The problem is that anything (be it an actual physical object, or even nothing more the abstract concept of information) traveling from point A to point B faster than the speed of light will appear, from some frames of reference, to arrive at point B before it has left point A. That's not only just weird, but can lead to kill-your-own-grandfather paradoxes. One reason to suspect that faster-than-light travel or communication is impossible is because it seems reasonable to figure that those kinds of paradoxes simply can't happen.
There are a couple of ways to have faster-than-light communication and travel without these paradoxes arising, but you either end up with some fanciful system that can only be implemented at light speed (spend the next 100,000 years creating a grand Cross Galactic Highway, and when you're done, you can thereafter cross this galaxy FTL without those pesky paradoxes), or it could be true that one of the philosophical underpinnings of Relativity is false, that there is a "preferred frame of reference"... and I'm running out of time to make that all make sense right now, so I'll have to leave it at that.
I don't quite agree, i think that those who come up with these theoretical miracles are forgetting one simple thing. If you hit the magic 'c' then there is no distance (to anywhere in the universe) in your direction of travel. People seem to forget this - you can have any multiplication of c you can think off, but distance is an absolute - once there is no distance then concept of less than no distance becomes your limiting factor.
In effect if you hit 'c' then you are everywhere in the universe all at once. It makes the concept of x10 warp drive irrelavent. Theoretically you can move at x10 c, but the concept of x10 less than 0 distance is the problem.
It's nice to find someone who really understands special relativity. It is so weird. I keep wanting time to unwind on the trip back home, but it doesn't work that way. Back to the Future's time machine worked better IMHO.
Since relativity was confirmed by atomic clocks flying around Earth, I guess I have to believe it, even if I don't like it.
why dont you like it? I assume you're quite fond of Gods creation from your posts - if so then you have to accept that God created relativity as part of this creation. What is there not to like?
With your knowledge of living organisms, how important is fluorine? It is the element that is produced on the surface of a white dwarf.
which pretty much proves that the age of the universe is far far older than you'd have us believe, for there to be fluorine in our part of the universe. You are aware that our sun is atleast a second generation star, formed by the extincions and explosions of previous stars. Incase you were'nt aware - according to the list of 'tailored intelligent designs for life' a high frequency of supernova explosions and suchlike completely rule out the possiblity of life developing. This means that the ingredients of our makeup didn't arrive here overnight, it don't happen often.
Anyway, if you are certain of free-will and infact have little interest in it as you claim, why did you feel the need to contribute to this thread? Is there some overriding constraint on your free will that makes you do things, proving you are not in control of yourself?
ie - freewill is being happy and contented in your beliefs to the point of accepting them regardless of what anyone else believes - and negates the feelings of insecurity, or the need to make a case for your belief, to try to make others accept your belief.
As ive said, i dont believe any of us really have freewill - lest the forums and life be a very quiet place.
which pretty much proves that the age of the universe is far far older than you'd have us believe, for there to be fluorine in our part of the universe.
Fourteen billion years suits me; I don't know about you.
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You are aware that our sun is atleast a second generation star, formed by the extincions and explosions of previous stars.
Yes, and I think I mentioned the sun being a second generation star. Only supernovae make elements heaver than iron, which gives us a rocky planet.
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Incase you were'nt aware - according to the list of 'tailored intelligent designs for life' a high frequency of supernova explosions and suchlike completely rule out the possiblity of life developing.
I realize that we can't have a supernova in our vicinity, but of course the one that gave us the earth and sun happened long before life was established.
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Anyway, if you are certain of free-will and infact have little interest in it as you claim, why did you feel the need to contribute to this thread? Is there some overriding constraint on your free will that makes you do things, proving you are not in control of yourself?
I've made up my mind on free will, and it's not my favorite topic. I got on this thread because it is about consciousness, not necessarily free will. (I've been wanting to get around to Roger Penrose's books on consciousness, but haven't made it yet.) Then sammi jo asked about the speed of light and I jumped into that discussion, with the wrong answer.
