Butters

I travel a fair bit, to places with fairly diverse religious beliefs. On occasion, I have either visited a temple, or met up with people who have taken me along to their religious ceremonies or included me in their beliefs. This is very nice, but I also feel that it is a bit strange of me to participate. I've been to midnight mass whilst staying with a family in England, and I did all the kneeling and crossing and so on that was required but it felt very odd to me. I get that same feeling at funerals, in fact even more so, when there is a hymn being sung or I am asked to participate in some part of the religious ceremony (as I was at most of my grandparents funerals). I've lit incense in Buddhist temples, and prostrated myself in mosques. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything bad about the people who go out of their way to include me in these things, and I certainly don't voice any objections at the time or make it an awkward situation, but it just feels disingenuous. I guess I figure in their place of worship I should do as I'm asked. After all, I put myself there. I like to visit temples and mosques because I enjoy the architecture and have an intellectual interest in religion. I don't respect religious beliefs, which doesn't mean that I don't respect the people who hold them, but I really don't like participating in what I see as superstitious rituals. So what is more disrepectful, doing it anyway, or politely declining?

This is very interesting, but I think I'm going to have to side with the idea that it's the first past the post system that contributes to this attitude the most. I guess if your vote is an all or nothing bet then you have to get more passionate about it. Speaking of which actually, what is the voter turnout recently? It's compulsary to vote where I live. I wonder if that is a factor as well, because a lot of people see it as a chore to be done rather than a fundamental right. Also, we have nothing even CLOSE to the Fox News Network. I've seen that a fair bit whilst travelling in south america in dodgy hotel rooms, and it is like a 24 hour a day propoganda frenzy machine. It uses emotions rather than facts, even in the supposedly non-opinion based news bulletins. Is there an equivalent for the Democrats?

Hmm. Well I will add my vote to somebody who supports marijuana legalisation but doesn't smoke it. I have smoked it in the past, never heavily, with few ill effects. I smoked/ate/drank it at Government-run "Bhang Stores" in Rhajistan in India. I smoked it during a week in Amsterdam, but it certainly didn't make me addicted. In fact, in both of those countries, there seemed to be very few negative social effects because of this. In Rhajistan, alcohol was FAR more of a social problem. In the interests of full disclosure I will admit that I tried opium at those same Indian shops. We were also able to buy amphetamines, valium and ketamine at the pharmacy in various parts of the sub-continent and south-east asia. I had magic mushroom milkshakes in laos and thailand as well, with the only negative being an inability to stop giggling for an hour so my cheek muscles hurt. As a teenager, I tried a lot of other things as well as those mentioned above. My point is, I am now in my 30's, and have never robbed anyone for drug money or been so stoned I microwaved my baby. Had I been sent to prison at any point (although in a lot of circumstances what I was doing was legal where I was) then I can only assume that I would be a far more maladjusted person than I am now. Something being ILLEGAL does not necessarily respond to what is moral (an abstract concept that is very open to debate) or what is in the best interests of a society. The law is a patchwork of revisions and special interests and whilst I agree that it would be a bad trend if people were to only obey the laws they agreed with, I think it is very healthy for a society to debate those laws which are not in our best interests so they can be changed.

I believe you have misunderstood me, CaptainPanic. I was actually saying that I see no problem with the fact that we redistribute wealth to those who need it, or that a school teaches that being homosexual is okay etc, etc. The letter was listing a lot of things which I see absolutely no problem with and in fact think are the signs of a progressive, caring society.

I am not an American, but like a lot of people outside of America, it is the country besides my own whose politics I am most exposed to in the media. The thing I have noticed, that does not seem to be the case in Australia is the extreme passion with which people devote themselves to a particular party. The 'us and them' thing in American politics seems very strong. Democrats are 'socialist criminals' and Republicans are either corrupt fat cats or brainless hicks. Why is it that in America, people seem so much more willing to pick a political tribe and devote themselves to it and its media advocates SO absolutely on both sides. I mean, I know this happens in other countries as well, but the extreme violence of the language that separates the two parties is far stronger there than in many others I have visited. What is it about America that gets people so worked up? Why do a lot of people seem to offer alliegance to one party for life, regardless of the issues? Or am I completely wrong about this and does it just seem that way because the extremists are the ones who get the airtime outside of America?

