Saturday, January 16, 2010

One can't collapse probability waves with closed eyes ∴ we dream

First step: watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_GQqUg6Ts
Second step: reassemble your shattered brain
Third step: rewatch the video if it pleases you
Fourth step: make a searching and fearless inventory of yourself

So class, what have we learned? Basically that Rob Bryanton is the only good thing about Regina. This video brings up many different possible discussion topics, which I plan on using as other blog posts sometime in the 4th quarter of 2015. But in this particular blog will focus on the probability of life, not the probability of life existing, but how our lives are made of probabilities.

Although I must stress the scientific legitimacy of this video because as far as I know, there is none. The experimentation and testing would be a tad difficult (1.21 gigawatts), but nonetheless it provides us with an entirely different way of viewing our life and time.

Basically what this theory is saying is that anything that can happen does happen, we only view one of the events happening. If I flip a coin there are three main probabilities that can occur: the can lands tails up, heads up, or on it's side. The probability of landing on it's side isn't likely but is included to understand this. Let's say you have a 48% chance of a tails, 48% of heads, and 2% chance of it landing on the side (I know that's not right). So when you flip a coin you could say your line of time gets separated into 100 other lines, 48 in which the coin lands heads up, 48 tails, and 2 on the side. So rather than 1 coin flip equaling one result, as occurring in an arrow line of time (as opposed to a branching tunnel view of time), 1 coin flip would yield 100 results, only one of which we see. This means that at every possible instant there are alternate lines of time branching off. As I sit here deciding what my next point should be, there is already a parallel Michael who has created that sentence, and from that Michael other numerous Michaels, maybe one who deleted the sentence.

This idea can seem a little farfetch (I'm not even sure if I have the idea explained correctly), feel free to do your best to disprove it as it seems more likely to disprove than prove (Hey, Jim I attached this here rope to my waist, I'mma hop on through the 6th dimension. If I'm yankin' on the rope it means pull me out cause this reality if infested with dinosaurs.) But it certainly a distinct way of viewing everything.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

I am, therefore I think.

One month later and here's my second post, I've been aiming for more of a quality over quantity approach. I will slowly work towards costcoty posts, that beautiful mix of quality and quantity supplied by everyone's favourite store. Well let's dust off the old brain and do it to it.

As my second post it's only logical now that I tackle the big question: what's the meaning of our existence? Numerous people believe that the human race were put on this planet and exist in the universe for a certain reason, but is that true? Is there some sort of goal the human race should be striving for, and would it even have any significance at the universal level? After this month of thought, it's fair to say there is no understandable reason for our existence.

Assuming that our life was created out of chance with the laws of our universe which firstly allow us to exist, to the living conditions of our planet, the random motion of molecules to firstly form life, the luck of genetics, and Japanese gameshows, all leading up to our current form of living. On the universal level, does our existence hold any sort of importance? If Earth and all its inhabitants were annihilated at this instant, would anybody care? Besides of course Pluto, who would now have her chance back at being a planet. If we land a person on Mars is there anyone else who cares besides us? No, not at all. Which brings us to a quote by Carl Sagan:

On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. - Carl Sagan

Welcome to your existentialist nightmare, somewhat. As far as we know we're alone in this universe and all of our achievements mean nothing. When's the last time Earth congratulated an ant for trekking an unreasonably long distance to bring food to their colony? The last time the universe congratulated the Earth for her accomplishments. The fact that our life seems to be the only one just leads more people to believe we must be special and have a purpose of some sort. We certainly are special, the universe just doesn't care, she threw us a bone when she gave us three dimensions to move through. But this is all assuming there is no God or other such beings.

But now instead let's say we were created by some sort of omnipotent overseer. Now does our existence hold any importance? We can't say for certain, we're simply fish in our aquarium trying to understand our owner. Our owner who lives in an entirely different world of logic, an almost completely different universe that our minds can't even begin to comprehend. So any importance that our lives may hold to him/her/it are simply inconceivable to us.



From such a distance we're meaningless



But so up close we don't seem so insignificant now, do we?

If there's nothing else in the universe that our existence is important to or if we were created for a reason that we don't understand at all, the only thing left is that our importance is objective. From person to person the reason for their living changes and we must find our own personal importance. Although there is one importance that holds true for every single person and that is to think.

Ps: This was an awful decision for a second blog post. I had much trouble trying to formulate and word everything I wanted to say, so I hope you enjoyed your stay at Chez Logical Fallacy. I'll try to develop and explain things better with things you may not understand, just ask some questions I guess.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

A Clockwork Orange

O my brothers, I must skazat an appypolly-loggy, for to you these statements are simply chepooka and gloopy, but to me it's choodesney. You most likely don't pony what I govoreet. Its purpose isn't to razdrez you, so don't gooly away yet. I came up with this idea for my first blog post after many minootas of cally messels running through my mozg, and then this horrorshow messel (I hope) came to jeezny, in hopes of making you skirk your gulliver and lose your rassoodook.

Enough with the Nadsat, hopefully you grasped the gist of that paragraph, even though it contained a number of words you've probably never heard (unless you've read A Clockwork Orange or speak Russian). Before reading any further or google searching to find out what any of that meant, in your post (if you plan on posting, if not just do it in your head) type out the gist of the previous paragraph, don't retype anything out word for word, just a short summary.

So even though you have no idea what those nonsense words mean, you could hopefully get a basic understanding of the paragraph. So how did you go about getting a general idea of this gibberish? Simply put, I'd say your subconscious disregards the nonsense words and pieces together the context of the words you do understand. When you read the sentences, did you try and attach an English word to each Nadsat word? You most likely didn't, as there are many words and you don't want to waste your time. The likely happening is that your subconscious went to work, translating the context into ideas while ignoring the nonsense.

Well this is bringing me to my point: Each person contains their own thought-language; a specific way of thinking that really only makes sense to themselves. Words are what our thought-languages are translated into in order to make sense to others. My thoughts were translated into words, where in your brain they were translated into your own thought-language. Your thought-language filled in the blanks from the nonsensical word language. Makes sense? Perfect! If not, it was simply because my thoughts weren't being translated correctly.