Everything is connected
tbuitenh | Try to connect these. | Tue, 2006-09-19 09:37
libervisco | Ermm.. everything is indeed | Tue, 2006-09-19 15:03
Ermm.. everything is indeed connected on some level I think. Everything that exists pretty much comes down to atoms and energy. You, me, our brains and impulses flowing through it.. everything comes down to that.
Now add some field theory to the whole thing (a theory which would say that every particle in the universe can hold an information relating to other particle anywhere in the universe) and that's it (I think that's a holographic universe theory).
I can't remember of anything that could come close to not being connected in some way connected right now. 
Simon G Best | Easy One | Mon, 2007-03-12 18:14
stojic | Well, the whole everything | Mon, 2007-03-12 18:33
Well, the whole everything is one, so asking to find two things that are not connected in any way is like asking to find two parts of something that aren't connected in any way, while they are obviously connected by the fact that they are both parts of the same thing.
And each time you imagine two things they are connected by the fact that you just imagined them, so your best bet in imagining them would be not to imagine them, which would fail because of that first reason in the post, not to mention that imagining something without imagining it is an impossible thing to do, unless you are out of your mind or on a verge of revolutionary discovery of a new sort of logic.
democrates | Everything | Mon, 2007-03-12 19:41
stojic | That was, in a sense, what I | Mon, 2007-03-12 19:53
That was, in a sense, what I was aiming at, but not as a mere set of all things, but more as "the single one". I like to think about everything as a single unchangeable whole that contains whole space and time, and us as small parts of that. When you look at it like that, you get a sense of everything being still and definite, which is pretty beautiful, I think.
democrates | El Plagiaro | Mon, 2007-03-12 21:37
Yes indeed I picked up on your post and should have used 'reply' to credit you with starting me down that road. But I think we may have a core difference in our preferences.
Maybe I'm projecting but I'd assumed that the paradox of the human mind that most people experience is that we can neither encapsulate infinity nor accept a limit to reality. IE. I can't 'picture' infinite space or time, but nor can I accept either a fixed space with nothing outside or something that's not made of something else, or time having a beginning or end.
For me this is appealing, preserving the possibility of an unending frontier of exploration and discovery no matter how widely or closely we observe or venture (when's 'fantastic voyage' showing again?). I welcome quantum uncertainty for the same reason, "God doesn't play dice with the universe", "Don't tell God what to do with his dice". Let the dice roll say I, I don't want to be able to predict too much any more than sports fans want to be certain of the outcome of every competition. I like to believe that it's all to play for and my choices change the future, as that babe in the terminator said "the future is not set".
So rather than still and definite, I prefer semi-predictable activity and infinite.
libervisco | Well um guys, how did you | Tue, 2007-03-13 00:09
Well um guys, how did you know that I will watch a show on syncronicity tonight? 
You didn't. Interesting. Because I just watched a scientific show on syncronicity which basically concludes a lot of what you just described, and right after seeing the show I saw your posts here. But the thing is, I saw there were new posts to this "everything is connected" thread even before I saw the show. From whichever point of view you look at it, it's a weird coincidence, which is why I'm so much enjoying this right now.
Man, it doesn't need to be explained. We are part of the whole which is part of another whole and so on and on. Maybe there is a limit there somewhere, but that doesn't have to matter to us. Life is a journey that should never end. Everything is connected and in some way related and how much of that "relatedness" will we perceive is simply up to how open can we get ourselves consciously or unconsciously to see it. 
Syncronicity rules! Connectedness rules! Collective mode rules!
Cheers
stojic | Well, I guess we didn't | Tue, 2007-03-13 01:33
Well, I guess we didn't know, but maybe we did. After all, if we are all parts of the same thing, then we are all one together with that thing, so we all knew that one part of us will watch the show and other parts are going to discuss something related. I like that phrase from the Rasta philosophy - they say "I and I" instead of "we". So, I and I and I knew .
I agree that it doesn't have to explained, and it probably never will be, at least not without the great uncertainty. That "relatedness" and "being open" you wrote about actually fits in my other post here, the one about the pebble. Being more open would mean being closer to actually perceiving totality of yourself, and perceiving "relatedness" comes easily with that.
stojic | The Pebble | Tue, 2007-03-13 01:19
Well you asked a question, so I don't see how you didn't reply to me, I didn't like the fact I broke the flat layout of the topic .
We are not able to imagine infinity or multidimensional spaces (we are struggling with three dimensions, there are claims about some people being able to operate in four), but we are capable of grasping the concept of multidimensional spaces and objects, and the concept of infinity (for as much as you choose, there is more).
The four dimensional space-time bent into itself so that it doesn't have border and is infinite (but repetitive) in every direction is conceptually no different from a two dimensional plane bent into a sphere. This is what "everything" I was referring to looks like. When you step out of it and look at it in its totality, there is no problem with nothing being around it, because all space is contained in the space-time, so there is nothing around to be empty.