So why are you getting on me about my posts anyway? I don't think you have me all figured out, as it appears you believe.
why dont you like it? I assume you're quite fond of Gods creation from your posts - if so then you have to accept that God created relativity as part of this creation. What is there not to like?
There are many things I must accept, but I don't have to like them. I like things to be intuitively obvious, and all we need to do is figure out the details of how it all works and how we can predict its behavior. If I drop a brick from a tall building it will fall with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s until air resistance takes over. I can understand all that. Relativity is weird. I do accept it as fact, and realize it must be dealt with.
The only time I used the word God in these posts is when I said, "People use the Bible to try to prove we have no free will. God is in control and determines everything that happens." It is a philosophy or doctrine of determinism that I don't agree with. Why are you assuming so much about my religious beliefs?
sorry, you are right, i assumed one to many things and i apologise.
Oops! I dashed off another reply and didn't see yours come in. No need to apologize. I didn't expect or want that. I was curious what it was about my posts that that made you come to those conclusions. You are not too far off, but I like to stick to the subject. Religious discussions usually go nowhere.
With your knowledge of living organisms, how important is fluorine? It is the element that is produced on the surface of a white dwarf.
Mars has other problems. It is not massive enough and has lost almost all its water to outer space. Planets a little heavier than Earth hang on to methane and ammonia. It's got to be just the right size. Those specific gravities are very close together.
I was just looking out for my own hide, so I thought human life.
Fluorine?
Some may be needed for humans, but its role isn't known and certainly it doesn't take much of it to be toxic -- lets put it this way, you can grow e coli on media that contains no fluorine without a problem. Elements get scattered througout the universe when a sun explodes, the formation of fluorine isn't well defined, there is apparently evidence that it can form in Red Giants... but who knows, we do not know completely how a lot of things happen, but that doesn't mean they don't happen in more ways than we do know...
What governs the speed of light is, actually, a mystery. Nothing in our understanding of the universe says that the light speed must be what it is. It could have been twice as fast or half as fast. Sure, other things will be different as well (quantitatively, but not qualitatively), but the light speed (a constant connecting space and time) was, for all we know, arbitrary chosen at the very instant the universe was created. The same goes for number of dimentions.
On the topic of negative and positive time:
Negative and positive time are not the same since our universe is not symmetric with respect to the time dimention. In order to make time go backwards you'd have to reverse all of the charges on the particles (electrons will now carry a positive charge...) and reflect a weak decays in the mirror (this is a bit more difficult to explain... look up P-symmetry of the universe in google). Other universes maybe different in that respect.
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Originally Posted by sammi jo
Related, (but not completely on topic)... a question for all you physics knowledgeable folks....
What is the property of space/vacuum/whatever that governs the speed of light (in a vacuum), faster than which nothing can travel? There must surely be a physical reason for this constant being what it is (approx. 186,000 mpsec.), rather than "that's the way is is because it is"....
There's probably a simple reason for this which has been explained decades ago... but casually looking around for an answer, I found nothing... yet.
Some may be needed for humans, but its role isn't known and certainly it doesn't take much of it to be toxic . . .
All I know is that in sophomore semiconductor lab, we wore two pair of gloves and a giant smock, but there was a direct line to the hospital anyway, in case any of the Hydroflouric acid got on you. The HF wasn't going to burn through your skin or anything, but apparently the flourine ions don't want to bond with anything except bone, and they work their way down to the bone pretty fast, where they begin to deteriorate the bone.
I would like to add to this thread in a more meaningful way, but it's a really busy week at work and now I'm going to bed. Cheers.
. . . flourine ions don't want to bond with anything except bone, and they work their way down to the bone pretty fast, where they begin to deteriorate the bone.
And water districts add it to our drinking water! Aluminum plants have lots of this toxic waste, and they found a way to pawn it off for a profit. Sorry for getting off topic. I'll be quiet now.
I don't quite agree, i think that those who come up with these theoretical miracles...
