So do you believe in the 21 grams 'theory'?

[trmiv]

Originally posted by: da loser
quick someone test this on their neighborhood cat

According to the link they tested it on dogs and found no weight loss, because apparently "animals have no souls."

 

[Vic]

Energy doesn't have mass.

 

[kogase]

Originally posted by: JLGatsby

Originally posted by: clickynext
Yeah, I don't think some invisible spiritual thing in your body would have mass.

I don't believe it would be a "spiritual" being. I believe in nothing outside of science.

But this "conscience driver" of the body could be some form of radiation/electricity/or some other unknown substance.

But I have a hard time understanding why I am consciencely inside this structure of bones and flesh. There must be some sort of "driver" (myself/my consciousness) inhabiting this organism. Otherwise I would be on the same level as any other living being (insect, germ, individual cell), which I do not believe is the case. I only look at the body as a piece of machinery.

It's all a matter of degree; where you draw the line. There are clear differences in awareness between, say, a mouse, a dog, an ape, a dolphin, and a human. But each one is certainly to some extent "aware". The ability to be aware or sentient is not unique to humans, we simply possess the ability to deal in rational thought arbitrarily on a much higher level than an insect. But it is still the same biological construct in the end: the brain.

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: JLGatsby

Originally posted by: Anubis
how much does that air in your lungs add to your weight?

Air weighs almost nothing, that's how you were able to breathe it in. If such a gas weighed anywhere near 21 grams, it sink to the floor and would not reach your nose, like pouring oil into a glass of water.

Uhm, wtf?? If how much of a gas weighed 21 grams? Your statement doesn't even begin to make sense without a volume. In fact air weighs about 1.1 kg/m^3 at sea leavel so 21 grams would be about 0.25 liters of air. However air in the lungs can't account for any weight loss (if it exists).

 

[imported_electron]

Originally posted by: Armitage

Originally posted by: JLGatsby

Originally posted by: Anubis
how much does that air in your lungs add to your weight?

Air weighs almost nothing, that's how you were able to breathe it in. If such a gas weighed anywhere near 21 grams, it sink to the floor and would not reach your nose, like pouring oil into a glass of water.

Uhm, wtf?? If how much of a gas weighed 21 grams? Your statement doesn't even begin to make sense without a volume. In fact air weighs about 1.1 kg/m^3 at sea leavel so 21 grams would be about 0.25 liters of air. However air in the lungs can't account for any weight loss (if it exists).

Never trust a "scientist" that uses the phrase "almost nothing" in his quantitative analysis. Such a "scientist" has almost nothing between his ears.

 

[thehstrybean]

Originally posted by: Vic
Energy doesn't have mass.

But energy is a particle, and therefore has mass....

 

[imported_electron]

Originally posted by: thehstrybean

Originally posted by: Vic
Energy doesn't have mass.

But energy is a particle, and therefore has mass....

Another beanbag for brains chimes in.

 

[JLGatsby]

Originally posted by: trmiv
I would like to think that it's true, that we do have souls that go on after we die. But I just don't believe it. This is it, when we die, we're gone, that's it. All this afterlife stuff is just something humans thought up because we fear death and we want to justify our existence. I'm very scared of death, but just convince myself there's something else after it.

Here's something to think about.

Ever lost gotten really drunk or bumped your head or in some way lost your memory? It feels like those minutes/hours you had memory lost never happened, although you lived them out (you just don't remember them).

Now if you became unconscious after you died (as you were before you were born), wouldn't life on a "here and now" conscious sense not exist? Wouldn't life just zoom through and end without you even knowing it? If that's the case, it should.

But it doesn't. We consciously live out each day. This is what I cannot understand.

I don't believe in anything outside of science, but this one thing that has stumped me.

Because of this, there must be something that lives on after the body dies. Because of that, I look at us as "beings" inhabiting living organisms (bodies), not simply bones and flesh. I don't believe flesh and bone can live in the highly conscious state we live in.

