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So yeah. I've just reached a whole new level of confusion, and need to let it out. Sorry for taking an intellectual dump here, but I have no other place where it's likely someone with a positive IQ will read it.
A small disclaimer: This is gonna be a long rant about philosophy, science, religion, and various other boring stuff. You have been warned. Proceed with caution.
I've stumpled upon this genius webcomic, and from there, found this video (part 2).
It's about 90 minutes total, and you don't need to be a physics student to understand it, it's made for the average Joe. Nonetheless, it got me thinking. The following will make much more sense if you watch the movie, but feel free to not waste your time on it, it's your loss.
So it starts out with Cantor, a German mathematician who revolutionized set theory. Every physics/math student knows him. His continuum hypothesis later proved to be unprovable, being the first example of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
The implications of Gödel's theorem cannot be stressed enough. There's questions that cannot be answered. At least, in any given system of axioms. Any system that would be able to prove or disprove any assumption would be self-contradictory. (Famous example for such a question is Russell's paradox)
I'll let that settle for a second.
What impressed me the most was the second half of the second part of the movie. Gödel tried to "save" his idea of the human mind that he invented "intuition" as a means for the mind to exalt every logical system, thus making otherwise unprovable problems solvable.
So...
Is there a God?
I think we have established by now that this question cannot be objectively answered. In a way, there is a God, and there isn't. It basically boils down to whether you think of your "intuition" as God's gift or just a chemical/neurological property of brain evolution.
The sheer force of the paradox boggles the mind. It's awesome and frightening at the same time. I am sure what I have experienced during that movie would be described by a spiritual journey by most religious people. Gödel and Cantor used logic to disprove logic. The quantified the limits of mathematics itself, with mathematics. Much like Heisenberg did with his uncertainty principle, they disassembled their own field of science.
Another important aspect which I skipped was the part about Boltzmann. If I should name one person whose work describes my view on how the universe works, it's Boltzmann. The man that introduced randomness into physics. Modern physics would not have happened without him, period. Quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, statistical physics, field theory, forget it, not gonna happen.
Boltzmann's work implicates the lack of a superior power. In my eyes, Boltzmann disproved God more that Nietzsche, or anyone else. Of course, you can still wriggle your way out of it and claim that God created everything, set the rules, and let the program run for 15 billion years without caring about it, but hey, we already discussed that.
So why all this ranting, you might ask.
I don't really know. And that's the thing. I am desperately trying to find some orientation these days, and I don't know where to look. According to Boltzmann, everything's random. According to Gödel and Cantor, there is no absolute logic, no absolute truth if you want. Everything we view as "normal" is man-made, artificial.
I don't know what to do with my life, and it's slowly driving me mad. Everything I do, everything I think seems inherently faulty. Nothing makes sense. Nothing has purpose or value.
Wow, this ended up way more emo than I had planned, but well, doesn't matter. Because nothing matters. Bluh.
 
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Braavos36402 Posts
what made you quit TL and why did you come back?
not bashing just curious
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You and you.
j/k. Quit to focus on my studies, which are going awesome since I stopped watching OSL instead of attending lectures, came back out of boredom because my studies are going so well I am actually unchallenged. A vicious cycle, really.
edit: Also, and this is gonna sound ridiculous, but TL is one of the most diverse and mature communities on the net. No, I'm not looking at you, inc.
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I don't usually link to xkcd, but this is the first thing that came into my head:
Nothing matters, its true. But that's no reason not to enjoy yourself. Do anything, do nothing... Just do whatever makes you happy.
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On May 03 2009 06:43 seppolevne wrote:I don't usually link to xkcd, but this is the first thing that came into my head: Nothing matters, its true. But that's no reason not to enjoy yourself. Do anything, do nothing... Just do whatever makes you happy.
cut off your dick, and then try to tell me nothing matters
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Sup Mr I-am-never-online-in-Steam
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just enjoy your life. your overthinking it
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On May 03 2009 08:17 daz wrote:
just enjoy your life. your overthinking it
I think the problem is rather that 99% of the people underthink it. And don't bother telling me underthink is not a word, because it totally should be.