There's nothing theoretical about travel and time dilation. We've confirmed time dilation in a number of ways, including experiments with traveling atomic clocks. Since the relatively low speed results agree perfectly (within the precision of our measurements) with theory, there's no good reason to suppose that just when it becomes inconvenient for us, when we'd like to travel the galaxy and not come home to find our family and friends have all been dead for a few thousand generations, the math will suddenly shift into a more favorable set of equations.
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...are forgetting one simple thing. If you hit the magic 'c' then there is no distance (to anywhere in the universe) in your direction of travel. People seem to forget this...
What you seem to be forgetting is that talking about traveling at the speed of light is really no more meaningful than talking about dividing by 0. These problems have to be dealt with as an approach to a limit.
As you approach the speed of light, distances in the direction of travel approach zero. But here's the interesting thing... if I go so fast that the opposite side of the galaxy is conveniently only a mile away from me, it's a much older opposite side of the galaxy than the younger version which was 100,000 miles away before I started going so fast. In fact, it's nearly 100,000 years older.
Imagine some Planet H (Planet X is just too horrible to imagine) 100,000 light years from here on the other side of the galaxy. As far as relativity is concerned, any differential motion between Earth and Planet H, as they move around in their orbits and their suns move in their galactic orbits, etc., is very minimal. We can say that Earth and Planet H share roughly the same inertial reference frame.
Somehow, some way, there's a clock sitting on Planet H right now which has miraculously been synchronized with Earth time, so it shows the year to be 2006 right now (it's important to remember that "right now" is a relative concept!), and this clock will conveniently stay nicely in synced with Earth time long into the future.
I get into space ship headed toward Planet H and slam my foot down on the accelerator really, really hard. Discounting the fact that I'd be squashed by the acceleration worse than having Mt. Everest dropped on my head, I quickly get up to a speed where Planet H is just a mile away from me, and coming up really, really fast. But it's a much older Planet H than the one which had been so far away. On this older Planet H, the clock reads 102,006.
I can make my own travel time to Planet H as short as I care to, limited only by available energy and my ability to withstand acceleration forces. But I simply can't get to the Planet H where the clock reads 2006. The youngest Planet H I can ever get to, if I leave right now, is the one where the clock reads 102,006.
There's nothing theoretical about travel and time dilation. We've confirmed time dilation in a number of ways, including experiments with traveling atomic clocks. Since the relatively low speed results agree perfectly (within the precision of our measurements) with theory, there's no good reason to suppose that just when it becomes inconvenient for us, when we'd like to travel the galaxy and not come home to find our family and friends have all been dead for a few thousand generations, the math will suddenly shift into a more favorable set of equations.
What you seem to be forgetting is that talking about traveling at the speed of light is really no more meaningful than talking about dividing by 0. These problems have to be dealt with as an approach to a limit.
As you approach the speed of light, distances in the direction of travel approach zero. But here's the interesting thing... if I go so fast that the opposite side of the galaxy is conveniently only a mile away from me, it's a much older opposite side of the galaxy than the younger version which was 100,000 miles away before I started going so fast. In fact, it's nearly 100,000 years older.
yes, yes yes i know and agree, and in your second post you're arguing from the POV of the distance between the two planets as seen from the reference frame of the planets speed - what im saying is that if the clock is set at 2006 and you travel around the universe at c, then your clock will always read 2006 until you decelerate.
What im also saying is that if you travel around the universe at c, then until you decelerate, you will have moved nowhere (in effect because the distance to everywhere is 0 - you are 'everywhere' all at once -in your direction of travel) until you decelerate, regardless of what it looks like in the reference frame of someone who is not moving at c.
Now I know it is not possible for mass to travel at c, unless it is possible to convert yourself into energy while you are moving.
However, what i am trying to make the point of is that while it is possible to conceive travelling at 2 x 'c', or 372000 mpersec - and in effect get somewhere in half the time, or make time go backwards, in reality it is often forgotten that you cannot decouple space from time, and you will hit an impassable limit at 186000, because there is no valid concept of having less than no distance to travel.
