Nihilism thread (Scientists claim everything we know may be a lie)

[Elphenor]

I didn't even remember posting under flippingsweet weird

[ohnoitsbonnie]

Originally Posted by Disco King

Yeah, when I was in first year, I was contemplating getting a minor in astrophysics. Decided against it because I never did high-school physics and would have to catch up on that, as well as math, because I slacked off on that in high school.

One of the recent friends I've made majors in astrophysics. She's really cool. I'd expect most science majors to be pretty matter-of-fact, but she's, like, all far-out and hippy-ish. Had an interesting talk about quantum physics after class, and she wants to get coffee soon so we can talk some more.

That's so great!!

[ohnoitsbonnie]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

I didn't even remember posting under flippingsweet weird

This guy has an enormous brain organ

[ohnoitsbonnie]

And yeah probably just particles. We understand so little about the universe.

[Elphenor]

I actually had an account on the oboard even before that funny enough

The oboard raised me that's how come I'm useless

[Disco King]

Though I have an armchair interest in the physical sciences, I've only recently come to realize how the sorts of things I think about when it comes to things like QM are very different from what scientists care about. Like, I think about things like quantum indeterminacy, and I'm all like, "wow, dude, that's so spooky, why is it like that?" But scientists themselves don't spend a lot of time thinking about what it means about the nature of reality that some phenomena is non-deterministic and probabilistic. They just kind of accept that "this is how the world works," and use these results to do things. They're not all, like, trying to get to the center of wave-particle duality, they're just like "okay, things exhibit wave-like and particle-like behaviour depending on the context," and use that fact to do things and find out more facts.

I had this eye-opener a few months ago. I went to this talk about quantum physics, where a researcher was talking about how they used quantum principles to image the incredibly quick phenomena of the breaking of a molecular bond, which happens in attoseconds. They used a laser to pull away an electron from the molecule, and then essentially slingshot it into the nucleus (I think... it was a while ago that I went). They essentially got the molecule to image itself with the diffraction pattern of the electron, I think.

I asked the researcher if progress in being able to use this to image briefer and briefer phenomena would eventually allow us to create a crucial experiment between the Copenhagen interpretation (in which there are no local or hidden variables responsible for the probabilistic measurement results we get, and quantum phenomena is just inherently random), and the Bohmian interpretation (in which there is a hidden variable, but it's non-local, because it's superluminal communication between particles).

The professor didn't even really remember what the Bohmian interpretation was. He had to ask his colleague to make sure. That's because things like these different interpretations of the results we see, the different constructions of reality that are compatible with the results, these are questions that probably aren't the kinds most scientists spend their time thinking about. Instead they think about using what they know to actually do things, like imaging the process of molecular bonds, working on things in molecular modeling, quantum computing, optics, solid-state physics... a bunch of stuff I probably have no idea about. If I were to look at a QM journal, it would probably be scientists using QM to do a whole bunch of shit I don't even understand and have never heard of, rather than the kind of questions I read about in popular science books, like quantum interpretations, which scientists probably don't spend a lot of time on themselves, and won't have a reason to until somebody finds a way to distinguish between equivalent explanations. A "crucial experiment." Until there is some way to make the questions empirical, it's probably more like philosophy to them

Here's the talk I went to:

Watch live streaming video from universityofcalgary at livestream.com

[Elphenor]

That makes sense

[buzzard]

Originally Posted by Disco King

I always get claire.de.lune and calla_lily mixed up, because they both begin with the letter C. Which one was the Latina?
Mercy, the cool Québécoise.

The former was from Trinidad and the latter was a Texan of latina and Native American origins.

Also, Mercy was from Manitoba and did not speak French.

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by ohnoitsbonnie

That's so great!!

Yeah, it's weird. Within the last few weeks, I've kinda made an effort to talk to more people and make friends. Always wondered how one is supposed to go about making friends, going from having small talk whenever you see each other to actually hanging out. Turns out, it's pretty much the same thing we all did in elementary school. Go up to somebody and ask them, "wanna be friends?"

So far, I've traded numbers with this girl in two of my classes who I recognized as an employee from a comic-book store I go to, and we hung out and I met a couple of her friends, one of them being another employee I had spoken to, but never really knew on any level deeper than customer/employee interaction.

The astrophysics girl, I invited her to the same thing, but unfortunately, she couldn't come out. She was really sincere about it and wasn't just flaking, she was saying she had some stuff going on.

