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Midnight_Toker
Gone Fishin'


Registered: 09/26/10
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Loc: Canada
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A Theory of Everything
#22339047 - 10/05/15 10:45 PM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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With two such brilliantly capable and accurate theories of the universe, why do you think we've yet been unable to merge them together to create a theory of everything?
Are we very close and only missing something that will have seemed obvious all along when discovered? Are we way off the mark? Perhaps our species just plain doesn't have the capacity to conceptualize the answer. Just as a 2D flatlander wouldn't even begin to be able to visualize the third dimension, even if it were described in great detail, if the universe has more than four dimensions, especially if it has several more than four, how could we ever even hope to figure it out?
Maybe the answer lies in a single mystery. Could it lie in the current secrets of quantum entanglement? dark energy? dark matter? black holes? These show us where the holes in our theories lay. If they crack open one of them will the rest follow?
Do you think that, if it were possible, it would be better to put forth a theory that fundamentally accounts for these mysteries instead of trying to tweak our current models to make them fit? Or do you think we're on the right track in any of the models we currently have?
Do you think experimentation or theory will be what puts us on the right track towards an answer? If and when it all gets figured out, do you think philosophy will still play a role, or will it be obvious and not open for interpretation?
If we solved the theory of everything, would we have anything else to strive towards?
I know this is a lot of questions that nobody has any answers to. I'm just interested in your theories, however crazy or rational they happen to be. Answer whichever questions you have thoughts on.
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Jokeshopbeard
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I think, given the current state of society and our understanding of ourselves, that such outward searches are irrelevant. Of course there will always be those interested in such things, however I think we would gain so much more from thoroughly understanding ourselves (in as much as this is possible) than from trying to chase after some all encompassing theory regarding quantum entanglement/dark energy/dark matter/black holes.
Just my opinion though..
-------------------- Let it be seen that you are nothing. And in knowing that you are nothing... there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to gain. What can happen to you? Something can happen to the body, but it will either heal or it won't. What's the big deal? Let life knock you to bits. Let life take you apart. Let life destroy you. It will only destroy what you are not. --Jac O'keeffe
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Midnight_Toker
Gone Fishin'


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But so many technological advancements have come from breaking new ground in physics and mathematics. One can only imagine what would come from a completed theory of everything. Infinite clean energy and FTL travel come to mind.
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Jokeshopbeard
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Of course it would be great. But in a world so full of war and atrocities done to fellow humans, would mankind not be better served by addressing these issues, rather than running after even more technological advancements?
Actually screw it, we're never going to get on, I should know that by now.
-------------------- Let it be seen that you are nothing. And in knowing that you are nothing... there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to gain. What can happen to you? Something can happen to the body, but it will either heal or it won't. What's the big deal? Let life knock you to bits. Let life take you apart. Let life destroy you. It will only destroy what you are not. --Jac O'keeffe
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Midnight_Toker
Gone Fishin'


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I wasn't really looking to discuss whether it's a goal worthy of pursuing or not, but I don't see why mankind can't address both problems at once(which is being done, just not to many peoples satisfaction on the war and genocide front.)
Perhaps a theory of everything would render religion provably obsolete and therefore end a significant amount of war forever.
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Jokeshopbeard
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I dunno man, it just seems such a moot point to me. I'll leave this discussion to those with something more constructive to add!!
-------------------- Let it be seen that you are nothing. And in knowing that you are nothing... there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to gain. What can happen to you? Something can happen to the body, but it will either heal or it won't. What's the big deal? Let life knock you to bits. Let life take you apart. Let life destroy you. It will only destroy what you are not. --Jac O'keeffe
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laughingdog
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Registered: 03/14/04
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do paradoxes exist?
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Hippocampus



