Scary thought I just had about life

[Atrail]

A pig is a filthy animal...

 

[djheater]

Bacon is goooood.... Sausage is gooooooood....

 

[silent tone]

This reminded me of an analogy that that japanese physicist, Naku or something used. He was watching these fish in a shallow pond. Basically they could only swim back and forth, left and right. Occassionally things fell in the watter and made a ripple on the surface. It was an effect of an event in a dimension that was foreign to them. In a similar situation we perceive 4 dimensions but theoretically the universe has 10. Strange events we witness are effects from events that take place, in some part, in the imperceptable dimensions.

 

[KEV1N]

Originally posted by: istallion
This reminded me of an analogy that that japanese physicist, Naku or something used. He was watching these fish in a shallow pond. Basically they could only swim back and forth, left and right. Occassionally things fell in the watter and made a ripple on the surface. It was an effect of an event in a dimension that was foreign to them. In a similar situation we perceive 4 dimensions but theoretically the universe has 10. Strange events we witness are effects from events that take place, in some part, in the imperceptable dimensions.

Wow, I really like that. The reason I've been thinking about this too is a lot of weird things have been happening to me lately. First of all, my best friend, his father has the same birthday as me. Recently I met a girl and although I haven't known her long I have a weird feeling that she could be "the one".. and her brother also has the same birthday as mine. Coincidence?

 

[CanOfBeans]

Originally posted by: KEV1N

Wow, I really like that. The reason I've been thinking about this too is a lot of weird things have been happening to me lately. First of all, my best friend, his father has the same birthday as me. Recently I met a girl and although I haven't known her long I have a weird feeling that she could be "the one".. and her brother also has the same birthday as mine. Coincidence?

Of course it's coincidence.

Each and every one of these events has a strictly nonzero probability of occuring. In fact, there exists an infinity of unlikely events, each and every one of which has a strictly nonzero probability of occuring. What would be very weird is if nothing unlikely ever happened to you. The chances of leading a perfectly ordinary life, without experiencing any unusual occurences, is very, very low - asymptotically tending to zero as the set of unlikely events that we consider grows ever larger.

Besides, unlikely events are not as unlikely as we may think. Let me give you an example. There are approximately 280 million people in the US. This means that a ONE IN A MILLION EVENT happens to 280 DIFFERENT PEOPLE IN THE US each and every day. This is ignoring the rest of the world.

If people gave up their silly notions of god and religion and suchlike, and instead familiarized themselves a little bit with elementary mathematics, coincidences wouldn't seem like such a mystery to anyone.

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: Astaroth33
This is probably one of the stranger "fate vs free will" examples I've heard of, but we're vastly different from fish in a number of ways:

For us, food does not drop out of the sky. We either grow it, or (indirectly) purchase it from those who have. We have to make choices and work in order to support ourselves (unless you're African-American, and feel that you are entitled to slavery reparations). We have a more highly developed sense of consciousness; we feel emotions, we not only react to what's around us, but we also act of our own volition to support causes we believe in. We make tools, and we invented something unique called "culture".

Whether there's a point to it all I cannot say. However, we're here, so we might as well make the best of it.

Unfortunately something called MTV came along and it's been all downhill since then...

 

[Slacker]

We are all on a "Need to know" Basis (<<secret of life, no charge )

 

[Fjive]

Originally posted by: Astaroth33
Look on the bright side; at least your fish has a face..

LOL

i still have those pics with me....hehe

 

[Wallydraigle]

Originally posted by: KEV1N
Today as I was feeding my pet fish Steve, I had a really scary thought. Every day I drop little pellets of food for him. I understand that he doesn't have the physiological capacity to reason, i.e. his brain is too small to realize who I am, that he's my pet, and that I give him food, change his water, and am basically responsible for everything that happens around him. He just accepts that food "happens" to drop from the sky and that it's good.

At that point I thought, what if we're "fish", and that someone or something else is governing the things that happen to us. Things we just accept as "coincidence", "chance", and "nature" are really being determined somewhere else by something else? And that we don't have the capacity to even being to understand what's REALLY going on, and that we won't be able to understand it no matter how hard we try? Just like Steve?

Another way to visualize this concept is a human standing over an ant. We can see the ant, and contemplate over it, but it has no idea of our existance. We just aren't something it can relate to, even though we are so obvious from our viewpoint. Occasionally an exceptionally bright ant may for a fleeting moment catch a glimpse of us, and entertain the slightest inkiling that beings of enormous power and godlike influence exist in their daily world, yet invisible to the ants' perspective.

Take your fish analogy a step further, and say that in your tank you have a fish that was caught in the wild. Steps were taken so that is never got a sight of it's captors, and it has been placed in a tank made of one-way glass, among others of its kind. he tank is of sufficient size that the fish are not aware of any constraint at all. These fish won't have any concept of what it means to be out of the water. Of course some fish can jump from the water for short distances, and they might have an inkling of what is "Up There", but only an inkling. The fish in this tank are all bottom dwellers, and have never been "Up There" at all. Each day at the same time food floats down from "Up There", but they have no idea how it gets there, or why, or even what it is. Fish relate to the world in a limited way. Things of the appropriate size are either "food" or "not". Anything larger than that is either "danger" or "not". A few fish are somewhat brighter than this. The fish in our tank are not bright fish. We have given the fish in the tank no reason to conclude that we exist. They have never seen us, or perceived us in any way. Since they relate to the world in the limited capacity of either "food" or "not" they would believe that food is just a naturally occuring substance in their world. The fact that food just happens in the tank wouldn't be evidence of the existence of a higher being because all their evidence suggests that food is just a naturally occuring phenomenon. From this frame of reference there is no reason to conclude that humans exist, and to jump to such a conclusion would be foolish.

There is a limit to what a fish can know and comprehend. The same holds true for all animals. A fish can only know what a fish can know. A dog can only know what a dog can know. A monkey can only know what a monkey can know. And a man can only know what a man can know.

In our frame of reference we could be likened to the fish. Odd coincidence is just a naturally occurring phenomenon in our world, like food is for the fish. Is there an "Up There" that we have no access to, knowledge of, or ability to comprehend? If there is, who lives "Up There", and who drops the food? Might Man one day grow legs and gain the ability to crawl out of the water?

 

[Dark4ng3l]

It's impossible for us to comprehend the universe or at least some parts of it because we are limited by the universe itselt. Let me explain it would be impossible for any powerful a computer to calculate every possible event that will happen to it's mass(with a theory of everything where you could calculate what would hapen to everything and when) because it would need to think faster than the universe acts on it with is impossible. Get it?