All I know is that in sophomore semiconductor lab, we wore two pair of gloves and a giant smock, but there was a direct line to the hospital anyway, in case any of the Hydroflouric acid got on you. The HF wasn't going to burn through your skin or anything, but apparently the flourine ions don't want to bond with anything except bone, and they work their way down to the bone pretty fast, where they begin to deteriorate the bone.
I would like to add to this thread in a more meaningful way, but it's a really busy week at work and now I'm going to bed. Cheers.
Exprosure HF is bad news... it'll hit the tissue pretty bad. HF exprosure is treated with calcium gluconate to bind up the F and take out of the body.
I think that in order to prove/disprove free-will, you would first have to prove/disprove the concept of yourself being conscious. And to add problem to that, you would need to prove complete and utter consciousness throughout the sphere of execution of the decision you are making under free-will
secondly, in order to prove free-will in the event that consciousness is proven, you would need to evalutate the choice you are mulling over in order to exercise the free-will, and conclude that in actual fact there is a genuinely a choice to be made, that is not constrained by any outside influences.
For instance - you might think you could ultimately express free-will by chosing to murder someone, it could be framed so that the choice is simply to pull the trigger or not. but the personal cost of doing so versus the benefit of doing so will prevent you from executing the necessary actions- so in actual fact, you are not exercising free-will here, because the perceived 'choice' is actually an illusionary sham, and the moral issue will always act as a constraint over your free will.
Infact, seeing as there is a moral constraint, cost or reward in everything you do, it might be that all apparent choices are governed by an external factor that reduces the amount of genuine choice to be made.
You might sometimes be determined to exercise the free-will in the illusionary choice, but the cost of doing so will almost certainly constrain your actions more (than the baseline) in the future. Exercising free-will, you will certainly lose a greater amount of freedom than you gain. In effect, because it is a sham, exercising free-will only serves to further bind you to slavery.
Firstly, there is the common usage of consciousness - I can contemplate myself.
Secondly, there is being conscious of yourself, but more importantly, being conscious of the constraints, factors and influeneces on your perception of yourself that limit and define you.
I might argue, that unless you are God, it is not possible to correctly evaluate all the possible internal and external constrains on yourself, so in reality, it is not possible to be fully conscious.
Not being fully conscious, must mean that all apparent choices to be made - in which you get to exercise free-will, really are illusions.
I think that in order to prove/disprove free-will, you would first have to prove/disprove the concept of yourself being conscious.
What comes to mind is, "I think, therefore I am." It likely isn't applicable, logically, but it's close enough for me.
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. . . the personal cost of doing so versus the benefit of doing so will prevent you from executing the necessary actions -- so in actual fact, you are not exercising free-will here . . .
. . . seeing as there is a moral constraint, cost or reward in everything you do, it might be that all apparent choices are governed by an external factor that reduces the amount of genuine choice to be made.
What you say is true enough, but it doesn't affect free-will at all, at least as I look at it. Say a man meet a beautiful woman who he is attracted to and she also to him. In his opinion, she is the perfect mate. Say he is also married and has several young children, so he must make a choice. Does he leave his wife or not?
There are many moral and economic constraint here. If it meant that he could not exercise his free-will, then he would stay with his wife and kids and we would not have so many families breaking up. The fact that these type of choices tend to go both ways seems to imply free-will is working just fine.
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. . . In effect, because it is a sham, exercising free-will only serves to further bind you to slavery.
What you are talking about here is the consequences of making bad decisions in the exercise of your free-will, not whether free-will exists or not. For example, trying drugs and getting hooked does not mean you did not have free-will in making your choice. Once hooked, you still have free-will, but it become extremely difficult to exercise it, being a slave to drugs. Obviously such examples are plentiful, beyond drug addiction.
Consciousness is notion... we don't really know what it really is, but it doesn't matter.
It's what consiousness allows us to do that is important.
It's somewhat asking us what is an electron? We don't know, however we know what its properties are and that is how we describe it.
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I might argue, that unless you are God, it is not possible to correctly evaluate all the possible internal and external constrains on yourself, so in reality, it is not possible to be fully conscious.
