Paradox of the week

[paradoxicalogic]

So if you're up on your quantum physics, we know that matter is made of atoms that are made of sub-atomic particles. These particles exist as waves of probabilities of infinite possibilities that don't actually exist until you look at it and it all collapses into reality. You are creating reality by observing it. The paradox, is you are made of

Comments

[e_o_pan]

I think there is only a paradox if I wasn't made of matter....

Sort of a universal "it takes one to know one".

All matter is where it needs to be as long as it needs to be there. So now you are just asking the age old "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to see it...." But that tree was being counted on by the rest of the forest to hold up it's end of being a forest. And even the browningian motions of atoms means the expectations of other atoms require the presence of the matter under scrutiny.

So reality is always there for reality to count on. Anyone/-thing/-etc outside reality has trouble believing in reality, not being part of it. But a very clever thing outside reality might postulate an ntire system of "matter" which, while it can't be proven outside of reality, works quite well as a self-consistent model.

What was the question again?

[punchtheclown]

the tree in teh forest is well and good. if it need to be there for the sake of reality. but what happens when you make it not matter.

the cat in the box question.

you put a cat in a box. with a nuero toxin that has a 50/50 chance of killing the cat. you close the box. while the box is closed and the particles are not being observed. (and dont say the cat is observing them) the cat that is in the box is neither alive nor dead. and at the same time he is both Alive and dead. its fate is based upon when you open the box. not keeping matter or reality together. you can observe the box but that has no meaning because you are technically just creating the box and not the contents. :)

I hope I typed that all out right.. my brain hurts.

[jatropheus]

Kind of like "Schrodinger's cat"... I never was quite sure on that, shouldn't the cat's intelligence & observation come into play? Also, an awful lot of animals live, die & decay without anyone's knowledge of them ever being there, particularly mice (despite the implications of Tom & Jerry, far less intelligent than cats) in people's walls. There are other things, too, that can be observed about the box from the outside, like the meowing, clawing, and movement within.

On the other hand, if we are all aspects of someone's dream, that might not matter. Unless, perhaps, it is the cat doing the dreaming. :)

[e_o_pan]

yeah - totally - I mean cats completely don't understand neuro-toxins. You can show them the bottle and everything - they just don't get it.

But I think he is not alive and dead - he is alive. All of the data points to that (he was alive last time you saw him) but there is a probability that he is dead. But like any probability, it is only a potential, not a state at the given time (present)

To be sure, "take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

[jatropheus]

Oh, this one is a favorite... although, to me the paradox isn't that people are matter (or that they don't matter), as others can create us. To me, it lies in the question of what it all started with, and did we retroactively create ourselves?

I wrote an article on this, expanding it to include the expanding universe theory (that's what they call it, anyway, but I'm pretty sure it's still a hypothesis - the math they used to "prove" it is theory) and micro/macroverses. I've probably pushed my personal page on you, it's a habit I happen to have, but it can be found, along with a bunch of my other odd writings & artworks, at http://www.geocities.com/jatropheus/home.html under "A New Wrinkle in Micro/Macroversals". Fun stuff

[e_o_pan]

I think that using the term 'retroactively' or assuming 'cause, then effect' is a bad habit of beings unable to move at will in the time dimension.

For example, it is quite possible that some young boy, fascinated by dragons in his youth, grew up to become an archaeologist, but the more he learned about physics, evolution, and fossilization his subconscious refined his notions of dragons and caused him to create the remnants of dinosaurs. Of course, the remnants of dinosaurs he was driven to find must have been precluded by living dinosaurs, and the parameters of those living dinosaurs had to fit into the biological pathways already in evidence by the surrounding fauna. But if the next little boy really wanted his dragons to fly… he would grow up to find evidence of dinosaur / bird evolutionary links. And someday maybe a very driven little boy will have a need to find evidence of a fire-breathing dragon. Although as far as I know, this hasn’t happened yet.

[heartshapedcunt]

I never took physics and I flunked chemistry twice.

Yar!

[heartshapedcunt]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/deusinnomen/175518.html