Also on that note, I don't believe everyone is completely conscious. Some people perhaps do not have "conscious drivers" but are merely living organisms reacting to their environment. (About this one I could be wrong). I just wonder why some people are so "out of it." It seems (at least to me) like some people have no "consciousness."

 

[JLGatsby]

Originally posted by: kogase
It's all a matter of degree; where you draw the line. There are clear differences in awareness between, say, a mouse, a dog, an ape, a dolphin, and a human. But each one is certainly to some extent "aware". The ability to be aware or sentient is not unique to humans, we simply possess the ability to deal in rational thought arbitrarily on a much higher level than an insect. But it is still the same biological construct in the end: the brain.

No, I don't mean a "reactive" conscious. I mean a "here and now" conscious. This is a hard to concept to grasp, but leaves something to be said.

We react with our brain, but I still live each day feeling as though I am sitting inside this body.

Why am I me, and why are you, you? Like from a "view point" perspective. This is what leads me to believe there is some higher sense of conscious living inside us.

 

[newParadigm]

Originally posted by: thehstrybean

Originally posted by: Vic
Energy doesn't have mass.

But energy is a particle, and therefore has mass....

Not if you subscribe to string theory. AAMOF, even if you don;t. photons and gluons are masssless particles. Weak gauge bosons (the messenger particle of the Weak Nuclear force, have an extremly miniscule mass, something like .01 AMU's)

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: Vic
Energy doesn't have mass.

E = mc^2 dude...

or, using c = 1 units,

E = m

Energy = mass...

 

[JLGatsby]

Originally posted by: electron
Never trust a "scientist" that uses the phrase "almost nothing" in his quantitative analysis. Such a "scientist" has almost nothing between his ears.

I mean, "almost nothing" relative to the air around us. It has a near zero effect.

 

[thehstrybean]

Originally posted by: electron

Originally posted by: thehstrybean

Originally posted by: Vic
Energy doesn't have mass.

But energy is a particle, and therefore has mass....

Another beanbag for brains chimes in.

"However, if light is trapped in a box with perfect mirrors so the photons are continually reflected back and forth in the box, then the total momentum is zero in the box's frame of reference but the energy is not. Therefore the light adds a small contribution to the mass of the box. This could be measured - in principle at least - either by an increase in inertia when the box is slowly accelerated or by an increase in its gravitational pull." -Philip Gibbs, Univeristy of California, Riverside Math Dept.

 

[kogase]

Originally posted by: JLGatsby

Originally posted by: kogase
It's all a matter of degree; where you draw the line. There are clear differences in awareness between, say, a mouse, a dog, an ape, a dolphin, and a human. But each one is certainly to some extent "aware". The ability to be aware or sentient is not unique to humans, we simply possess the ability to deal in rational thought arbitrarily on a much higher level than an insect. But it is still the same biological construct in the end: the brain.

No, I don't mean a "reactive" conscious. I mean a "here and now" conscious. This is a hard to concept to grasp, but leaves something to be said.

We react with our brain, but I still live each day feeling as though I am sitting inside this body.

Why am I me, and why are you, you? Like from a "view point" perspective. This is what leads me to believe there is some higher sense of conscious living inside us.

Are you asking why there are individuals rather than a population of identically minded and experienced humans?

 

[JLGatsby]

Originally posted by: kogase
Are you asking why there are individuals rather than a population of identically minded and experienced humans?

No, I'm asking why are we not as robots? Robots are identical to us in terms of the overall "concept." But they use circuits and chips instead of brain chemicals and electric pulses.

With this, a robot could be said to have a conscious state in the same way we do, as saying, there is "someone inside of there."

As far as "identically minded," no living being is identically minded as another, that's all in our brain chemistry. Our habits, feelings, and reactions are all in our brain, that's physical.

But step back, I am me. I live life with my brain, but doesn't it feel like there is some sort of "viewer" sitting inside the body? Some level of consciousness?