Registered: 04/01/15
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Quote:
Midnight_Toker said: With two such brilliantly capable and accurate theories of the universe, why do you think we've yet been unable to merge them together to create a theory of everything?
I'm not sure what two theories you are talking about.
Quote:
Midnight_Toker said: Do you think experimentation or theory will be what puts us on the right track towards an answer? If and when it all gets figured out, do you think philosophy will still play a role, or will it be obvious and not open for interpretation?
If we solved the theory of everything, would we have anything else to strive towards?
Yes, I think experimentation and theory puts us on the right track of understanding the universe. Einstein, man. I don't think we're close to having everything about the universe figured out. It usually comes in very small chips, but every so often a huge chunk is solved all at once. That's exciting.
Philosophy will always play a role. Boiled down, it's just love of wisdom. If my favorite answer to the universe is true, that we're all just a bunch of clingy matter decaying in a specific way we call life, then that still doesn't answer some fundamental philosophical questions. I think there will always be a need to find personal meaning in our lives, and each individual has slightly different ideas on that.
Knowing everything about how reality works may only create more philosophical questions.
I find it difficult to fathom that human understanding of all reality could ever be complete. At this point the scale and depth isn't even known. We haven't seen the smallest, or the vastness yet. It's like standing on a mountain and deciding to explore everything we can see. What about past the horizon? Of course we can calculate based on the horizon and angles what the size of the earth would be. We did that centuries ago in the age of discovery. But that didn't take into account the rest of the universe.
What I'm getting at is that most people sort of think the universe = all of reality. I see no reason to think our universe is the only one. It could turn out that this entire universe is only one in 100 billion local universes. Perhaps each universe is like a grain of sand on a beach on a universe-planet. Take that analogy one step further. There could be trillions of universe-planets each with 1069 universes on it. And perhaps each of those universes also has a nearly infinite complex of multi-verses where every different possible permutation plays out. What I'm getting at is that it could very well prove impossible to completely plumb the depths of all reality. And even if we did, there would still be people trying to say god created it.
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WhoManBeing
PsychedelicYogi



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All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.
Universe? Yea, the ground we walk on is eARTh. Talk of space is too far out, man.
Understanding what reality is has many different possible perspective, and there in between. Really be relative to what's at hand.
-------------------- Hip, hip... WhoRAy!!! Eye was thinking the other day... ahh, thinking never done me no good.
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muckamuck
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Please don't ask me for details, but I think kurt goedels incompleteness theorem suggests that no system can fully explain itself without reference to something outside itself. To explain myself completely i would need to explain all the food I eat and the air I breath and all the people I've met. We are part of the universe and it's very hard to explain something from the inside. We would need to step outside to get a better view, but then how to explain the outside? I believe there is an absolute all encompassing system at some point but I think that could only be glimpsed by mystical insight and never really explained logically.
Basically I agree with jokeshopbeard.
This symbol: is probably the closest thing I've seen to a theory of everything
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Brian Jones
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Re: A Theory of Everything [Re: muckamuck]
#22339812 - 10/06/15 06:17 AM (8 years, 3 months ago) |
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OP sounds like he's talking about physics, and I don't even know what those two theories are (Let's hope it's not the one about the god particle.)
Let me know when we get to the Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology.
-------------------- "The Rolling Stones will break up over Brian Jones' dead body" John Lennon I don't want no commies in my car. No Christians either. The worst thing about corruption is that it works so well,
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Midnight_Toker
Gone Fishin'


Registered: 09/26/10
Posts: 11,589
Loc: Canada
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My bad. I figured it was obvious that the theories were quantum mechanics and relativity.
I'm only talking about physics, not physics itself. I have no understanding of the mathematics. All I get out of it is a seemingly good starting point to ponder the universe.
@Hippo - Your infinite universe theory/planets of universes is basically what has worked for me for a good while now. The only problem with it is it means there are probably more dimensions than we know of and that means, in my opinion, it's likely to be impossible that humans will make the sideways leap and come up with an understanding. That's not a problem for the universe though, only the people who want to know what it all is.
Still it's what makes most sense to me. If this has happened once, it can happen again and again and again; and given forever, it simply will. Whether the universes are happening all at once in different dimensions or one at a time in our infinite void, coming into and going out of existence over trillions of years, is irrelevant in the realms of an infinite period of time. If that is true than everything that ever could happen is happening, has happened, and will happen again.
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
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Well, if you believe in String theory, relativity and q.m. have already been reconciled. The problem with String theory is that it's essentially religion. There is just no way to test it. It has some major drawbacks.
Personally, I feel that if the two are ever reconciled, it will be a shift on the order of Einstein in 1905. It will take a completely new set of insights, and a whole new framework will be born, in which the new theory reduces to our two current theories as an approximation.
One thing you have to understand is that non-locality is not compatible with Relativity. I mean, that's a serious problem. And quantum mechanics doesn't even include gravity. That's another serious problem. So we can see that, at a fundamental level, both theories are basically wrong, just as Newtonian mechanics is.
I also feel that there can be no final theory of everything. I think the universe has no bottom -- quantum mechanics actually implies this -- and that the universe is infinite, and that we could be creating more and more precise models and theories forever and ever. I don't think there's ever an end to it -- the universe is like a giant onion, and Relativity was a new layer, and quantum mechanics was a new layer, and it just keeps going all the way to infinity.
We're stuck trying to unify them because no one yet has come along who is smart enough to try a radically new approach. The physicists are just trying to paste everything together and it's totally stupid. It will be something we never expected, if we ever get there ourselves.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Hippocampus



