What came before the Big Bang?

[Straw Dog]

Now when you see that, you will also notice that this "I", is self-creating. You can actually watch as it happens. Be quick, though. It is extremely sly and tricky! It hates being found out, and once that happens, will do everything in its power to resist your newfound vision.

Everything goes back to one. What does one go back to?

 

[YmirGF]

Everything goes back to one. What does one go back to?

Vainly trying to shoehorn reality into preconceived notions about how reality ought to behave?

 

[Thief]

That's probably because there is no reason to assume a nuclear plasma soup had any thought or feeling...

Not the soup...the Cook.

 

[Straw Dog]

Can Reality actually be such that there are no such things as the physical vs. the non-physical; that these are merely conceptual overlays to make the rational mind comfortable with its methodology?[/quote]

Conceptual methodology is also an action of the total system. We need common terms and an understanding to make effective communication possible. Language is natural.

 

[Straw Dog]

Vainly trying to shoehorn reality into preconceived notions about how reality ought to behave?

I don't know the rational answer to the question. It's a koan that Thich Nhat Hanh says he contemplated for a long while.

 

[Mycroft]

In the end nobody knows.

You can believe one thing or another. But you can never know. So neither side can put forth an authoritative statement on the matter. You can't reasonably say "This is what happened" because you have know way of knowing, and faith is not proof or evidence. Nor is one side not knowing proof or evidence.

 

[metis]

No, strings aren't "waves of energy." They're fundamental if string theory is correct, which means the most they can be called is "strings." They would still be matter, and they would still possess energy as a property.

Which is why I put "energy" into quotation marks, indicating that it shouldn't be taking literally. My use of "wave" was meant to indicate that these strings are believed by some to vibrate differently, thus altering the nature of various sub-atomic particles that they may compose.

Particles (all particles are sub-atomic, by the way) are matter in the conventional sense, because the conventional sense of "matter" is to have spatiotemporal extension and energy -- and particles have both.

Thanks, and I was aware of that.

No, matter doesn't "evolve into energy." Rest mass has an energy equivalence, but when the energy is released it's still doing so by being carried by particles (radiation, for instance -- those are particles, it's still matter carrying the energy).

OK, so my words were probably not the best to use. My reference was the changing nature from matter to energy, not a reference to change with the actual particles themselves.

A single atom can only be said to be "polarized" if its valence electrons form an overall shape giving the atom the equivalent of a dipole moment. That's what "polarized" means -- to act like a dipole. You are using the word incorrectly.

When my hands clap, what's keeping them from moving inside one another since atoms are mostly empty space? Even though my hands look solid, they're very much not, so what keeps my hands apart?

As for your recommendation, I don't mean to be trite, but did you realize I'm a cosmology grad student?

I know a thing or two about quantum physics.

I appreciate that, and I'll admit that I'm operating out of my field (I'm an anthropologist, now retired) but I have done quite a bit of reading in this area to at least have a basic idea what's going on. However, with that being said, I certainly not only will not make an absurd claim that I know anywhere near as much as you, and I do appreciate any corrections you have.

 

[metis]

...either with no rhyme or reason as an unconscious gyrating stupidity, or for the sheer delight of it via an awakened consciousness, since, in either case, such prolific output and infinite variety have no useful purpose whatsoever.

Who says the universe has to have a "purpose" for existing. What's supposedly wrong with "it is what it is"? OTOH, maybe there is a purpose and a creator, but I simply cannot tell that with any certainty whatsoever. Remember, it is not I who is jumping to conclusions.

 

[idav]

That's probably because there is no reason to assume a nuclear plasma soup had any thought or feeling...

Granted but a "plasma soup" doesn't need feelings to eventually evolve some feelings. I doubt anyone would look at the plasma energy thinking anything living could ever come out of it. That's our own bias because we can't handle living in plasma ourselves, though some species are better suited for such harsh conditions.

 

[Slapstick]

This is also confusing. You say this person "can't explain anything in simple English," then in the next breath you complain that they refer to things as "stuff."

I don't know about you, but I would call that "simple English." The intent to demarcate matter as a thing rather than as a property of a thing by calling it "stuff" seemed pretty obvious to me.