"we can use a human fetus for medical research, but it is wrong to use an animal" "We take money from those who work hard for it and give it to those who don't want to work" " in public schools you can teach that homosexuality is OK, but you better not use the word God in the process" "you can kill an unborn child, but it is wrong to execute a mass murderer" Yes. What's the problem there?

I would probably agree with that. It's more philosophy than commandment.

Just an addition to that, I have been researching the most plausible methods for stable wormholes, but of course so much of it is up in the air. The idea that appeals to me most is that the vast amounts of energy that the stars send to the centre of the galaxy is used by rings of the substance to create negative energy and hold open the mouths. But this feels counterintuitive. Even if the addition of vast amounts of energy could make the substance somehow transmute to an exotic matter with a negative mass, how could adding energy create negative energy? Probably couldn't I suppose. Is there some other way they could use vast quantities of energy to create stable wormholes? I read something about a ring rotating at nearly light speed, but the details were a bit sketchy and I had trouble finding anything that suggests its more than a vague idea with no real science behind it.

Oh yes. The thoughts of a single star are definitely on a massively slow scale and the humans that discover them have no real way of discerning those thoughts because they occur so slowly from our point of view. That is already the case in the novel, but it also focuses on the idea that there is infinite complexity in both directions on the scale. So although the neurons in the brain of a galaxy are constrained by light speed, that is not an issue at all, as this is more than fast enough for the suns to think. But it is important that galaxies are in some way linked even beyond the observable universe because it also implies that the universe itself is a single neuron in an even larger multiverse. So using the wormhole-like structures at the galactic core is a good way to link them without violating the speed of light. In the book in fact there is debate about whether the stars are actually 'thinking' at all, as we cannot detect any repeatable patterns within their messages. Which makes sense, because the scale is so large that to find any kind of repeating thought processes would take millions of years, if they occur at all. But the first book doesn't really explore the small scale yet, apart from through a tacit assumption that a similar thing is happening in the other direction. I will definitely be using the idea of the relative sense of time at each scale though and the possibility of expressing all of existence as a single fractal equation so that any amount of magnifcation is possible.

Hey. The reason that there are observed star deaths is because they are necessary to create the heavier elements that form us. I guess the analogy with a human brain does not hold up completely, but it's not supposed to be an exact simulacrum of a human brain, it's just another form of brain. So as neurons can die, so can stars, but there are ultimately enough to survive, and the others are instrumental in creating the matter that forms the spheres, and the organisms that build them. As for the novel, it's actually a series. The first one is already finished, although it is self-published on lulu.com. If you want to have a look, just go to www.lulu.com and then type ergo sum &/or Simon Cutting as a search. I would send a direct link, but it seems to be dynamic and the link doesn't work twice. They do print on demand stuff, but I make it available as a free pdf file. I'm not really out to make money from this, I just want people to read my stuff. Feel free to have a look and tear it to shreds if necessary!

Ultimately it is all transmitted to the supermassive blackholes at the galactic core. I was working on the assumption that most of the energy was used to maintain the wormholes/blackholes that make this possible, and the rest was the information stream that communicated with the other galaxies.

They actually do expel it, but they do so via large 'spikes' on the surface of the sphere that point towards other dyson spheres. It's expelled as microwave laser energy so it has a very focused beam and it is only sent towards other spheres, which earth is not in the vicinity of.

cabinintheforst, i seem to recall another post of yours where you asked for a photograph or footage of evolution in progress to prove that it exists. If you would accept that as proof, then why is your concept of proof for matter's existence so much more severe? I'm fine with not trusting our own senses as it seems sensible to have the awareness of their possible fallibility in mind. That said, your previous post was so dependent on something that is physically impossible to photograph or film that it seems like you are determined not to have your own questions answered to your satisfaction. Surely a dialogue is more interesting than fortifying yourself within rigid preconceptions?