In this case you'd have to define what God is. And certainly you can not define God as something that can "evaluate all the possible internal and external constrains on yourself", because that is a logical paradox and is not applicable in our physical universe.
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The problem is that anything (be it an actual physical object, or even nothing more the abstract concept of information) traveling from point A to point B faster than the speed of light will appear, from some frames of reference, to arrive at point B before it has left point A. That's not only just weird, but can lead to kill-your-own-grandfather paradoxes. One reason to suspect that faster-than-light travel or communication is impossible is because it seems reasonable to figure that those kinds of paradoxes simply can't happen.
There are a couple of ways to have faster-than-light communication and travel without these paradoxes arising, but you either end up with some fanciful system that can only be implemented at light speed (spend the next 100,000 years creating a grand Cross Galactic Highway, and when you're done, you can thereafter cross this galaxy FTL without those pesky paradoxes), or it could be true that one of the philosophical underpinnings of Relativity is false, that there is a "preferred frame of reference"... and I'm running out of time to make that all make sense right now, so I'll have to leave it at that.
I don't quite agree, i think that those who come up with these theoretical miracles are forgetting one simple thing. If you hit the magic 'c' then there is no distance (to anywhere in the universe) in your direction of travel. People seem to forget this - you can have any multiplication of c you can think off, but distance is an absolute - once there is no distance then concept of less than no distance becomes your limiting factor.
In effect if you hit 'c' then you are everywhere in the universe all at once. It makes the concept of x10 warp drive irrelavent. Theoretically you can move at x10 c, but the concept of x10 less than 0 distance is the problem.
It's nice to find someone who really understands special relativity. It is so weird. I keep wanting time to unwind on the trip back home, but it doesn't work that way. Back to the Future's time machine worked better IMHO.
Since relativity was confirmed by atomic clocks flying around Earth, I guess I have to believe it, even if I don't like it.
why dont you like it? I assume you're quite fond of Gods creation from your posts - if so then you have to accept that God created relativity as part of this creation. What is there not to like?
With your knowledge of living organisms, how important is fluorine? It is the element that is produced on the surface of a white dwarf.
which pretty much proves that the age of the universe is far far older than you'd have us believe, for there to be fluorine in our part of the universe. You are aware that our sun is atleast a second generation star, formed by the extincions and explosions of previous stars. Incase you were'nt aware - according to the list of 'tailored intelligent designs for life' a high frequency of supernova explosions and suchlike completely rule out the possiblity of life developing. This means that the ingredients of our makeup didn't arrive here overnight, it don't happen often.
Anyway, if you are certain of free-will and infact have little interest in it as you claim, why did you feel the need to contribute to this thread? Is there some overriding constraint on your free will that makes you do things, proving you are not in control of yourself?
ie - freewill is being happy and contented in your beliefs to the point of accepting them regardless of what anyone else believes - and negates the feelings of insecurity, or the need to make a case for your belief, to try to make others accept your belief.
As ive said, i dont believe any of us really have freewill - lest the forums and life be a very quiet place.
which pretty much proves that the age of the universe is far far older than you'd have us believe, for there to be fluorine in our part of the universe.
Fourteen billion years suits me; I don't know about you.
You are aware that our sun is atleast a second generation star, formed by the extincions and explosions of previous stars.
Yes, and I think I mentioned the sun being a second generation star. Only supernovae make elements heaver than iron, which gives us a rocky planet.
Incase you were'nt aware - according to the list of 'tailored intelligent designs for life' a high frequency of supernova explosions and suchlike completely rule out the possiblity of life developing.
I realize that we can't have a supernova in our vicinity, but of course the one that gave us the earth and sun happened long before life was established.
Anyway, if you are certain of free-will and infact have little interest in it as you claim, why did you feel the need to contribute to this thread? Is there some overriding constraint on your free will that makes you do things, proving you are not in control of yourself?
I've made up my mind on free will, and it's not my favorite topic. I got on this thread because it is about consciousness, not necessarily free will. (I've been wanting to get around to Roger Penrose's books on consciousness, but haven't made it yet.) Then sammi jo asked about the speed of light and I jumped into that discussion, with the wrong answer.
