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geordief

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geordief last won the day on March 8

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  1. Ouch ,did you mean to say "really"?. I think it is just a mathematical construct to model real effects.
  2. Sadly (well happily enough) ,I don't think that will ever happen (unless we ever chanced upon a defunct civilization that left records) Perhaps we could find intelligent life here on earth among the other species if we learn to communicate with them and they understood symbols....or even if they just helped us to understand our own intelligence. (the intelligence we use when our basic needs have been met)
  3. I doubt there is a useful dichotomy between the mind and the brain. To my view the brain is a part of the body and what the mind is is very hard to understand.
  4. Can you explain (in simple terms for me and perhaps in greater detail for others) how time dilation causes gravity? I thought time dilation was caused by relative motion and that relative motion does not necessarily entail ,or cause gravity. So you can have time dilation where there is no curved spacetime.
  5. No ,the life we see around us follows logical paths .(animals,trees,humans,societies and the physical universe) The senselessness I had in mind was the apparent void we come from at birth and the void we enter after we are finished. In between we try to understand what our place is in that context. I doubt other species entertain these ideas but ,who knows maybe they might.
  6. "To Be or not to Be" https://youtu.be/1u8OlUS7BhU?si=rMV91ELFEeaZncRA Or is the meaning of life to make sense of what has no sense?(we can all make sense of what seems logical, I would say)
  7. Thanks.I did track down that passage in the book. For those of us who find it hard to visualise a curved 4d (3d+time) object is the way to do this to break the 4d down into all its 2d surfaces? Would every surface need to be curved for the 4d object to be classed as such? Or could in theory only one of eg spatial surfaces be curved and all the other surfaces be "straight" and the 4d construct would also be curved?(not that I expect such a thing to exist in nature)
  8. Because it is spacetime that is curved and not space?
  9. Yes ,it is intended to be an analogy. But analogies can perhaps be useful as a way of getting a clearer understanding of the actual phenomena or just encouraging further inquiry. So, can some analogies be better than others? The trampoline analogy has the fault ,if taken literally**of mistaking an effect if gravity for gravity itself. If that is disregarded it is a lot "catchier" than mine -maybe too catchy for it's own good. **of course students should be repeatedly warned that it is just a flawed analogy (as all analogies intrinsically are)
  10. One of the main arguments against the trampoline analogy for spacetime curvature is that the heavy object distorting the fabric of the trampoline/spacetime fabric itself relies on gravity to act ... Suppose we just have two bodies ,one of which is a source of mass/energy and they are connected by a geometric line that is marked off in equal lengths of spacetime distance. There is a tension between the two objects (and so along the geometric line?) for the "simple" reason * *that the two objects have in principle a common source at the beginning of the universe ,whatever that looked like. Going back to the two objects,as time progresses the massive/energetic object "pulls on " the geometric line representing spacetime and "reels it in" like a measuring tape that springs back into the body of the tool. But the line is held at the location of the second body and ,moreover is elastic . And so the spacetime intervals written on the geometric line are stretched on the side of the massive body and this stretching is continues all the way along the geometric line as far as the second body,with the distortion from the ideal even spacing greatest in the immediate vicinity of the massive body ,but still existing (propagating?) as far as the second body ,or indeed to infinity if that is where the second body is. This is different from the trampoline analogy in the it just deals with one spatial dimension (at a time). The idea occured to me as I have been forced to wear compression stockings for now and when you pull them up the leg it looks a bit like stretching a trampoline or spacetime fabric in action Also ,in the What is Gravity thread a few of you are talking about whether spacetime curvature can cause mass or vice versa. In "my" analogy the mass can "ingest" spacetime and so it "causes" it. And the stretchy geometric line (spacetime) cause the second object to move relative to the massive object. **well,I think both these objects have a prior relationship and so a "historic" connection in that sense
  11. Do I sound like an extreme monist? And you would be a mainstream monist ,perhaps? I am only slightly familiar with these concepts https://www3.nd.edu/~maritain/jmc/etext/psych023.htm#:~:text=Dualism teaches that Mind and,one and the same Reality. but ,from the link there seem to be quite a few variations... I think I would be attracted to what you say is not the case I think consciousnesss could be extensive in the same way as a particle extends into its field according to QFT. (of course I am waffling)
  12. I think more along the lines that your consciousness is those experiences. There is nothing "hands off" about what I think of as consciousness.It is entirely immersive , athough there is an illusion of an "internal observer". which is just a facet of our consciousness.
  13. You are thinking of a coma? So if you have an experience where "nothing could be better" (as in the oft quoted line"it was bliss that day to be alive" ) and this is followed by the depths of despair (perhaps as a result of a medical condition) your consciousness does not follow any direction? In the former experience all your days lie ahead of you in anticipation and in the later there is no tomorrow. Is your consciousness diminished or altered?
  14. So ,if we lose a hair off our head we loose (just change?) a bit of our consciousness(as well as when there is a change in the environment such as the sun going behind a cloud)? Can we increase or decrease our amount of consciousness or is it just redirected/reoriented? Do emotions affect our consciousness?
  15. Can we bottle (or just create) spacetime curvature and thereby create (or annihilate) mass? That might be a causal relationship.
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