When you look at space itself, you see that it is constantly changing with time. But when you step out and look at space-time, it looks fixed. If it were changing, then some external time dimension with which the space-time changes would have to exist. This maybe changes things if there were infinitely many time dimensions, but I like the simpler solution more, so I'll stay with four dimensions.
When I look at universe like this, as a non-changing four dimensional object, it looks wonderful to me (I like to imagine it as a pebble). It is fixed, it contains everything and it simply is. Every happening is a dot in it, every human life is a spark of conscience. Some sparks are extending to the Moon and back, some probably to Mars and further, and there are probably many different types of sparks throughout the pebble. Maybe the pebble itself glows a bit. And it all simply is, in all of its complexity.
This view brings one problem with it - a lack of true free will and choice. But I don't see free will or choice as fundamentally necessary, so it doesn't bother me much. After all, we don't need free will because we are simply fixed four dimensional objects inside the pebble. Free will has no meaning in the totality of the pebble, it is an illusion of living consciously through time. In this picture, it is a nice little effect.
This all is, off course, a simple speculation about the possible setup of "everything", but I think it paints an interesting picture.
democrates | Darn Interesting | Tue, 2007-03-13 03:47
That sounds a lot like metaphysical naturalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_naturalism
I guess the main thing is that you find contentment with it, just as I do with my world view, and that we can respect indeed welcome and enjoy diversity. Given the lack of conclusive proof for any particular view set, I have to keep an open mind even as I adopt these views, which I believe I chose to do with free will, hehe
When I choose to believe in God and eternal salvation I know full well that this may be due to a psychological yearning for the idealised parent who will look after everything forever, there there democrates, eat your schnitzels and rest your noggin on your cloud pillow. But it feels good and I'm not harming anyone, so I'm happy to wear that technicolor raincoat.
Same thing with believing in the multiverse, a concept eastern philosophy has long espoused but now has some backers from the fields of string theory and supergravity as they exercise their brains with branes and matrix theory. 9, 10, 11, 12 dimensions, take your pick. The big bang was caused by the collision of two branes? Cool! Trillions of other universes with who knows what laws of physics? Awesome! I don't care! So long as no-one tells me the size of reality in cubic parsecs I shouldn't feel trapped and suffer a dose of claustrophobia. Maybe there's another psychological basis indicated for that view, that darn cot with it's bars...
stojic | Off course, diversity is | Tue, 2007-03-13 16:44
Off course, diversity is welcome. Some time ago I would probably argue against the existence of God, but now I know it makes no sense to argue over something that is neither provable or disprovable, so I won't argue over something I cannot be sure in myself .
I read somewhere a thought by someone who said that the best world view one can have is the world view that benefits him most, because ultimately no world view can be proved true or false, so practically they are all equally true. While this is a pretty pragmatic point of view, it suggests the connection you mentioned, between someone's psychology and his choice of world view. After all, people tend to choose the world view that they feel is right, some of them feel so strong that it's right that they firmly believe they know it's right. It could all be firmly rooted in their psychology.
Although I find beauty and content in the world view I described, I wouldn't necessarily call it my world view, as I don't completely believe in it. But then again, do you have to completely believe in something for it to be your world view, or does having a world view include a healthy dose of doubt? I guess that without doubt one would be a true believer, or a closed minded person.
libervisco |
stojic wrote:
I read | Thu, 2007-03-15 18:22
I read somewhere a thought by someone who said that the best world view one can have is the world view that benefits him most, because ultimately no world view can be proved true or false, so practically they are all equally true.
You know, I bet some christians would jump on that and say "yeah you just believe in what suits you at the moment, you are a lost soul my child".
To be honest, something does slightly smell about that philosophy, because it leads to the conclusion that selfishness is base to all world views and that all struggles between humans are based on selfishness alone. But that doesn't appear to be true, although even those who selflessly work towards a better world (as they see it) do so because of at least one selfish motive: it is a better world for them too. So I suppose these things intermingle. What a surprise!
Anyway, I'd say the whole story about world views probably comes down to being described as a process. The best way to think about world views is probably not as some sort of fixed unchanging concepts, but rather as an ongoing process of discovery, questioning, adoption and then all over again.
That again makes me conclude that life is just a journey, an ongoing process in the memory of cosmos, not a fixed file on a hard disk called Earth.
Simon G Best | Free Will Exists | Thu, 2007-03-15 11:38
This view brings one problem with it - a lack of true free will and choice. But I don't see free will or choice as fundamentally necessary, so it doesn't bother me much. After all, we don't need free will because we are simply fixed four dimensional objects inside the pebble. Free will has no meaning in the totality of the pebble, it is an illusion of living consciously through time. In this picture, it is a nice little effect.
I could ask: if there's no such thing as free will, then isn't Free Software ultimately pointless? What sense would there be in talking about rights and freedoms if there's no such thing as free will in the first place?
But instead, I'll say this: I assume free will exists. I can't help it if my assumption's incorrect; but if it is correct, then I have chosen, of my own, free will, to make the correct assumption.
I was trying to find something that was entirely different from a raspberry, when I discovered something amazing:
Everything is connected in some way.
Don't believe me? State two things that aren't connected at all.
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