So why are you getting on me about my posts anyway? I don't think you have me all figured out, as it appears you believe.
So why are you getting on me about my posts anyway? I don't think you have me all figured out, as it appears you believe.
sorry, you are right, i assumed one to many things and i apologise.
why dont you like it? I assume you're quite fond of Gods creation from your posts - if so then you have to accept that God created relativity as part of this creation. What is there not to like?
There are many things I must accept, but I don't have to like them. I like things to be intuitively obvious, and all we need to do is figure out the details of how it all works and how we can predict its behavior. If I drop a brick from a tall building it will fall with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s until air resistance takes over. I can understand all that. Relativity is weird. I do accept it as fact, and realize it must be dealt with.
The only time I used the word God in these posts is when I said, "People use the Bible to try to prove we have no free will. God is in control and determines everything that happens." It is a philosophy or doctrine of determinism that I don't agree with. Why are you assuming so much about my religious beliefs?
sorry, you are right, i assumed one to many things and i apologise.
Oops! I dashed off another reply and didn't see yours come in. No need to apologize. I didn't expect or want that. I was curious what it was about my posts that that made you come to those conclusions. You are not too far off, but I like to stick to the subject. Religious discussions usually go nowhere.
With your knowledge of living organisms, how important is fluorine? It is the element that is produced on the surface of a white dwarf.
Mars has other problems. It is not massive enough and has lost almost all its water to outer space. Planets a little heavier than Earth hang on to methane and ammonia. It's got to be just the right size. Those specific gravities are very close together.
I was just looking out for my own hide, so I thought human life.
Fluorine?
Some may be needed for humans, but its role isn't known and certainly it doesn't take much of it to be toxic -- lets put it this way, you can grow e coli on media that contains no fluorine without a problem. Elements get scattered througout the universe when a sun explodes, the formation of fluorine isn't well defined, there is apparently evidence that it can form in Red Giants... but who knows, we do not know completely how a lot of things happen, but that doesn't mean they don't happen in more ways than we do know...
On the topic of negative and positive time:
Negative and positive time are not the same since our universe is not symmetric with respect to the time dimention. In order to make time go backwards you'd have to reverse all of the charges on the particles (electrons will now carry a positive charge...) and reflect a weak decays in the mirror (this is a bit more difficult to explain... look up P-symmetry of the universe in google). Other universes maybe different in that respect.
Related, (but not completely on topic)... a question for all you physics knowledgeable folks....
What is the property of space/vacuum/whatever that governs the speed of light (in a vacuum), faster than which nothing can travel? There must surely be a physical reason for this constant being what it is (approx. 186,000 mpsec.), rather than "that's the way is is because it is"....
There's probably a simple reason for this which has been explained decades ago... but casually looking around for an answer, I found nothing... yet.
Fluorine?
Some may be needed for humans, but its role isn't known and certainly it doesn't take much of it to be toxic . . .
All I know is that in sophomore semiconductor lab, we wore two pair of gloves and a giant smock, but there was a direct line to the hospital anyway, in case any of the Hydroflouric acid got on you. The HF wasn't going to burn through your skin or anything, but apparently the flourine ions don't want to bond with anything except bone, and they work their way down to the bone pretty fast, where they begin to deteriorate the bone.
I would like to add to this thread in a more meaningful way, but it's a really busy week at work and now I'm going to bed. Cheers.
. . . flourine ions don't want to bond with anything except bone, and they work their way down to the bone pretty fast, where they begin to deteriorate the bone.
And water districts add it to our drinking water!
I don't quite agree, i think that those who come up with these theoretical miracles...
There's nothing theoretical about travel and time dilation. We've confirmed time dilation in a number of ways, including experiments with traveling atomic clocks. Since the relatively low speed results agree perfectly (within the precision of our measurements) with theory, there's no good reason to suppose that just when it becomes inconvenient for us, when we'd like to travel the galaxy and not come home to find our family and friends have all been dead for a few thousand generations, the math will suddenly shift into a more favorable set of equations.