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Trying to prove or disprove any kind of god (be it Christian or otherwise) on any kind of empirical grounds is futile. Whichever side you bat for, you're going to run into a whole mess of circular arguments that you can't escape out of.
And anyway...personally, I think that the core of the universe being understood only from a psychologistic view is scary. I would rather that we observe the universe through numbers and theories and whatnot, not that we apply them to it and hope that it works. That's why I really liked Frege and Russell's works...or at least what they tried to accomplish (as they failed in the end). Modern set theory is also, at its core, considered psychologistic...and that kind of makes the basis for modern logic and mathematics kind of shaky.
I don't know much about the implications it would have towards math or physics, but for philosophy (I'm studying philo at uni), it would kind of threaten the entire field of modern analytic philosophy, which is like 80% of the field as it is now. Nearly all of modern philosophy is qualified against modern logic, and older stuff gets dated and made irrelevant based on it as well. It works, but if it ultimately can't be shown to be a metaphysical truth or system or whatever, it can only be taken with a rather large grain of salt.
So...I am hoping that the neo-Fregeans of today make a breakthrough eventually.
EDIT
To reply to your more personal questions...
You're not gonna get anywhere if you try to make sense of your existence from the perspective of all these theories and whatnot. You're going to lose sight of the "smaller" things relative to them. Live your life separately. No matter how hard you try, you can't apply any of this kind of thing to you going to work, meeting with friends, going to the grocery store, paying your rent, etc. They are separate matters.
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Maybe you're right. Maybe I am looking for a "grand unified truth" that just isn't there. Still, on some subjects I find it incredibly hard to come to a decision which I can be happy with. I'd go as far as calling it a disability to make a call and then live with the consequences.
Apart from that, I really like how philosophy intersects with science here. The methods are not that different either, from what I gather. I am a big fan of Russell as well, but I haven't really read that much about his work or that of the others.
What baffled me most about all this is how conservatively the scientific world reacted to the implications of Gödel's and Boltzmann's propositions. I was strongly reminded of how the church reacted towards Galilei, and I would never have thought that scientists could be so stubborn. Come to think of it, I think I remember hearing Einstein heavily opposed Quantum theory until his death. Oh well, nothing is black-and-white I guess.
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I think it is generally accepted that there is no conceivable way to *prove* the existence of a so called anthropomorphic being called "God," but as far as faith/belief system goes:
Go with your intuition, and whatever you feel. If you stick with an existentialist view, then whatever makes you happy. If you feel compelled to find religion, or nirvana, or whatever you want, then do so. You shouldn't find too much trouble, except in a few situations, in terms of what you believe. Whatever you feel compelled to believe is what you should pursue. Life has no rules, as a general rule; it is just that some things will get you arrested  .
What I'm suggesting is keep an open mind: What I mean I'll attempt to explain with a hypothetical situation:
You are an atheist, and someone attempts to compel you to follow any given sect of Christianity.
What I am saying not to do is: Blow him/her off, call them an idiot for wasting their life and just walk away.
I'm suggesting you to listen (not necessarily the whole way, because sometimes it just isn't worth it) and maybe ask questions until you are satisfied with your knowledge (not experience) of what they are talking about.
Not only will this give you an open mind, it will give you a broader idea as to what you feel is the right thing to follow, and will probably give your life a greater sense of fulfillment, not "the right way."
Take this advice, or don't.
tl;dr: Listen to what people have to say, and pick your own beliefs, and don't be ignorant to other people, to a point within reason.
EDIT: I kinda went all over the place here. Hopefully you can follow it.
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On May 03 2009 05:59 Cpt Obvious wrote:
So...
Is there a God?