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quantum mechanics and relativity are fun. I dipped my toes in it in college physics. I think it's fun for people to ponder on because, especially with quantum mechanics, it gets on the edge of our understanding. It's like that mystery of what's right around the corner that grabs our imagination. Relativity is just fun because of how it bends our perceptions, sensations, and common sense of our understanding of reality. Special relativity and general relativity have some real mind benders, at least for me. I mean compared to newtonian physics, where everything is just the math behind what you intuitively know happens anyway. Like throwing a ball and watching gravity pull it back down. You and I can throw a ball and have it land it a specific spot several yards away. It's just the math that's hard. But with relativity and quantum physics, it's the concepts that are just as hard as the math.
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laughingdog
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TokerM-- you seem to have forgotten some missing items: consciousness , dark matter ?? , the dualistic nature of language itself, paradox / Godel , all of which are unaccounted for by quantum, Newton and Einstein. And the question of what are abstractions and thought. The 'final theory of everything' seems to me to be a wet dream of the so called 'left brain', "rational mind". Which would seem to be precisely the "reason" for taking 'shrooms'. Space is subtler than objects, but makes their existence possible. Awareness is subtler than thoughts, but makes their existence possible. A 'final theory of everything' is like attempting to explain space with objects. The left brain/ego never wants to let go...
Edited by laughingdog (10/06/15 04:39 PM)
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BrendanFlock
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Well..Im not sure if i know anything at all..
but to do with string theory..
A brane of a string can indeed encapsulate an object..by its very outline..
Strings can reverberate and channel energy from one object thats been covered as a string..to another..both that if you take an outline which would be in a various dimension..you could with the very nature of strings line them up in a row..until the totality of an object is created from virtue of the small..added together to be something bigger..
Every type of symbol..whether it has objects in or around it can be copied as a string..like words them selves..can be made of of letters..which if you had an exaction necessarily you could make these letters and characters out of strings themselves..
Probably since it is a theory of everything..you could probably say anything from any state of mind..and have some type of objective truth that could relate to the final theory so to speak..
When we start telling others that they know nothing..or dont deserve to speak about such and such a notion..like maybe a person only has an insight based on hearing the term quantum mechanics..but how could a theory of everything disclude this..
Doesnt it have to by nature include everything there is..
I see it as a circle which can be arranged by a string as well..likely that we need to understands points of existence..which would be a 0 dimensional string..or objects in 1 dimension with are lines..again could be arranged by a string..2s objects as shapes..and our wise 3 d realm which in change is moderated by our measurement called time..I know one thing about the 4th dimension and if it exists at all..must have some type of point..or at least a knot of some sort..
interesting lattice of information:
A 3d world exists..but is measured by time which is the change of the 3d material in whatever way is necessarily changed..So the concept of a 4th dimensional level would either be in the connection from the 3d totality..a projection from the past..which lead to the now..and the projection of the future..which is without the knowledge of the changes that would occur unless the universe is indeed deterministic. and that would solve the whole notion of 4th dimension which would be the totality of our realm in past..and future..with the 3d being the experience of the now..which is only one click on the clock so to speak..and this very knowledge/nature is glory..to the morals of the time and the expert labouring nodes in which we exist..in a way that is total industrious and ingenious..maybe some saint will discover the theory..or maybe a Child..the wisdom of each person should be appreciated..
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stevester1235
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Okay so i have these red orangy mushroom with spots and i wanted to see if they are fly agaric because i'm new to this and need help
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Jokeshopbeard
Humble Student

Registered: 11/30/11
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Quote:
stevester1235 said: Okay so i have these red orangy mushroom with spots and i wanted to see if they are fly agaric because i'm new to this and need help
You're obviously new to the forum thing too. You'll be wanting the identification sub-forum. This one is for talking about stuff unrelated to growing. Good luck!
-------------------- Let it be seen that you are nothing. And in knowing that you are nothing... there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to gain. What can happen to you? Something can happen to the body, but it will either heal or it won't. What's the big deal? Let life knock you to bits. Let life take you apart. Let life destroy you. It will only destroy what you are not. --Jac O'keeffe
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