Our brain cannot be that "conscious viewer." Here's why. Read my "have you ever been drunk/had memory loss" statement from above:

Ever lost gotten really drunk or bumped your head or in some way lost your memory? It feels like those minutes/hours you had memory lost never happened, although you lived them out (you just don't remember them).

Now if you became unconscious after you died (as you were before you were born), wouldn't life on a "here and now" conscious sense not exist? Wouldn't life just zoom through and end without you even knowing it? If that's the case, it should.

So if our brain were the "ultimate/end consciousness," that means that level of conscious would one day cease to exist (our brain would physically die), meaning our life would end the same second it began, because there is no "continuous/immortal consciousness" to preserve it.

In my opinion, we need an "immortal continuousness" to live our each day "here and now." Otherwise we'd just be robots and life would have already ended for every living being that ever existed the same second as it began.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: newParadigm

Originally posted by: thehstrybean

Originally posted by: Vic
Energy doesn't have mass.

But energy is a particle, and therefore has mass....

Not if you subscribe to string theory. AAMOF, even if you don;t. photons and gluons are masssless particles. Weak gauge bosons (the messenger particle of the Weak Nuclear force, have an extremly miniscule mass, something like .01 AMU's)

1. String theory has no experimental backing.
2. Photons and gluons have 0 REST mass, but photons do have momentum, and gluons probably do as well.
3. Weak gauge bosons are some of the most massive particles there are. The W is about 80 GeV and the Z is just over 90 IIRC. These single particles are as massive as entire atoms around Bromine/Rubidium I think.

 

[thehstrybean]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: newParadigm

Originally posted by: thehstrybean

Originally posted by: Vic
Energy doesn't have mass.

But energy is a particle, and therefore has mass....

Not if you subscribe to string theory. AAMOF, even if you don;t. photons and gluons are masssless particles. Weak gauge bosons (the messenger particle of the Weak Nuclear force, have an extremly miniscule mass, something like .01 AMU's)

1. String theory has no experimental backing.
2. Photons and gluons have 0 REST mass, but photons do have momentum, and gluons probably do as well.
3. Weak gauge bosons are some of the most massive particles there are. The W is about 80 GeV and the Z is just over 90 IIRC. These single particles are as massive as entire atoms around Bromine/Rubidium I think.

QFT. I'm finishing up "The Elegant Universe", and constantly being reminded that String Theory may very well never be proven, and therefore reduced to philosophy...

 

[JohnCU]

Wow, a lot of messed up physics going on in here.

 

[JLGatsby]

Originally posted by: JohnCU
Wow, a lot of messed up physics going on in here.

In Soviet Russia, physics messes up you!

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: thehstrybean

QFT. I'm finishing up "The Elegant Universe", and constantly being reminded that String Theory may very well never be proven, and therefore reduced to philosophy...

I read that book within the first few months of it coming out, and have seen the nova special too. It's great, and good fun, and provides a lot of food for thought and a very attractive future for physics, but all physicists realize what it is right now.... just equations on paper and nothing more. There are a lot of theorists who do string theory in order to provide a hint for what to look for in the future, and to extract what information and predictions you can get out of it, and experimentalists are designing experiments to test it, and that is all good, but there are a lot in the general public who quote it as the end all be all of physics as though it were hard truth. It may well be in the future, but no one can say that for sure right now, so we just go with what we know.

 

[BrokenVisage]

Originally posted by: JLGatsby

Originally posted by: trmiv
I would like to think that it's true, that we do have souls that go on after we die. But I just don't believe it. This is it, when we die, we're gone, that's it. All this afterlife stuff is just something humans thought up because we fear death and we want to justify our existence. I'm very scared of death, but just convince myself there's something else after it.

Here's something to think about.

Ever lost gotten really drunk or bumped your head or in some way lost your memory? It feels like those minutes/hours you had memory lost never happened, although you lived them out (you just don't remember them).

Now if you became unconscious after you died (as you were before you were born), wouldn't life on a "here and now" conscious sense not exist? Wouldn't life just zoom through and end without you even knowing it? If that's the case, it should.