I think we have established by now that this question cannot be objectively answered. In a way, there is a God, and there isn't. It basically boils down to whether you think of your "intuition" as God's gift or just a chemical/neurological property of brain evolution.
The sheer force of the paradox boggles the mind. It's awesome and frightening at the same time. I am sure what I have experienced during that movie would be described by a spiritual journey by most religious people. Gödel and Cantor used logic to disprove logic. The quantified the limits of mathematics itself, with mathematics. Much like Heisenberg did with his uncertainty principle, they disassembled their own field of science.
Another important aspect which I skipped was the part about Boltzmann. If I should name one person whose work describes my view on how the universe works, it's Boltzmann. The man that introduced randomness into physics. Modern physics would not have happened without him, period. Quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, statistical physics, field theory, forget it, not gonna happen.
Boltzmann's work implicates the lack of a superior power. In my eyes, Boltzmann disproved God more that Nietzsche, or anyone else. Of course, you can still wriggle your way out of it and claim that God created everything, set the rules, and let the program run for 15 billion years without caring about it, but hey, we already discussed that.
So why all this ranting, you might ask.
I don't really know. And that's the thing. I am desperately trying to find some orientation these days, and I don't know where to look. According to Boltzmann, everything's random. According to Gödel and Cantor, there is no absolute logic, no absolute truth if you want. Everything we view as "normal" is man-made, artificial.
I don't know what to do with my life, and it's slowly driving me mad. Everything I do, everything I think seems inherently faulty. Nothing makes sense. Nothing has purpose or value.
Wow, this ended up way more emo than I had planned, but well, doesn't matter. Because nothing matters. Bluh.
i have the same problem
dunno what to do dont want to talk about it i cant fall asleep at night
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The reason what we do matters is simply because it impacts our progress as a species.
it is our goal to survive, and our hope to prosper.
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Very interesting stuff and a great challange to your mind. I can certainly see what your problems derive from and it really is something that the human mind is (up to this point at least) incapable of grasping. Personally I don't think this has anything to do with a god or anything of the sort, but more with the fundamental flaws in human thinking and how incomplete our understanding of our existence is. We are capable of some truly amazing feats of abstract thinking, but obviously there are limits. Inifinity, uncertainty and mathematical paradoxes are some of these concepts which are basically unfathomable to the human mind yet conceivable in their unsolved form.
I think the problem is rather mundane. A mechanical fallibility in our ability to comprehend existance and all the laws, logics and paradoxes that comes with it. A neurological impairity. Impurity if you will. Just think about some of the things these mathematicians and physicists claimed, that there are problems that are unsolvable and that you actually cannot know which problems are. Is it even possible for an entity that we can hypothesize about to solve these unsolvable problems and find structure where we believe to have proven that no structure is to be found?
It's a great topic of discussion, 5/5.
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life matters as much as you want it to
im way too tired to make a real post but you've got a nice ass
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On May 03 2009 09:31 Cpt Obvious wrote:I think the problem is rather that 99% of the people underthink it. And don't bother telling me underthink is not a word, because it totally should be.
Exactly what I think too.
Alot of people just begin to think about these things(god/meaning of life etc) and then make their idea as fast as possible and are stuck in that way of thinking for the rest of their life. IMO, people should think about those things and create their own ideas all their life, but the problems we humans have is that we NEED an answer and unfortunately like you said: there is no clear answer to fundamental questions. So instead of constently re-think about it and change their minds, people in general just choose an already made answer (religions) for all those questions.
I mean, it's so much easier to have someone telling you what to think and what to do in every circumstances. "Does god really exists?" "What should I do if he do(not) exist?". You could wake up every morning for all your life asking yourself those questions, you would never have a clear answer. Or you could make your mind in 2-3 days and act accordingly for the rest of your life trying to hide away from different ideas so your beliefs are not challenged.