Another guy from a class of mine caught me in the hallway and asked me to study with him. I didn't even approach him, this time somebody approached me.

There's the girl I had a class with last semester who I got some drinks with, another guy I've had a couple of classes with and have seen at a show, and one of his friends that I had only met once before a while ago when I went to talk to the other guy. Recognized him, and was just like, "Hey, I remember you. Wanna trade contact info?"

Originally Posted by ohnoitsbonnie

This guy has an enormous brain organ

Heh, I posted there for a while, so some characters just stuck in my mind.

Originally Posted by buzzard

The former was from Trinidad and the latter was a Texan of latina and Native American origins.

Also, Mercy was from Manitoba and did not speak French.

Ah.

I knew Mercy wasn't a francophone (looking it up, I guess "Québécoise" usually refers to a French-speaking person from Quebec, "Quebecker" being the demonym used by English Canada for residents of the province, though the French word for any resident of the province is "Québécoise") , but I totally thought she was from Quebec. Hmm. "Cool Manitoban" doesn't quite sound as good, so she'll just have toe be Québécoise to me.

[ohnoitsbonnie]

[reprise85]

people come up to me fairly frequently wanting to study. unfortunately that is the only time anyone ever does. and i study much better solo than with a group.

well, almost always. there was one person last semester who told me she liked how my brain worked (based on questions i asked in class) and then added me on facebook.

DK you seem to be socializing a lot more, are you sure the ssri isn't doing anything?

[Disco King]

I think it could very well be the SSRIs. On days where I do adderall, I talk even more, but then kind of accidentally become a motormouth and go a mile a minute and become a little too uninhibited, so I have to draw myself back a little bit.

It's weird, I saw this guy on the bus that I had a class with, we got into a conversation, and then he asked for my FB (still don't have FB, but I told him we'd trade contact info next time I see him, but I couldn't then because it was my stop). The thing is, I had always assumed that this guy hated me. He was in my continental philosophy course, and I've always been skeptical of stuff from continental philosophy, but I decided to take it anyway with an open mind, just to see what it's about before I decide whether it should be criticized or not. It kinda just confirmed all my suspicions that a lot of contyz are charlatans, and I'd kind of raise my hand a lot to question the material on the basis of empirical evidence and logical soundness.

On one of the very first days of class, I heard that guy scoff at something I said. He even put up his hand to address me, and say "excuse me, this is continental philosophy; what we're doing is a little more... complex... than empirical stuff."

I dunno, philosophy in general is usually stuff that can be thought about "from the armchair," whereas science is about empiricism and investigation and things that can't just be deduced by thinking them through, and must be investigated. But with analytic philosophy, it is very much symbiotic with science. Scientific findings can lead to new philosophical questions or become premises in philosophical arguments. Even the stuff that doesn't have a lot to do with empirical stuff and is purely abstract and a priori or analytic, value is placed on following the rules of logic. Continental philosophy felt more like literary criticism to me. I think literary criticism is great, don't get me wrong, but the people in English departments who do it are using it to analyze texts, the sorts of things that can actually be given different meanings and interpretations. Reality doesn't quite work in the same way. Debunked psychoanalytic stuff that actual psychologists don't pay any attention to is still pretty huge in continental philosophy, and a lot of the biggest conty philosophers draw heavily from it. Conty phil seems to be more about weird cults, where particular philosophers are central and highly revered, rather than things just being about the substance of what is written. Like, ask analytic philosophers who their favourite philosopher is, they will probably say that they don't have one. Most of the journals are about areas in philosophy. With continental philosophers, people treat a few philosophers like they are prophets, academics specialize in reading a particular philosopher (you could be a Nietzsche expert, or a Derrida expert, or whatever), and the biggest journals are all devoted to the exegesis of a particular philosopher, like a journal dedicated to Heidegger, or Hegel, or whatever. The reason there is no "Journal of Bertrand Russell Interpretations" is because nobody needs to interpret what he was saying-- he was clear the first time. All that's left to do is to see how far his arguments go. These contyz, a lot of them were obscurantists and bullshitters with equivocal prose. I mean, there is a journal dedicated to Zizek, and that guy's still fucking alive. If people don't understand what he means, why not ask him? Because he's going to give another answer full of word-play and provocative but meaningless "profundities" in order to maintain this aura of being too wise to grasp.