My idea of simple when it comes to English is being able to give an accurate or detailed description of whatever is being explained. Not a dumb down version of a word that for me doesn’t need an explanation as if it’s being taught to a 6 year old. I wouldn’t call the word “stuff”, which could be anything, as being “precise” or any more descriptive. But then again I just realized you three are debating someone that is delusional, and doesn't think matter exists.

Aside from that, I don’t think lumping everything together and slapping a label on it as being “stuff” does anything to help anyone better understand what matter is. But then again if anyone was actually interested in learning anything about it they could always research it for themselves.

 

[Slapstick]

For that matter, (no pun) what is the origin of the matter which 'gets' matter? The problem is the fact that we see 'matter' as 'real', when, in fact, it is an illusion.

The answer, of course, is consciousness, which solves all of these 'problems'. All we have been doing is nibbling around the edges, around the appearance, rather than piercing to the heart of the...heh, heh....uh.... matter. :banghead3

Yeah, the same stuff your keyboard is made out it. Try hitting your head on that.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

My idea of simple when it comes to English is being able to give an accurate or detailed description of whatever is being explained. Not a dumb down version of a word that for me doesn’t need an explanation as if it’s being taught to a 6 year old. I wouldn’t call the word “stuff”, which could be anything, as being “precise” or any more descriptive. But then again I just realized you three are debating someone that is delusional, and doesn't think matter exists.

Aside from that, I don’t think lumping everything together and slapping a label on it as being “stuff” does anything to help anyone better understand what matter is. But then again if anyone was actually interested in learning anything about it they could always research it for themselves.

The point is that when they say matter, it really doesn't have an actually meaning. We describe matter by its properties, not by sake of it being itself.

So when I say a chair, the image in your head has certain properties. Color, Texture, Shape. Those are all properties of matter they are what a chair has to make it a chair.

That's a point I got out of the article. Though I might be wrong.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Who says the universe has to have a "purpose" for existing.

Those who have a difficult time parsing human projection from everything else.

 

[Mycroft]

Those who have a difficult time parsing human projection from everything else.

Quite so. And humans project onto things madly. They say 'birds sing'. Birds do not sing, 'sing' is a projection of human concepts onto the noises made by birds to communicate.

Speaking of birds, an experiment I once performed with my students to indicate that there was no purpose behind nature (and therefore the universe) may very well be relevant here.

I asked them a question. 'Do you believe the purpose of the mother bird is to care for her young?' they all said yes, of course.

So we set up a nest and, within the nest we placed a little rubber chick. When feeding time came I moved the bird about very rapidly and the adult bird placed nearly all of the food into the rubber chick leaving practically none for the real chicks. Which made the students curious.

We repeated the experiment again the next day and the same thing happened. All experiments must be reproducible, after all.

The day after when it was feeding time again, we observed the birds feeding but we left the rubber chick alone so that it was very still. The mother bird did not put any worms into the rubber chick. at all. That made the students curious and, on the next day we repeated it again.

This, I told them, was why there was no purpose behind nature. A mother bird doesn't care for her young, that's a human projection, it simply reacts in a very mechanical fashion to certain stimuli in its environment. And that's all.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

Quite so. And humans project onto things madly. They say 'birds sing'. Birds do not sing, 'sing' is a projection of human concepts onto the noises made by birds to communicate.

Speaking of birds, an experiment I once performed with my students to indicate that there was no purpose behind nature (and therefore the universe) may very well be relevant here.

I asked them a question. 'Do you believe the purpose of the mother bird is to care for her young?' they all said yes, of course.

So we set up a nest and, within the nest we placed a little rubber chick. When feeding time came I moved the bird about very rapidly and the adult bird placed nearly all of the food into the rubber chick leaving practically none for the real chicks. Which made the students curious.

We repeated the experiment again the next day and the same thing happened. All experiments must be reproducible, after all.

The day after when it was feeding time again, we observed the birds feeding but we left the rubber chick alone so that it was very still. The mother bird did not put any worms into the rubber chick. at all. That made the students curious and, on the next day we repeated it again.

This, I told them, was why there was no purpose behind nature. A mother bird doesn't care for her young, that's a human projection, it simply reacts in a very mechanical fashion to certain stimuli in its environment. And that's all.

Well you could make the argument that humans do the exact thing. We just come up with fancy names for it.

