Life is the frantic scrabbling of the futile struggle against death
in a cold, uncaring universe.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:21, archived)

ahem
www.b3ta.com/talk/6212655 Also, I couldn't care less. I'm going to see Motherfuckin' Take That
( Blue Star was working part time at the 5 and Dime, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:22, archived)

Is it raining in Holland today?

( Neptune A dole queue dosser and foul mouthed chav., Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:23, archived)

The torment of existence versus the horror of non-being.

( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:23, archived)

neither of those are really all that bad.
I don't know why people make such a fuss about it.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:37, archived)

You are an emotionless husk of a human being?

( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:40, archived)

people make a fuss about it because I'm emotionless?
now that doesn't make any sense.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:41, archived)

You don't know why because you're emotionless.
:)
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:42, archived)

well, maybe.
but honestly. nobody complains about not having been born infinite time ago, why is it only the non-existence in the future that troubles them?
And nobody wants to be infinitely tall, why don't people care about being finite in space?
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:44, archived)

I'm troubled that I may not exist in several other parallel universes!
Nah, but people are scared of the future. They can't remember what happened before thye existed, but there is the chance of creating new memories in the future. Everything is hurtling forwards and then BAM! KAPOW. ZING. KAPOOIE. WOWSA. FRAX. BRONG! POW. Gone.
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:47, archived)

But they're not gone, they're still there in the past.
Death doesn't annihilate a person, it completes them. We all have our time and space in eternity. It's only the ego that causes strife.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:49, archived)

What does "gone" mean, if not "somewhere(/thing) other than where(what) they were in the past"?

( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:51, archived)

You should know better than to get involved in this one.

( Neptune A dole queue dosser and foul mouthed chav., Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:53, archived)

they remain in exactly the same place in space and time as ever they did, do and will.
you are thinking of existence as transient and only applies to the present.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:54, archived)

But you can't go back to that space and time.
Maybe in terms of quantum theory. But not in the majority of people's understanding of the way the world works.
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:56, archived)

you ARE that space and time.
there's no going about it.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:57, archived)

I'm not thinking of anything,
you're misusing language (which is developed and used in transient experience) to score New Age waffle points.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:58, archived)

"existence" isn't transient as a concept.
it may appear so grammatically, insofar as it would be correct grammar to say that something "existed" as much as it would do say it "exists in the past" and "does not exist now or in the present". There's nothing New Age about any of this. Mathematicians use the term with no reference to time or chronology whatsoever.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:01, archived)

You're still waffling
human experience is transient. The fact that money existed in your bank account and will always have existed in your bank account at a certain time (which is only saying it existed) won't stop you being evicted for non-payment because at the time of demanding the money was gone.

You're at best replying to a conversational use of "gone" with a totally different definition. It doesn't show you're right, just that you've misunderstood the meaning of what was being said.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:09, archived)

I can't help but think that you've misunderstood the meaning of what I've said,
either that or you're for some reason motivated to prove that the universe is a fundamentally depressing place.

Human experience is transient, that is correct. But "experience" as such is only a point of view. See things differently, intellectually, and things don't look so bad.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:18, archived)

If you find it depressing, that's up to you
I'm taking issue with saying something that's gone is not gone because it's still where it was in the past at that point in time.

Whereas it's gone, by the definition of "gone", so if that gone-ness is upsetting or disquieting to someone, you don't change anything about its gone-ness or their affect, you just dangle shiny sophistry to distract them. Which may have been your aim, but I suspect not.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:26, archived)

I think the problem may be with the word "gone" itself.
I suppose what I'm saying is that nothing is really ever literally gone at all. Or that "gone" doesn't strictly mean "non existent".
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:33, archived)

That's not the way the human psyche works though.
Think of something in the past. It's behind you. Think of something you'll do tomorrow... Next year. You visualise it in front of you, further and further. It's the way the mind deals with the concept of time, no matter how rationally you think of it, it puts it into a spatial perspective. No-one ever thinks of time as a non-linear thing. So once you're gone, you're gone.
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:52, archived)

You're thinking of time as a two way thing.
Like once you past a postbox on the road, you can always go back if you forgot to post your letter.

In terms of time, you pass the postbox by a footstep and it's gone. Completely. You can never go back and post that letter in that postbox.
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:55, archived)

but the postbox is still there.

( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:56, archived)

What's the point of it being there if it's unaccessible?
The future is liquid, changeable, you can go where you want. Once it's the past it's fixed and you can never revisit. I'd be a lot more scared of not having those choices in the future than erasing all the choices I remember having made in the past.