Anyway, where was I going with this... oh yeah. So, I challenged the material in the course a lot, and I think the prof, who was totally in the conty camp, was kinda annoyed of me. I had assumed this guy hated me, too, given his attitude toward my questioning of the material early in the semester. But we encounter each other on transit, have a pleasant conversation, and the guy actually wants to add me on Facebook. It is kinda nice that you can have totally different opinions from somebody and still get along. Like, we see the world differently, but that doesn't mean that we're going to scowl at each other in the hallways or anything. That's cool.

[Disco King]

Also, I weirdly just got contacted by the brother of a guy who was my friend in high school. Turns out he wants to jam. Have no idea how he even got my number (he worked with my sister, but he quit a while back, I hear... I don't think his brother has my number, I've never texted him...), and I haven't really seen this guy since high school, when I'd see him in the hallways. I only knew him through his brother. Like, the couple times I went to his house, I might see him.

I dunno, I've never really jammed with anybody and am totally open to making music with him. Such a coincidence that he contacts me now, just as I'm starting to actually make friends. I keep on having this unreal feeling like things are just lining up too well to actually be happening, like I'm going to wake up from another one of those dreams that make me resent my life as I groggily start to realize that none of what I was just experiencing was actually happening and it's time to start my dismal day.

I've joined a few clubs here and there. Went to this philosophy club function where we go to the campus pub, drink and talk about phil. I got pretty deep in conversation with these two guys about philosophy of science, and then recent political events. A prof was there (he left early, though), and he specialized in phil of science, and we were kinda talking about how philosophy of social science is understudied, and there's pretty much never been any work in philosophy of political science, especially. I talked about having some interest in exploring it, and he seemed really excited about the prospect of me kinda breaking ground in an untapped area, telling me that my thoughts were interesting.

The students I was talking with, when we left the pub, invited me back to the dorm of one of them for some whiskey. Stayed there until, like, 1:30 am, carrying on the convo. This was actually the first time I've ever been in the campus residence. I felt like an actual university kid, making social connections and hanging out with people and shit.

[teh b0lly!!1]

it's dangerous to provoke DK these days

[teh b0lly!!1]

I'm not really seeing how certain facts about the universe, like the duration of our lifespan compared to that of the universe, or that scientists can describe large regions of space with two-dimensional mathematics, really has much bearing on whether things "matter." Something's status as "mattering" isn't an ontological claim about the universe. There are no facts external to conscious minds that determine if something "matters" or not. There's no such thing as objective "mattering."

regarding this though, i simply meant that considering how impossibly vast the universe is, and reading about theories that question the very basic concepts that make up what we perceive to be 'reality', it makes your anxieties, fears and frustrations seem that much smaller and more insignificant. it's discouraging to know how tiny and meaningless you are in the grand scheme of things, but it can be equally liberating sometimes.

yes, it doesn't change one's day-to-day reality, but it puts it in a very different perspective. and the prism through which we experience the subjective world around us matters to us, as individuals, more than what may actually be there.

[LaBelle]

Nearly everything is matter.

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by teh b0lly!!1

it's dangerous to provoke DK these days

It does seem that I will take any opportunity to go on another monologue.

Originally Posted by teh b0lly!!1

regarding this though, i simply meant that considering how impossibly vast the universe is, and reading about theories that question the very basic concepts that make up what we perceive to be 'reality', it makes your anxieties, fears and frustrations seem that much smaller and more insignificant. it's discouraging to know how tiny and meaningless you are in the grand scheme of things, but it can be equally liberating sometimes.

yes, it doesn't change one's day-to-day reality, but it puts it in a very different perspective. and the prism through which we experience the subjective world around us matters to us, as individuals, more than what may actually be there.

I see what you mean. Like, the feeling you get from meditating on certain aspects of the world can alter the importance you place on things.

I sometimes think about the fact that there will come a time when the expansion of space is accelerating so quickly, it will exceed light speed, and light from galaxies drifting away from each other will never reach each other. Regions of space that are held together with gravity, like globular clusters or whatever, will still be able to send information within themselves, but the universe will start to look pretty "dark" to any observer, for the most part. Whatever life forms exist then, if they don't have knowledge transmitted to them from before metric expansion exceeded light speed, none of their science could ever possible reveal to them that there exists anything "out there," that there are those other galaxies and stars that they can never perceive, because the light and gravity waves from them will never reach them. Any theories about what the universe is like during this phase of the universe will look pretty different from ours. The universe will probably look a lot smaller.