 

[Mycroft]

Well you could make the argument that humans do the exact thing. We just come up with fancy names for it.

Well the difference between humans and birds is that birds have a very limited associative memory (this is, incidentally, why sex feels good and why there can be no homosexuality in animals.. Humans have a very complex associative memory. So when a chick isn't moving, the bird simply wont feed it because its associative memory is only complex enough to understand movement > feed. But when a human baby isn't moving, our associative memory is complex enough to know that this is not normal behaviour for the baby and therefore something is amiss.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

Well the difference between humans and birds is that birds have a very limited associative memory (this is, incidentally, why sex feels good and why there can be no homosexuality in animals.. Humans have a very complex associative memory. So when a chick isn't moving, the bird simply wont feed it because its associative memory is only complex enough to understand movement > feed. But when a human baby isn't moving, our associative memory is complex enough to know that this is not normal behaviour for the baby and therefore something is amiss.

How do you relate this with birds like Crows? Of course when you say homosexuality I assume you are talking about more than just the behavior? And haven't bonobo chimps and dolphins been shown to have sex for pleasure?

 

[Mycroft]

How do you relate this with birds like Crows? Of course when you say homosexuality I assume you are talking about more than just the behavior? And haven't bonobo chimps and dolphins been shown to have sex for pleasure?

It will be pretty much the same pattern in crows, too. The associations each bird can make may vary in complexity from species to species, depending on the size of the brain, but there's little evidence to show that they are outside of what is known as the 'mechanistic concept'.

Let's ask a naughty question: Why does sex feel good?

Well in humans it's leftover from our primate ancestry. But in animals it serves to ensure that they reproduce. Animals don't have a complex enough associative memory to grasp concepts such as population, reproduction, etc. They don't know that if they have sex it will produce offspring, they cant. So nature's way of ensuring they do produce offspring is simply to make sex feel good. This 'feeling' can be replicated no matter what USB port you stick your dongle into so sometimes a male does happy times with another male and it feels good. But that's just happenstance, I believe. I see no evidence for male animals actively seeking out other males for companionship or 'love' or whatever projection we like to put onto the behaviour.

Dolphins and Chimps have a slightly more complex associative memory. So there's a possibility that they do realise having sex produces offspring, but currently there's no way of making that determination.

Humans, of course, know that when we have sex we get babies. OUr associative memory is complex enough to understand this. So does sex need to feel good in humans? Not really, because we know we can reproduce whether it feels good or not.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

It will be pretty much the same pattern in crows, too. The associations each bird can make may vary in complexity from species to species, depending on the size of the brain, but there's little evidence to show that they are outside of what is known as the 'mechanistic concept'.

Let's ask a naughty question: Why does sex feel good?

Well in humans it's leftover from our primate ancestry. But in animals it serves to ensure that they reproduce. Animals don't have a complex enough associative memory to grasp concepts such as population, reproduction, etc. They don't know that if they have sex it will produce offspring, they cant. So nature's way of ensuring they do produce offspring is simply to make sex feel good. This 'feeling' can be replicated no matter what USB port you stick your dongle into so sometimes a male does happy times with another male and it feels good. But that's just happenstance, I believe. I see no evidence for male animals actively seeking out other males for companionship or 'love' or whatever projection we like to put onto the behaviour.

Dolphins and Chimps have a slightly more complex associative memory. So there's a possibility that they do realise having sex produces offspring, but currently there's no way of making that determination.

Humans, of course, know that when we have sex we get babies. OUr associative memory is complex enough to understand this. So does sex need to feel good in humans? Not really, because we know we can reproduce whether it feels good or not.

Hope that makes sense.

Well i also thought part of the reason it felt good was to also form bonds between the individuals who are experiencing it as well. Even if don't need to have sex to feel good to have babies, it helps though to either form bonds, or push forward to having more sex to produce more babies. I mean without birth control there would be plenty of more babies around simply because Sex does feel Good.

 

[Mycroft]

Well i also thought part of the reason it felt good was to also form bonds between the individuals who are experiencing it as well. Even if don't need to have sex to feel good to have babies, it helps though to either form bonds, or push forward to having more sex to produce more babies. I mean without birth control there would be plenty of more babies around simply because Sex does feel Good.

Don't forget that humans also have associative memory enough to know to...ahem...pull out before conception occurs.