So what about the crab? It doesn't look like a rock.

I don't know. The information online about it is tragic - split between gormless Reptilian-believing tinfoils and "science-y" articles saying speaking sagely about pareidolia and providing even less argument or evidence than the conspiracy crew! No analysis of how such a structure may be geological. No comment about its size. They just say "NASA is certain it's geological", yet NASA has been certain about many things and been wrong.

There should have been a concerted effort to understand the structure - to take a closer look, if only for public interest's sake (who's paying for it?). Even if the feature was geological, it may have been a fossil or an unusual crystalline formation or an indicator of unusual geological or chemical activity. This is not something you tend to see on Earth. The other claims - faces, people, mammals - are often absurdly obviously rocks and shadows, but this one is very strange to me. I've looked at numerous photos of Earth rocks presented as being similar to the "Martian crab" and they are not even remotely close. Nope, "just a rock" and move on, which was distressingly incurious and simply abysmal science.

It's this kind of arrogance and shallowness in parts of the scientific community that reduces credibility.

That's very well said. I can find no sensible theory to explain why they don't strive to understand it.

The idea that reality is ultimately granulated is speculative, but generally well regarded in the scientific community because the math seemingly supports this notion.

How could one particle affect another if they weren't part of a continuum?

I admit defeat http://www.physicscentral.com/experimen ... estion.cfm

Yes it bogged Descartes down too:

This conclusion in the Sixth Meditation asserts the well-known substance dualism of Descartes. That dualism leads to problems. As Princess Elisabeth, among others, asked: if mind is unextended and matter is extended, how do they interact? This problem vexed not only Descartes, who admitted to Elisabeth that he didn't have a good answer (3:694), but it also vexed Descartes' followers and other metaphysicians. It seems that, somehow, states of the mind and the body must be brought into relation, because when we decide to pick up a pencil our arm actually moves, and when light hits our eyes we experience the visible world. But how do mind and body interact? Some of Descartes' followers adopted an occasionalist position, according to which God mediates the causal relations between mind and body; mind does not affect body, and body does not affect mind, but God gives the mind appropriate sensations at the right moment, and he makes the body move by putting it into the correct brain states at a moment that corresponds to the volition to pick up the pencil. Other philosophers adopted yet other solutions, including the monism of Spinoza and the pre-established harmony of Leibniz.

How does one thing affect another thing? They have to be part of the same thing otherwise it's an impossible problem.

If the foam doesn't thin out, and expansion is true, then foam particles are being created which pushes space outward.

But they are annihilated immediately. Maybe they are tiny explosions? Maybe everything that exists is an explosion of sorts? fast ones and very slow ones

Somehow they are being created faster than they are being annihilated?

Usually seeds go bad during that time. It's just a green fuzzy stuff growing from the dirt.

https://askabiologist.asu.edu/content/h ... nderground

Yeah, ragweed is one that can live a long time underground. If you see ragweed, you know the dirt has been disturbed recently.

I don't know, it just doesn't seem consistent with what I've observed in nature to have seeds not sprout for a few years and then suddenly germinate when conditions in my house never varied by much.

I knew you would say that

Oh dear, I am becoming predictable

No, it's just what I would have said

[Greta]

I can find no sensible theory to explain why they don't strive to understand it.

They seemed to have made an assumption. It seems that if people are getting excited over any of the photos they reflexively assume that it's nonsense. Every article about it is full of straw aliens the ghostly women, floating rock, giant face or rocks which look tiny bit like animals (and the more obviously amorphous bits of them are ignored). This was different but someone decided to ignore a research opportunity.

"Other philosophers adopted yet other solutions, including the monism of Spinoza and the pre-established harmony of Leibniz" ...

How does one thing affect another thing? They have to be part of the same thing otherwise it's an impossible problem.

Does connection entirely imply membership or ownership?

If the foam doesn't thin out, and expansion is true, then foam particles are being created which pushes space outward.

But they are annihilated immediately. Maybe they are tiny explosions? Maybe everything that exists is an explosion of sorts? fast ones and very slow ones

Somehow they are being created faster than they are being annihilated?[/quote]
Maybe the same, with the energy of the "little explosions" pushing outwards in all directions.

I don't know, it just doesn't seem consistent with what I've observed in nature to have seeds not sprout for a few years and then suddenly germinate when conditions in my house never varied by much.

It does to me. Some seeds have a very wide tolerance for different conditions while others are very particular. Some will soon rot while others are much hardier. You may well have had some tardigrades in stasis in there too.

[Serendipper]

I can find no sensible theory to explain why they don't strive to understand it.

They seemed to have made an assumption. It seems that if people are getting excited over any of the photos they reflexively assume that it's nonsense. Every article about it is full of straw aliens the ghostly women, floating rock, giant face or rocks which look tiny bit like animals (and the more obviously amorphous bits of them are ignored). This was different but someone decided to ignore a research opportunity.

I can't believe the scientists aren't protesting en masse. The media attention would force nasa to research more.

"Other philosophers adopted yet other solutions, including the monism of Spinoza and the pre-established harmony of Leibniz" ...

How does one thing affect another thing? They have to be part of the same thing otherwise it's an impossible problem.

Does connection entirely imply membership or ownership?

A co-op membership.

If the foam doesn't thin out, and expansion is true, then foam particles are being created which pushes space outward.

But they are annihilated immediately. Maybe they are tiny explosions? Maybe everything that exists is an explosion of sorts? fast ones and very slow ones

Somehow they are being created faster than they are being annihilated?

Maybe the same, with the energy of the "little explosions" pushing outwards in all directions.[/quote]
Yes but then it would become thinner. We need new particles to maintain density.

I don't know, it just doesn't seem consistent with what I've observed in nature to have seeds not sprout for a few years and then suddenly germinate when conditions in my house never varied by much.

It does to me. Some seeds have a very wide tolerance for different conditions while others are very particular. Some will soon rot while others are much hardier. You may well have had some tardigrades in stasis in there too.

Now there is a name I'll never remember

So how about a mason jar of dirt with lid and ring in the oven at 350 for a while, then fill with boiling water to the top, slap the lid on and wait 5 years?