Hi all. This is kind of a shameless request for ideas. I'm writing a science fiction novel, part of a series in fact. The basic premise is that each star sends out a coded gene sequence in an eleven year cycle that, when created in a lab forms a sort of dark substance that then encircles the star in a dyson sphere. This substance allows for the transmission of radiation output in a narrow focus to other stars. ie, the stars are brains that act as neurons on a galactic scale and humans are the cells that create the neural links between these giant stars. This is why there is apparently so much matter missing from galaxies. The stars are obscured by dyson spheres, and the dark matter uses dark energy as its power source. So far, so unbelievable. The story focuses on humans with technology only a few hundred years from ours, and I have avoided inventing any magical new forces or fields that allow us to violate physics. My problem is, it's supposed to be about infinite complexity in both directions. So beyond the vibrating strings there is something even smaller we cannot detect. It's why quantum particles seem to appear from nothing, and at the other scale, galaxies form single neurons in a universal consciousness and these combine in a multiverse etc etc... But not violating the speed of light is a problem when linking the galaxies together as the space between galaxies is expanding faster than that. So my idea was that the supermassive black holes at the centre of the galaxy are actually wormholes that allow the transit of the maser information that the stars are sending into it. It doesn't allow for physical objects to pass through, but it does allow the transmission of information. Anything else would be torn to pieces long before it got close. This is all viewed from the point of view of humans, with limited ways of observing this event, so the way they infer it is basically that they see that the transmission of all the star neurons is towards the centre of the galaxy and there are none trying to leave it. Then they detect amounts of either negative energy or exotic matter from the galactic core, which leads them to decide that this is to keep open the wormholes that allow the transmission of information between galaxies. So, after all that set-up, which I hope made some sort of sense, I was just wondering if anyone can think of a better way to give such a large and very 'sci-fi' idea a more plausible edge, or indeed if anybody can think of other problems I might need to address (bearing in mind it would have to be something that humans could observe- there is no omniscient narrator in the book). Is it possible that negative energy or exotic matter would form naturally towards the centre of the galaxy. What the hell are either of those things anyway?!? Besides which, I think it's an interesting topic to speculate on!

A friend of my is starting to become obsessive about contaminants in his food and drink, and recently has decided that using a plastic kettle to boil water for tea is building up toxic levels of Bisphenol A in his body. I am less convinced that this is anything more than a media beat-up, but I have no evidence to base this on. This is not his only theory, and he tends to believe in a lot of so-called alternative medicines and other far more obviously bogus science, so that may colour my perception of this latest obsession. My question is as follows. Is Bisphenol A a problem in the levels most people are exposed to, and even if it is, is the plastic used to make a kettle the right type of plastic to release this chemical into the water?

Ah. So the Raelians then. (I am of course making the assumption with this thread that it will be answered from an atheistic perspective! Otherwise people end up quoting their various holy books at each other!)

With the increasing rate of scientific discoveries and our greater knowledge of different cultures, most modern religions come under a lot of outside pressures that they didn't in the past. Which religions do you think have the greatest chance of surviving for the next few hundred years? In my opinion it would be some form of Buddhism, as large amounts of it are based on claims that cannot be refuted by science. Not all of it, of course, but it avoids a lot of the larger sweeping statements of supposed fact that occurs in Abrahamic religions. Again, it's not immune. Although Buddhism can be all consuming in some people's lives, my sister in law for example is a Buddhist, but it is more of an observance that gives her a type of serenity, and something that she can easily compartmentalise. A creationist will always be fighting against logic to maintain their belief for example. Islam is more demanding in a day to day sense as well, and involves submission to God which is hard to fake, although I have met several lax Muslims in my travels, usually over a beer or whisky. Just interested, and of course it is very regional, but I suppose the question is, which religion has the best statistical odds of maintaining a steady following?

Okay, this may seem like a stupid question, but how do I quote somebody in a post reply? I realise that I can put them in a quote box, but how do I specify who it was who said it if I am quoting multiple people. I'm sure it's very simple but I've been messing around for ages and can't get it to work! Help me please, I'm new to forums.

But solving this problem by contemplating many different realities seems like the long way around. It would make more sense to me to assume that time is not linear and that the measurement is already determined. I am going to measure it and get the same result as you in the future. It has already happened, it's just that my linear perception of time hasn't perceived that measurement yet. It may sound silly and a bit sci-fi with no real evidence to back it up, but to my mind it is at least as plausible as multiple realities, and far simpler in many ways. Of course it also undermines any sense of free will if all time exists at once and has already happened, so perhaps that's why it's not as palatable as the many worlds theory...