...are forgetting one simple thing. If you hit the magic 'c' then there is no distance (to anywhere in the universe) in your direction of travel. People seem to forget this...
What you seem to be forgetting is that talking about traveling at the speed of light is really no more meaningful than talking about dividing by 0. These problems have to be dealt with as an approach to a limit.
As you approach the speed of light, distances in the direction of travel approach zero. But here's the interesting thing... if I go so fast that the opposite side of the galaxy is conveniently only a mile away from me, it's a much older opposite side of the galaxy than the younger version which was 100,000 miles away before I started going so fast. In fact, it's nearly 100,000 years older.
Um, younger opposite side...
In case that wasn't very clear...
Imagine some Planet H (Planet X is just too horrible to imagine) 100,000 light years from here on the other side of the galaxy. As far as relativity is concerned, any differential motion between Earth and Planet H, as they move around in their orbits and their suns move in their galactic orbits, etc., is very minimal. We can say that Earth and Planet H share roughly the same inertial reference frame.
Somehow, some way, there's a clock sitting on Planet H right now which has miraculously been synchronized with Earth time, so it shows the year to be 2006 right now (it's important to remember that "right now" is a relative concept!), and this clock will conveniently stay nicely in synced with Earth time long into the future.
I get into space ship headed toward Planet H and slam my foot down on the accelerator really, really hard. Discounting the fact that I'd be squashed by the acceleration worse than having Mt. Everest dropped on my head, I quickly get up to a speed where Planet H is just a mile away from me, and coming up really, really fast. But it's a much older Planet H than the one which had been so far away. On this older Planet H, the clock reads 102,006.
I can make my own travel time to Planet H as short as I care to, limited only by available energy and my ability to withstand acceleration forces. But I simply can't get to the Planet H where the clock reads 2006. The youngest Planet H I can ever get to, if I leave right now, is the one where the clock reads 102,006.
There's nothing theoretical about travel and time dilation. We've confirmed time dilation in a number of ways, including experiments with traveling atomic clocks. Since the relatively low speed results agree perfectly (within the precision of our measurements) with theory, there's no good reason to suppose that just when it becomes inconvenient for us, when we'd like to travel the galaxy and not come home to find our family and friends have all been dead for a few thousand generations, the math will suddenly shift into a more favorable set of equations.
What you seem to be forgetting is that talking about traveling at the speed of light is really no more meaningful than talking about dividing by 0. These problems have to be dealt with as an approach to a limit.
As you approach the speed of light, distances in the direction of travel approach zero. But here's the interesting thing... if I go so fast that the opposite side of the galaxy is conveniently only a mile away from me, it's a much older opposite side of the galaxy than the younger version which was 100,000 miles away before I started going so fast. In fact, it's nearly 100,000 years older.
yes, yes yes i know and agree, and in your second post you're arguing from the POV of the distance between the two planets as seen from the reference frame of the planets speed - what im saying is that if the clock is set at 2006 and you travel around the universe at c, then your clock will always read 2006 until you decelerate.
What im also saying is that if you travel around the universe at c, then until you decelerate, you will have moved nowhere (in effect because the distance to everywhere is 0 - you are 'everywhere' all at once -in your direction of travel) until you decelerate, regardless of what it looks like in the reference frame of someone who is not moving at c.
Now I know it is not possible for mass to travel at c, unless it is possible to convert yourself into energy while you are moving.
However, what i am trying to make the point of is that while it is possible to conceive travelling at 2 x 'c', or 372000 mpersec - and in effect get somewhere in half the time, or make time go backwards, in reality it is often forgotten that you cannot decouple space from time, and you will hit an impassable limit at 186000, because there is no valid concept of having less than no distance to travel.
All I know is that in sophomore semiconductor lab, we wore two pair of gloves and a giant smock, but there was a direct line to the hospital anyway, in case any of the Hydroflouric acid got on you. The HF wasn't going to burn through your skin or anything, but apparently the flourine ions don't want to bond with anything except bone, and they work their way down to the bone pretty fast, where they begin to deteriorate the bone.