Makes you wonder what facts are true of the universe today that we fundamentally cannot know about, due to the way the universe is. What kind of information, on principle, we can never have. How different the universe could actually be from our theories, because our theories are only based on the sorts of evidence we can have access to. The fact that beings in the future universe would have no way to distinguish between, say, their galaxy being the only thing in existence, and other galaxies moving away so quickly that they will never be able to detect them, really calls into question if our own theories are really close to reality, or are undermined by evidence we can never have access to.

[teh b0lly!!1]

I sometimes think about the fact that there will come a time when the expansion of space is accelerating so quickly, it will exceed light speed

where are you getting this?

i was under the impression that the expansion of the universe is slowing down, seeing as the biggest velocity probably took place right after the big bang, and has been steadily losing momentum since. which is also in line with the 'the universe will become cold and dead' theory.

[LaBelle]

I heard that somewhere too, that the universe expansion is speeding up not down.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...nsteins-theory

[MyOneAndOnly]

[MyOneAndOnly]

Dagsson is the best

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by teh b0lly!!1

where are you getting this?

i was under the impression that the expansion of the universe is slowing down, seeing as the biggest velocity probably took place right after the big bang, and has been steadily losing momentum since. which is also in line with the 'the universe will become cold and dead' theory.

Sounds like you're conflating some ideas about the metric expansion of space, cosmic inflation, and heat death.

The expansion of space is currently accelerating, but it isn't the fastest it's ever been. The early universe had an inflationary period, during which space expanded exponentially. Then it sort of plateaued, but the expansion is accelerating again, just not as rapidly as during the inflationary period.





Just like a cup of tea will gradually cool down to room temperature because the heat of the room and the tea reach equilibrium, the energy of the universe will eventually reach an equilibrium, and, because the universe is presumably a closed system, there will be no free energy to do work. It'll just be a homogeneous universe (this says nothing about whether that absolute temperature will be hot or cold, though). In other words, the universe will be in a state of maximum entropy, just as a cooling tea cup and the room it is in (which is warming slightly) are gaining entropy.

If there were more matter, and therefore more gravity pulling things together to counteract the expansion, you would have a universe with positive curvature, or a "closed universe, in which you'd expect expansion to slow down and even reverse, resulting in a "Big Crunch." Having more expansion than gravity, especially with the help of dark energy, would result in a universe with negative curvature, an open universe that's acceleration expands forever.

Scientists believe that we live in a flat universe. Expansion and gravity are exactly equal, so space overall has no curvature and is flat (this isn't the same as saying it's two-dimensional, and is a little different than the "holographic universe" idea; a "positively curved universe" is represented as a sphere, a "negatively curved" universe is represented as a saddle, and a "flat universe" is represented as a plane, but this is because we can only represent shapes as three-dimensional projections. In reality, we are talking about the 4-D analogues of these shapes, like a hypersphere; a hypersphere is to a sphere as a sphere is to a circle).

Both a negatively-curved universe and a flat universe would lead to heath death. Think of gravity as a force that can do work. "Work" is transferring one sort of energy into another. Suspend a ball above the ground. It has stored within it gravitational-potential energy. Drop it. Gravity is pulling on it, converting that potential energy into kinetic energy, moving the ball toward the earth.

If space is expanding and the universe is flat, there won't be enough gravity to "pull things inward," which would be work, a transfer of energy. In local systems, entropy can decrease due to gravity (think of using a kettle to warm up your tea, doing work on it to transfer the electrical energy into thermal energy; similarly, gravity pulling in an interstellar cloud to make it into a star is doing work on it), but overall, entropy always has to increase with time (you only decreased the entropy in your tea/room system by increasing it elsewhere, and that star is going to radiate it's heat and burn out). So, even though entropy can decrease here and there, over time, the trend will always be toward increasing entropy, and eventually, the universe will reach maximum entropy. No free energy for anything to happen. Just still matter floating out there.