Okay, but doesn't that get into the whole thing about what actually constitutes an observer? As in, when does the world branch off? Does it require a specific event involving observers to do so, and if that is the case, then doesn't that imply that the universe has some sort of bias towards consciousness? That would be a very profound thing to prove. It just seems like an overly complicated concept to explain something that we find difficult to comprehend. It's not a very neat explanation. Which of course proves nothing either way. My instinctive sense of the nature of the universe is not a very strong authority for anything!

I think the question is mainly one of semantics. When people talk of equality between the genders they are not saying that both men and women are equal in all ways, they are saying that our goal should be to not disadvantage somebody because of their gender. It is not, ultimately, an entirely achievable goal, but it is one worth striving for. Obviously a female boxer going up against a male boxer is not an even match at the highest levels of competition. But in terms of a woman in certain businesses trying to compete with the old boys network, there is a distinct disadvantage to being a woman that is not based on actual ability. That is one example of the sort of things that equal rights is trying to address. Woman have to be the ones that have babies. That is a disadvantage. There are certain laws in place in Australia (where I am) to make this less of a disadvantage, but it is ridiculous to assume that if you have a child then there will be NO disadvantage to your career or income at all. If a woman chooses to have a baby, then she will not have the same flexibility of choices as her partner. It's biological. So basically, women's rights does not mean that men and women are exactly the same. Nobody is suggesting that, as they clearly are not. Therefore, separate sporting teams has nothing to do with women's rights.

Well remembering only one past isn't really an argument against the theory, as you are just one possibility and lived only one possible version of events. There is an infinite number of 'you' that remember only their specific and slightly different past. I have to assume that all these universes are not simply brought into existence as the events happen. There must simply be an inifnite number of universes where everything is playing out simultaneously. If the possibilities are infinite then you can't 'create' a new universe by making a decision because it must already exist. Despite what small children seem to think, there is no infinity plus one! Also of interest, are things like the universal constants actually constants? Is it physically possible for these things to be different? Are there possible universes where matter cannot bond together to form planets and stars?

I just have a question relating to the many-worlds theory. The idea that all possibilities actually happen makes a certain kind of sense, but I was wondering how small exactly the definition of a possibility is supposed to go? The idea that movies enjoy depicting is that it is some 'significant event' that 'creates a new universe' seems the silliest of all, as it would seem to imply that the universe somehow makes a judgement call on what it considers significant, especially in relation to humans. Fine, that's movies. They don't have to make too much sense. But what about smaller scale things? What if I move my arm slightly whilst watching television one night? Now what if I move my arm but the person next to me doesn't? Or we both don't, but the guy in the house next door does? And then we take into account everyone on the planet and where their arms are and so on. That's one planet down, now how many more do we have to consider? Then of course the smaller interactions of forces on objects and so on. And of course, what about the location of individual molecules in my body? The infinite minor variations that might occur within me moving my arm, and precisely how far I move it, and then every combination of these combined with every other event in the universe. Then within those molecules, does it matter what the precise position of the atoms in them is? And even then, how small do the measurements have to be before they become insignificant and don't require an entire universe to accomodate the endless permutations of all these near-infinite variables? Is there a measurement that is as fundamentally small as things can get? Something beyond the planck length scale or whatever else we have decided is very very small. This is reductio ad absurdum, I realise, and of course it is possible that the answer is simply this. 'Yes. All these things matter and are measured infinitely and there are an infinite number of universes because of this. That's what infinite means, you idiot!' I also have a friend who argues that everything in the universe is measurable, right down to human motivations and actions, and so the point is moot. These things that seem to be different possibilities are in fact nothing of the sort. It's a sort of clockwork universe idea where free will is an illusion and so the only different possibilities would be from things outside of the universe that affect it. This concept may or may not be meaningless! I am curious as to what the general consensus on this is?

Wow. That's amazing. It almost looks photoshopped. I wonder if you could earthquake-proof a tower that tall, or if you would just have to build it in places that aren't prone to seismic events.