I would like to add to this thread in a more meaningful way, but it's a really busy week at work and now I'm going to bed. Cheers.
Exprosure HF is bad news... it'll hit the tissue pretty bad. HF exprosure is treated with calcium gluconate to bind up the F and take out of the body.
I think that in order to prove/disprove free-will, you would first have to prove/disprove the concept of yourself being conscious. And to add problem to that, you would need to prove complete and utter consciousness throughout the sphere of execution of the decision you are making under free-will
secondly, in order to prove free-will in the event that consciousness is proven, you would need to evalutate the choice you are mulling over in order to exercise the free-will, and conclude that in actual fact there is a genuinely a choice to be made, that is not constrained by any outside influences.
For instance - you might think you could ultimately express free-will by chosing to murder someone, it could be framed so that the choice is simply to pull the trigger or not. but the personal cost of doing so versus the benefit of doing so will prevent you from executing the necessary actions- so in actual fact, you are not exercising free-will here, because the perceived 'choice' is actually an illusionary sham, and the moral issue will always act as a constraint over your free will.
Infact, seeing as there is a moral constraint, cost or reward in everything you do, it might be that all apparent choices are governed by an external factor that reduces the amount of genuine choice to be made.
You might sometimes be determined to exercise the free-will in the illusionary choice, but the cost of doing so will almost certainly constrain your actions more (than the baseline) in the future. Exercising free-will, you will certainly lose a greater amount of freedom than you gain. In effect, because it is a sham, exercising free-will only serves to further bind you to slavery.
There must be atleast two forms of consciousness.
Firstly, there is the common usage of consciousness - I can contemplate myself.
Secondly, there is being conscious of yourself, but more importantly, being conscious of the constraints, factors and influeneces on your perception of yourself that limit and define you.
I might argue, that unless you are God, it is not possible to correctly evaluate all the possible internal and external constrains on yourself, so in reality, it is not possible to be fully conscious.
Not being fully conscious, must mean that all apparent choices to be made - in which you get to exercise free-will, really are illusions.
I think that in order to prove/disprove free-will, you would first have to prove/disprove the concept of yourself being conscious.
What comes to mind is, "I think, therefore I am." It likely isn't applicable, logically, but it's close enough for me.
. . . the personal cost of doing so versus the benefit of doing so will prevent you from executing the necessary actions -- so in actual fact, you are not exercising free-will here . . .
. . . seeing as there is a moral constraint, cost or reward in everything you do, it might be that all apparent choices are governed by an external factor that reduces the amount of genuine choice to be made.
What you say is true enough, but it doesn't affect free-will at all, at least as I look at it. Say a man meet a beautiful woman who he is attracted to and she also to him. In his opinion, she is the perfect mate. Say he is also married and has several young children, so he must make a choice. Does he leave his wife or not?
There are many moral and economic constraint here. If it meant that he could not exercise his free-will, then he would stay with his wife and kids and we would not have so many families breaking up. The fact that these type of choices tend to go both ways seems to imply free-will is working just fine.
. . . In effect, because it is a sham, exercising free-will only serves to further bind you to slavery.
What you are talking about here is the consequences of making bad decisions in the exercise of your free-will, not whether free-will exists or not. For example, trying drugs and getting hooked does not mean you did not have free-will in making your choice. Once hooked, you still have free-will, but it become extremely difficult to exercise it, being a slave to drugs. Obviously such examples are plentiful, beyond drug addiction.
so what is consciousness?
Consciousness is notion... we don't really know what it really is, but it doesn't matter.
It's what consiousness allows us to do that is important.
It's somewhat asking us what is an electron? We don't know, however we know what its properties are and that is how we describe it.
I might argue, that unless you are God, it is not possible to correctly evaluate all the possible internal and external constrains on yourself, so in reality, it is not possible to be fully conscious.
In this case you'd have to define what God is. And certainly you can not define God as something that can "evaluate all the possible internal and external constrains on yourself", because that is a logical paradox and is not applicable in our physical universe.