edited 6th Aug '11 2:14:13 PM by JimmyTMalice
"Steel wins battles. Gold wins wars."When I was younger I got freaked out by the realization that extension is an illusion and ultimately objects are just a bunch of points in space that exert forces on each other from a distance. I've never touched anything in my life! Is touching even physically possible? Is the concept even coherent? I think you'd need to be a quantum physicist to answer that.
@Milos
They didn't try to disprove that we were animals. They discouraged people going around saying "We're all just a bunch of hairless, intelligent apes" because we believe there's more than just that separating us from the rest of the animals.
edited 7th Aug '11 4:21:55 AM by Loid
"Dr. Strangeloid, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Cleanlink" - thespacephantomI recall I freaked out massively when I realised the implications of everything having a cause regarding human agency/free will.
In hindsight, not really sure why, since it doesn't actually entail the loss of human agency.
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All physics beyond Maxwell's equations is just one big mindfuck to me.
You mean that Maxwell's equations aren't?
Quantum physics is certainly counterintuitive — I don't actually know it very well, I know something about quantum computing and quantum information theory but that's not precisely the same — but I don't see how Maxwell's equations are any clearer.
I mean, there is this electric field and this magnetic field, right? And when a electric field changes over time, this generates a magnetic field; and when a magnetic field changes over time, this generates an electric field.
That's pretty bizarre, at least to me.
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
The latter's not knowledge, it's speculation.
I sometimes freak out at the idea that there are more than seven billion people. That's one million times more than the number of stars which are visible to the naked eye in a dark night.
That's a whole lot of Turing-equivalent intelligent beings, that's what I'm saying
Actually, I freak out that's there's only a few billion people. Makes me feel uneasy.
I vowed, and so did you: Beyond this wall- we would make it through.I can't freak out over the idea of seven billion people, because a number that big won't fit in my mind.
I don't know, I don't usually freak out, exactly, but there are many ordinary things that I find fascinating when I look closely.
Like, hands. Have you ever just flipped your hands over from palm to back a couple of times and watched how they move? The hand rotates and the elbow stays exactly where it is.
Or, the idea that yoghurt, bread and beer was all partially made by microorganisms. Or, what exactly is fire?
Be not afraid...Yeah, I cannot visualize that number either. But the idea that there exists such a huge number of intelligent beings, each one of them far more complex and unpredictable than I can possibly imagine, is something that I find a little staggering
edited 2nd May '12 5:27:53 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.I still can't get over the fact that, assuming there is no afterlife, when you die, you die. There is nothing else left. You will not feel anything ever again. Hell, your sense of consciousness or subconsciousness won't even exist. It makes me almost cringe just thinking about it. My life... is limited. I don't want to just go away D:
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And also spiders.Obviously not common knowledge :p, but I've freaked out badly imagining that I literally could never die. Course I've also freaked out imagining myself being a lifeless corpse packed tight into a pitch-black coffin underground.
I vowed, and so did you: Beyond this wall- we would make it through.Sometimes I realize how insignificant we are in the grand scale of things.
...I really hope there's SOME sort of extraterrestrial life out there. It doesn't even have to be sentient. I just want to know that life will still exist even if Earth doesn't.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And also spiders.That there is a big chance that we may be incapable of ever achieving absolute complete knowledge of...well, pretty much anything. That's kind of disheartening.
edited 2nd May '12 6:12:25 AM by Lemurian
Join us in our quest to play all RPG video games! Moving on to disc 2 of Grandia!
Think instead of how awesome it is that we can achieve some knowledge, using brains that evolved under some rather specific and restrictive evolutionary pressure!
I mean, we have developed systems of symbolic manipulation which allow us to predict, with a staggering degree of precision, the course of stars and planets. Just how incredible is it that we can do that?
edited 2nd May '12 6:18:59 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."Sugar beets, my bones are small."
I mean, have you ever looked at your wrist? Really looked at it? For most people, it's such a frail little thing... like the tiny articulation that connects the delicate rose to its pedicel. Imagine it snapping in the breeze, your hand being carried off, the milky ligaments straining against the meat-flower-bird-puppet's independence.
Okay, it's a great deal stronger than that, but still. We're just so frail.
Smile for me!^^ Yeah, I know, that's pretty cool and all, especially from a scientific view. But from a more philosophical and 100% Completion-kind of view, it makes me wonder about the value of those discoveries.
Join us in our quest to play all RPG video games! Moving on to disc 2 of Grandia!On the other hand, what would we do if we got to a point where there's nothing left to discover?
Perpetual learning keeps us growing and developing as a species. It's our hat, really. Without it we'd fall into stagnation and, eventually, start going backwards because of our tendency to enact change even if it doesn't benefit us. We'd be humped!
And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

'mkay
Kill all math nerds