Edit- I totally understand what you mean though. In terms of existing in different times and spaces and all that stuff. It's just the way people normally think when they go through their day to day business can't be like that or no-one would get anything done.
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:59, archived)

*shoots blaster at microphone*
this was a boring conversation anyway
( Derek Monte subthread killer: qu'est-ce que c'est, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:02, archived)

But is the blaster still shooting at the microphone?
Hahaha :P
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:04, archived)

maybe that's why I never get anything done.
but the apparent liquidity of the future is only an illusion produced by the fact that we only remember the past and have no knowledge of the future. If there's a reason for everything, then it was all defined from the beginning to the end.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:04, archived)

Now you're getting spiritual, and I'm afraid I don't subscribe to that.
:)
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:08, archived)

I never thought of "there's a reason for everything" as being particularly spiritual.
It's largely what drives scientific enquiry. It certainly drives mine.
I don't subscribe to the idea that things happen by chance. I'm not talking about some mystical force of "fate" here, just basic logical necessity. Any wave equation in maths or physics, for instance, has its entire time evolution determined and fixed uniquely from its initial conditions. Quantum mechanics comes in and makes a bit of a mess of that, but even still. I can't think of anything that's ever happened in my life that could logically have happened any differently. People sometimes ask the hypothetical "if you were young again, would you make different choices?" and the answer's no, because I'd still have the same knowledge the second time round as the first.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:13, archived)

oh the universe cares,
on the whole it gives people exactly what they ask for. It's just a case of learning to speak its language.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:39, archived)

What language is that, pray?

( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:44, archived)

esperanto

( Blue Star was working part time at the 5 and Dime, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:46, archived)

well I'll give you an example.
man puts his hand in bowl of boiling water.
"argh!" he exclaims, "my hand is burnt! The Universe mustn't care about me!"

It's the language of the Laws of Nature.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:46, archived)

That's not caring
in any meaningful sense of the word. That's blind impartiality.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:49, archived)

It cares about impartiality,
it doesn't pick favourites. It's been very carefully set up to allow us to achieve whatever we want, and what could be more caring than that?
Caring has to be impartial, if it is to be anything but arbitrary self-satisfaction, hence phrases such as "you've got to be cruel to be kind" and "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:54, archived)

Then if anything cares
it's whatever set the universe up, not the universe itself. That cares no more than a dialysis machine, it just does its job.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:00, archived)

good point,
I prefer to stick with the Universe these days because bringing God up too early puts people off. But still, isn't this just semantics? It's like saying I don't care, only the genes that led to the formation of my brain.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:06, archived)

the difference between your will and the molecules that form your genes
is more than a semantic one, isn't it? Certainly if you believe in a Prime Mover, will must be a fairly fundamentally different thing to chemistry.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:12, archived)

I don't subscribe to any form of dualism, if that's what you mean.
The brain is an entirely deterministic state machine. But it is still said that people have the capacity to "care".
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:15, archived)

And they do so by modifying their behaviour
to improve the welfare of other humans. Compare and contrast with "I don't care about X" - it doesn't affect your desires and you won't do anything differently as a result of X's existence. Like the universe. :)
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:21, archived)

There is nothing in the universe to which the Laws of Nature do not respond.
They care about every last grain of sand. And everything that happens is in some way connected to everything else that happens. The Universe fundamentally cannot ignore any fact, or person. It may appear uncaring when it isn't partial to your whims, but really, it's still doing exactly as you ask. Because you think you want one thing, but you ask for the opposite.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:24, archived)

But they don't modify their response.
And you don't ask in any voluntary way, or signalling way. You don't have a choice but to 'ask'.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:29, archived)

Your actions aren't voluntary?
And a brain doesn't modify its response, either. It merely has a very complex response that depends on past events. As do the laws of nature; which they'd have to, because a brain is entirely subject to those very same laws of nature.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:37, archived)

Yes, they are
but my actions and conscious asking has no effect upon the universe. I only ask to be scalded by hot water in the sense that someone asks for a smack in the mouth by being a twat. And since we're ignorant of (probably) much of the natural law of things, we can't ask in an informed way.

A human modifies its response dependent on past events. It is complex. There's no disagreement there.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:47, archived)

yeah I think the Universe as a whole is pretty complex too,
agreement there, I hope? The point is, brain cells don't change the way they work as such, they really change the "data" stored in them.

Your actions have every effect upon the universe, otherwise what's the point in doing anything? Your actions have consequences. We're not that ignorant of the effects of, for instance, boiling water, but it's in our own interests to find out more. Ignorance is not an excuse.

I think perhaps the trouble is that people tend to think of "caring" in a very personal way. I say the Universe cares. I don't mean so much that it cares whether you're happy or not. It'll kill you, if you ask it in the right way, and won't feel a jot of guilt. It's up to you not to ask for a smack in the mouth, if that's not what you want. Because that's not such a scathing analogy as you might think. The guy who gives you a smack in the mouth cares about you being a twat. What the universe cares about is complete impartiality, because that's the only thing that provides us with opportunities to achieve anything. It would actually be, in my opinion at least, a bit rubbish and pointless if we were all just fanned and fed grapes by angels all day.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:57, archived)