Sarcasm Wrote:I dont agree and honestly i'm a bit confused, could you explain it more in depth? maybe then i'd understand more. I mean i kinda get that everything could be nothing, but i dont think it applies to every situation, its kinda...a conditional thing.

Everything can only be nothing if the sum total of all is nothing. In other words: it can never be correct while anything more than nothing exists.

Quote:I can kinda see how it could make sense if your looking at everything as a whole (as the term itself representing 1 thing) and nothing as a whole instead of everything in the sense of alot of things together and nothing being literally nothing.

That's all I mean

(April 11, 2011 at 10:57 pm)Aerzia Saerules Arktuos Wrote:

Sarcasm Wrote:I dont agree and honestly i'm a bit confused, could you explain it more in depth? maybe then i'd understand more. I mean i kinda get that everything could be nothing, but i dont think it applies to every situation, its kinda...a conditional thing.

Everything can only be nothing if the sum total of all is nothing. In other words: it can never be correct while anything more than nothing exists.

Quote:I can kinda see how it could make sense if your looking at everything as a whole (as the term itself representing 1 thing) and nothing as a whole instead of everything in the sense of alot of things together and nothing being literally nothing.

That's all I mean

Lol alrite, i gotcha then ^^

(April 11, 2011 at 6:30 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Reducing a problem to mathematics pulls it out of nature and proves nothing ultimately useful to reality. Or a purist might say that it's poorly realised mathematics...

Nothing useful?
The very fact that you're able to post on this forum is a direct result of problems such as the transport of conduction states in metals, semiconductor band-gaps and the construction of a coherent and consistent logical system based on just 2 distinct units of information being "reduced to mathematics".

Mathematics is often the best framework within which to approach a problem, since mathematics is the language in which it is impossible to express an imprecise thought.

Sae Wrote:Yes, and it was from the start. However, I apparently suffer from being unable to eloquently state my position.
This would be funny (of me) if it wasn't sad

Taking 5 pages to demonstrate a tautology could be considered impressive
Have you been taking lessons from Ray Comfort?

Lilphil Wrote:Taking 5 pages to demonstrate a tautology could be considered impressive
Have you been taking lessons from Ray Comfort?

Hush -_-

At least it seems we are all in an agreement with me now that my argument is clearly stated ^_^

Okay, fine..you want a SERIOUS answer from me. Then the answer is "NO, nothing is not everything"

I will go so far as to say nothing is 99% or so of the universe. You can look up in the night sky and see that much, even without knowing relativity or basic Quantum Mechanics.

But that 1% or so of "SOMETHING" makes a big difference.

If the Topic was titled "Damn near eveything is nothing", then I would agree.

---

Grammatically, the word "nothing" is an indefinite pronoun, which means that it refers to something. One might argue that "nothing" is a concept, and since concepts are things, the concept of "nothing" itself is a thing. This logical fallacy is neatly demonstrated by the joke syllogism that contains a fallacy of four terms:

1.Nothing is beyond the Universe.
2.Average Joe is beyond nothing .
3.Therefore Average Joe is beyond the Universe.
The four terms in this example are

Average Joe,
The Universe,
Nothing-as-a-thing, which a Average Joe is beyond than, and
Nothing-as-an-absence-of-a-thing: 'no-thing' or 'not-some-thing', i.e., no entity exists that is beyond The Universe.
The error in the conclusion stems from equating nothing-as-a-thing with nothing-as-absence-of-a-thing, which is invalid logic.

(April 12, 2011 at 6:43 am)reverendjeremiah Wrote: Okay, fine..you want a SERIOUS answer from me. Then the answer is "NO, nothing is not everything"

I thought we just determined that no-one said it was... :S

The second half of your post is exactly what I was saying about the content of a set not being equal to the set itself.
Nothing-as-a-thing is the empty set.
Nothing-as-an-absense-of-a-thing is the content of the empty set.
And you're right that it's a logical fallacy to equate them.

And please note that my initial statement of 'nothing is everything' was entirely a play on words and me being a complete nutcase as usual

(April 12, 2011 at 6:43 am)reverendjeremiah Wrote: Okay, fine..you want a SERIOUS answer from me. Then the answer is "NO, nothing is not everything" ...snip

Wait, so, eliminating double negatives, what you really said was, "nothing is everything." So you agree with Sae.

(April 12, 2011 at 10:09 pm)Rhizomorph13 Wrote: Wait, so, eliminating double negatives, what you really said was, "nothing is everything." So you agree with Sae.