Free energy already exists, we've been kept in the dark for over a century.

[Rhekimos]

if I was a machine,  i would get a real hard on to experiment on my former creators.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58Ab2xw7hVE&list=PL57hJfweW_2vnl3jTZcIEOTwxcwvLXqkc&index=1

Kind of reminded me of this.

The great granddaddy of Shodan, Skynet and all the rest of the evil silicon gods, AM.

[Bjord]

The most reasonable and pragmatic explanation for the existence of God(s) or Deity(ies) is that they take the form of biological or otherwise naturally-occuring beings countless centuries more advanced in every way than our own species. The passage of such a long period of time allows for development of technology that can only be explained through miracles, magic, or other things commonly attributed to divine intervention or action.

This relies on an assumption that God or Gods need not be completely omnipotent or omniscient or timeless- only that they be extraordinarily, unfathomably more advanced than us.

We don't know anything about what's out there, it would be ridiculous and arrogant to "pragmatically" or "reasonably" guess what type of advanced beings there are out there and speculate about their use of technology.

Though I would not be surprised if there are beings out there who can alter matter with pure thought, or beings who are living in higher dimensions and surpass our knowledge of the Universe so greatly that it cannot be measured by our human minds.

Most of you will think I'm a nutter for even mentioning dimensions, but luckily those are the people I care about the least.

[Xant]

Oh, Bjord.

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

[Riddaren]

Many believe in infinite amount of universes.
If that is the case there are definately godlike creatures in other places.

Everything is relative though. They may be normal and look at us weirdly.

[Rhekimos]

Many believe in infinite amount of universes.
If that is the case there are definately godlike creatures in other places.

Everything is relative though. They may be normal and look at us weirdly.

Even those infinite other universes could follow a similar set of rules as that of our own, though. Maybe the basic forces of nature could have a slightly different balance in relation to each other. Out of those and out of the states of matter inside the universe, you could get infinitely many variations.

Also, if an omnipotent being was born in another universe, could it reach across and affect our universe?

[Vovka]

the best source of free energy is Africa all brown look alike, so it's a photo with the Brazilians will fine

(click to show/hide)

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

[Xant]

Many believe in infinite amount of universes.
If that is the case there are definately godlike creatures in other places.

Everything is relative though. They may be normal and look at us weirdly.

Everything is relative? What even is relative? You say relative so you must know what it is. Such a thing as relative is nowhere to be found (aside from your parents), so what does it even mean to say relative? You cannot meaningfully prove that everything is, as you say, "relative."

[Leesin]

This is Bjord http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4a7_1446501509

[Bjord]

From inside a womb you can pragmatically and reasonably deduce that life only lasts 9 months before you are sucked out into the abyss. This is based on the observations you as a spectator could make from within your own tiny womb universe. As a spectator you can only disprove this by leaving the womb.

From earth we reasonably make assumptions of the nature of gravity and make equations that work. We know that we're 100% correct because these equations work... on earth... on a small scale so we must know everything there is to know about gravity. We only question this when we begin to leave earth.

As we look beyond the earth and our equations operate on a larger scale between two celestial bodies suddenly our old gravity equation doesn't work, but that's fine cos we'll make a new equation that does work at that scale (but conversely doesn't work when applied small scale on earth). This suggests that all of a sudden we don't 100% understand gravity, we just know enough about how it acts on our planet to make an equation that works, on our planet.

The rate at which our universe expands is actually accelerating, this suggests a wholly incomplete understanding of the nature of the universe or matter on our part as something can only accelerate if a force is being applied to it. Possible explanations - a strong gravitational pull from *outside* our universe applying this acceleratory force, or, a negative repulsive gravity component that only functions over huge distances. But if we based our understanding solely on what we observe on our own tiny planet, these aren't concepts we'd ever come across.

The problem is, flawed conclusions in science can still provide functioning models that 'work'. For example, wood contains phlogiston therefore wood burns. I can see the wood burning, so our model is correct, it 'works'. Any substance that burns clearly contains phlogiston. But at the end of the day what is phlogiston, something we've invented to explain why things burn and nothing more. Then when things burn we prove ourselves right. Too much of science works on that basis even now, just cos we've invented concepts and constants that explain how the phenomenon's we experience on earth work (on earth), doesn't mean we have 100% of the story. Science is about hypothesis testing, only shear arrogance ever suggests that we understand everything.

Well said, spoke what was on my mind as well.

[Sir_Hans]

even if every other planet/galaxy did follow the same fundamental laws as our own, you can't really say that you could foresee what to expect there...

If you went back 500 years on earth and asked someone to describe what they think earth would be like in 500 years it would be no where close to what earth is actually like today.

If we discovered life on another planet even with the same fundamental laws, we still have zero idea what to expect... maybe the race of aliens we stumble upon has held mastery over electricity and computers for 20,000 years... whereas humans on earth have only known the very very basics about electricity for maybe 400 years, and have only had computers for about the past 50+ years...

[Rhekimos]

Cosmology

The universe isn't being pulled from the sides and accelerating because of that. Instead it's expanding at each and every point in space. Like a sponge taking in water.
If it was being pulled by huge gravitational forces at the edges, it would have been shredded to bits long before the galaxies closer to the center would have had a chance feel anything.

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

_{Distances increase as more spacetime fills in between galaxies - wiki}

Gravity between two celestial bodies isn't hard to get right, but as soon as you have three bodies all interacting with each other in a dynamic system, the math suddenly becomes really hard.

_{A simulation of 3 orbiting bodies.}

In principle, I agree about models being faulty and we not knowing everything. We have pretty good ideas though, and we're constantly testing and observing if one of them hits closer to the truth than the last idea.

[Vibe]

In principle, I agree about models being faulty and we not knowing everything. We have pretty good ideas though, and we're constantly testing and observing if one of them hits closer to the truth than the last idea.

Basically this. For sure we don't know a lot, but what we know can also be confirmed outside Earth (by observation) - there's a lot of binary star systems we can observe, for example. There is only a very very slight possibility that we got it all wrong. What we're doing is slight adjustments to how things work based on new findings. Though I agree there is still a lot to know about how gravity functions - namely the connection between quantum mechanics and gravity / general relativity. That's something we haven't quite tackled yet, and something Hawking writes about in his books.

[Moncho]

even if every other planet/galaxy did follow the same fundamental laws as our own, you can't really say that you could foresee what to expect there...

...
If we discovered life on another planet even with the same fundamental laws, we still have zero idea what to expect...

Exactly. If the laws there are different, there is no way that we can really predict anything, but if they follow the ones we expect, we can say something. So as long as nothing happens that shows that ours are not working for that system we use the theories that we have, and expect. In fact, in our current system, Noether's theorem states that for each conserved quantity (eg momentum, mass-energy) there exists corresponding invariance (in this case invariance wrt translations/rotations, or time), so this should happen. And if the rules over there are that far apart, well we don't really care since having different laws means we can't say much about what is happening.

The problem with foreseeing how life would develop comes from the complexity of the beings in question. We don't understand why Earth developed why it did (as a whole, we have some underlying causes, but we can't say why exactly each trait was favoured at each point), so under slightly different circumstances wildly different results will occur (like in the 3 body problem), on the other hand for huge systems like galaxies each individual perturbation is so small compared to the whole that we expect the entire thing to still follow some pattern, a bit like with matter around us as opposed to the probabilistic world of atoms.

[Molly]

visitors can't see pics , please register or login


On the topic of God...

(click to show/hide)

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

[Xant]

Well said, spoke what was on my mind as well.

are you serious