But it doesn't. We consciously live out each day. This is what I cannot understand.

I don't believe in anything outside of science, but this one thing that has stumped me.

Because of this, there must be something that lives on after the body dies. Because of that, I look at us as "beings" inhabiting living organisms (bodies), not simply bones and flesh. I don't believe flesh and bone can live in the highly conscious state we live in.

Also on that note, I don't believe everyone is completely conscious. Some people perhaps do not have "conscious drivers" but are merely living organisms reacting to their environment. (About this one I could be wrong). I just wonder why some people are so "out of it." It seems (at least to me) like some people have no "consciousness."

Well put, I think along those lines as well.

 

[kogase]

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage

Originally posted by: JLGatsby

Originally posted by: trmiv
I would like to think that it's true, that we do have souls that go on after we die. But I just don't believe it. This is it, when we die, we're gone, that's it. All this afterlife stuff is just something humans thought up because we fear death and we want to justify our existence. I'm very scared of death, but just convince myself there's something else after it.

Here's something to think about.

Ever lost gotten really drunk or bumped your head or in some way lost your memory? It feels like those minutes/hours you had memory lost never happened, although you lived them out (you just don't remember them).

Now if you became unconscious after you died (as you were before you were born), wouldn't life on a "here and now" conscious sense not exist? Wouldn't life just zoom through and end without you even knowing it? If that's the case, it should.

But it doesn't. We consciously live out each day. This is what I cannot understand.

I don't believe in anything outside of science, but this one thing that has stumped me.

Because of this, there must be something that lives on after the body dies. Because of that, I look at us as "beings" inhabiting living organisms (bodies), not simply bones and flesh. I don't believe flesh and bone can live in the highly conscious state we live in.

Also on that note, I don't believe everyone is completely conscious. Some people perhaps do not have "conscious drivers" but are merely living organisms reacting to their environment. (About this one I could be wrong). I just wonder why some people are so "out of it." It seems (at least to me) like some people have no "consciousness."

Well put, I think along those lines as well.

Eh, I looked over this post. Okay, I see where you're coming from Gatsby. I agree that it's hard, perhaps impossible, to imagine simply disappearing when you die. Still, I don't take my lack of understanding of the matter as a license to jump to completely wild and unfounded conclusions like an everlasting soul, an afterlife, a supreme being, etc.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: Anubis
how much does that air in your head add to your weight?

fixed

 

[Proletariat]

Originally posted by: JLGatsby

Originally posted by: trmiv
I would like to think that it's true, that we do have souls that go on after we die. But I just don't believe it. This is it, when we die, we're gone, that's it. All this afterlife stuff is just something humans thought up because we fear death and we want to justify our existence. I'm very scared of death, but just convince myself there's something else after it.

Here's something to think about.

Ever lost gotten really drunk or bumped your head or in some way lost your memory? It feels like those minutes/hours you had memory lost never happened, although you lived them out (you just don't remember them).

Now if you became unconscious after you died (as you were before you were born), wouldn't life on a "here and now" conscious sense not exist? Wouldn't life just zoom through and end without you even knowing it? If that's the case, it should.

But it doesn't. We consciously live out each day. This is what I cannot understand.

I don't believe in anything outside of science, but this one thing that has stumped me.

Because of this, there must be something that lives on after the body dies. Because of that, I look at us as "beings" inhabiting living organisms (bodies), not simply bones and flesh. I don't believe flesh and bone can live in the highly conscious state we live in.

Also on that note, I don't believe everyone is completely conscious. Some people perhaps do not have "conscious drivers" but are merely living organisms reacting to their environment. (About this one I could be wrong). I just wonder why some people are so "out of it." It seems (at least to me) like some people have no "consciousness."

Thats pretty interesting...

It makes me think that sometimes being human is a curse.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Originally posted by: thehstrybean

Originally posted by: Vic
Energy doesn't have mass.

But energy is a particle, and therefore has mass....

:disgust:
You send them to school, and they eat the books