[MyOneAndOnly]

in another 20 billion year or so a future intelligent species developing on a planet somewhere in the universe won't be able to see all the galaxies we see today. Expansion will mean that they won't be able to "look back in time" at early universe stars and galaxies because the universe will be too large and will have expanded too far for light that old to reach future observers. It will be impossible for future civilizations like that to discern with astronomical observations and logic how the universe came into existence and that expansion even exists

[Elphenor]

Originally Posted by Disco King

Sounds like you're conflating some ideas about the metric expansion of space, cosmic inflation, and heat death.

The expansion of space is currently accelerating, but it isn't the fastest it's ever been. The early universe had an inflationary period, during which space expanded exponentially. Then it sort of plateaued, but the expansion is accelerating again, just not as rapidly as during the inflationary period.





Just like a cup of tea will gradually cool down to room temperature because the heat of the room and the tea reach equilibrium, the energy of the universe will eventually reach an equilibrium, and, because the universe is presumably a closed system, there will be no free energy to do work. It'll just be a homogeneous universe (this says nothing about whether that absolute temperature will be hot or cold, though). In other words, the universe will be in a state of maximum entropy, just as a cooling tea cup and the room it is in (which is warming slightly) are gaining entropy.

If there were more matter, and therefore more gravity pulling things together to counteract the expansion, you would have a universe with positive curvature, or a "closed universe, in which you'd expect expansion to slow down and even reverse, resulting in a "Big Crunch." Having more expansion than gravity, especially with the help of dark energy, would result in a universe with negative curvature, an open universe that's acceleration expands forever.

Scientists believe that we live in a flat universe. Expansion and gravity are exactly equal, so space overall has no curvature and is flat (this isn't the same as saying it's two-dimensional, and is a little different than the "holographic universe" idea; a "positively curved universe" is represented as a sphere, a "negatively curved" universe is represented as a saddle, and a "flat universe" is represented as a plane, but this is because we can only represent shapes as three-dimensional projections. In reality, we are talking about the 4-D analogues of these shapes, like a hypersphere; a hypersphere is to a sphere as a sphere is to a circle).

Both a negatively-curved universe and a flat universe would lead to heath death. Think of gravity as a force that can do work. "Work" is transferring one sort of energy into another. Suspend a ball above the ground. It has stored within it gravitational-potential energy. Drop it. Gravity is pulling on it, converting that potential energy into kinetic energy, moving the ball toward the earth.

If space is expanding and the universe is flat, there won't be enough gravity to "pull things inward," which would be work, a transfer of energy. In local systems, entropy can decrease due to gravity (think of using a kettle to warm up your tea, doing work on it to transfer the electrical energy into thermal energy; similarly, gravity pulling in an interstellar cloud to make it into a star is doing work on it), but overall, entropy always has to increase with time (you only decreased the entropy in your tea/room system by increasing it elsewhere, and that star is going to radiate it's heat and burn out). So, even though entropy can decrease here and there, over time, the trend will always be toward increasing entropy, and eventually, the universe will reach maximum entropy. No free energy for anything to happen. Just still matter floating out there.

Can you get Morgan Freeman to read this to me

[Cool As Ice Cream]

just slidin' through the donut that is time...

[Run To Me]

Everyone stop killing yourselves b/c of the universe and eat some hot n spicy cheez its

You'll be glad you stuck around past age 27 to eat these

[Run To Me]

I can't even fathom suicide at this point there's too many video games to ever even play, and more are coming out daily

[Run To Me]

Not trying to minimize depression or suicidal thoughts, I've been there before. Just saying, at 34 with a job and fam I can't even imagine wanting any less than the little time I currently have to play Mario and shit

I mean, there's a lot of good snacks out there, and entertainments

[LaBelle]

Can't say I fully understand depression (only know a few people online and irl who suffer from it), but whenever I see someone say they have no reason to live truly bothers me.

It's one of those things that I wish I knew what to say to help them, without coming across as condescending or preachy.
Feeling sad or down in life is one thing, losing all perspective that life can be good is soul crushing.

[reprise85]

i was suicidally depressed for most of my life from 12-25ish, with times off
it is soul crushing
when it comes back just a little now it feels unbearable. but it's like the lobster heating up in water thing. you get used to it and all of a sudden you're about to jump off a building. i knew it was getting bad when i actually was researching methods in earnest like seeing which bridge had the highest success rate in my area and such. although back then i was much more into ODing but unless you have barbiturates it's so easy to fail. if i ever kill myself it will be jumping from height, or if i somehow had a gun it might be that instead.