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I watched this documentary around half a year ago, and I liked it quite a bit actually, particularly fascinated about the part with Godel's theorem and Cantor's principles of infinity. I understand where you are coming from, but like Arhaic said proving and disproving God is quite impossible with our current empirical evidence. However I like the deep philosophical implications of the Uncertainty principle, Quantum Theory, and the incompleteness theorem. If the nature of this universe is chaotic in itself, as shown by the current physics theories, where did the order come from? Where did order arise from? The fine tuning principle is also a scary one, but I don't really take into the principle of multiple parallel universes. You cannot disprove or prove god simply by this, however things are certain such as the inherent order arising from pure chaos which is quite a startling thought, and the complexity of things that we can never understand and probably never will. I think Godel's incompleteness theorem is a fascinating idea that reminds us of the inherent loop of complexity within the system, things that we cannot solve. Unfortunately the problem of God is probably one of the problems that are unsolvable by science unless he reveals himself to us then it is proved, however it remains unprovable.
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On May 03 2009 05:59 Cpt Obvious wrote:So yeah. I've just reached a whole new level of confusion, and need to let it out. Sorry for taking an intellectual dump here, but I have no other place where it's likely someone with a positive IQ will read it. A small disclaimer: This is gonna be a long rant about philosophy, science, religion, and various other boring stuff. You have been warned. Proceed with caution. I've stumpled upon this genius webcomic, and from there, found this video ( part 2). It's about 90 minutes total, and you don't need to be a physics student to understand it, it's made for the average Joe. Nonetheless, it got me thinking. The following will make much more sense if you watch the movie, but feel free to not waste your time on it, it's your loss. So it starts out with Cantor, a German mathematician who revolutionized set theory. Every physics/math student knows him. His continuum hypothesis later proved to be unprovable, being the first example of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. The implications of Gödel's theorem cannot be stressed enough. There's questions that cannot be answered. At least, in any given system of axioms. Any system that would be able to prove or disprove any assumption would be self-contradictory. (Famous example for such a question is Russell's paradox) I'll let that settle for a second. What impressed me the most was the second half of the second part of the movie. Gödel tried to "save" his idea of the human mind that he invented "intuition" as a means for the mind to exalt every logical system, thus making otherwise unprovable problems solvable. So...Is there a God? I think we have established by now that this question cannot be objectively answered. In a way, there is a God, and there isn't. It basically boils down to whether you think of your "intuition" as God's gift or just a chemical/neurological property of brain evolution. The sheer force of the paradox boggles the mind. It's awesome and frightening at the same time. I am sure what I have experienced during that movie would be described by a spiritual journey by most religious people. Gödel and Cantor used logic to disprove logic. The quantified the limits of mathematics itself, with mathematics. Much like Heisenberg did with his uncertainty principle, they disassembled their own field of science. Another important aspect which I skipped was the part about Boltzmann. If I should name one person whose work describes my view on how the universe works, it's Boltzmann. The man that introduced randomness into physics. Modern physics would not have happened without him, period. Quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, statistical physics, field theory, forget it, not gonna happen. Boltzmann's work implicates the lack of a superior power. In my eyes, Boltzmann disproved God more that Nietzsche, or anyone else. Of course, you can still wriggle your way out of it and claim that God created everything, set the rules, and let the program run for 15 billion years without caring about it, but hey, we already discussed that. So why all this ranting, you might ask. I don't really know. And that's the thing. I am desperately trying to find some orientation these days, and I don't know where to look. According to Boltzmann, everything's random. According to Gödel and Cantor, there is no absolute logic, no absolute truth if you want. Everything we view as "normal" is man-made, artificial. I don't know what to do with my life, and it's slowly driving me mad. Everything I do, everything I think seems inherently faulty. Nothing makes sense. Nothing has purpose or value. Wow, this ended up way more emo than I had planned, but well, doesn't matter. Because nothing matters. Bluh.
Didn't you quit because you owed some one from TL some money? >_>
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EPT![[image loading]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/nihilism.png)
