Random Thoughts

[Silver]

Tasted Nutella for the first time this morning.

It's good, but far too sweet to eat in abundance. As sweet as it is, no wonder kids like it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Drich is even more incoherent than I remember him being.  Smells like panic before the election.

The cousins are using food money to buy ammo, "for when the libruls fake the election."

[onlinebiker]

Drich is even more incoherent than I remember him being.  Smells like panic before the election.

The cousins are using food money to buy ammo, "for when the libruls fake the election."

They really are morons - buying when the price of ammo is greatly inflated.

Only thing I have been buying is reloading components - which oddly have not been affected in price.

[Sal]

Just a bit of empty speculation, but whatever.

What do you think Balance is? The way I see it envisioned by others, it's usually described as two (or more) forces in an equilibrium of some kind (static or dynamic). Usually this is explained as opposing forces, counteracting each other(s) to reach equilibrium. Why? This is equilibrium, yes, but that's far removed from Balance, rather, it's conflict that just happened to reach that state of equilibrium.

My perspective is different. I think Balance is better understood in the lense of a system of functions. So instead of merely thinking of it as "competing" forces, think of Balance functionally, where each interaction between those functions work in unison, to create a greater whole that I call Balance.

For example, the way our ears maintains our ability to stand upright can be thought of as a balance - it's easy to see why, when compared to disruption of that inner ear mechanisms.

There are many ways in this that can be explored dialectically; chaos/order, supply/demand, Left/Right, etc.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The cousins are using food money to buy ammo, "for when the libruls fake the election."

They really are morons - buying when the price of ammo is greatly inflated.

Only thing I have been buying is reloading components - which oddly have not been affected in price.

Some of them reload, but they have the following issues.

1. Policing up the brass. "Damn libruls won't tell me what to do."
2. Buying powder. "Gotta drive a hundred miles to somewheres they don't know me to buy powder these days. Damn libruls!"
3. It's kinda like work. "Damn libruls won't tell me what to do."

[onlinebiker]

They really are morons - buying when the price of ammo is greatly inflated.

Only thing I have been buying is reloading components - which oddly have not been affected in price.

Some of them reload, but they have the following issues.

1. Policing up the brass. "Damn libruls won't tell me what to do."
2. Buying powder. "Gotta drive a hundred miles to somewheres they don't know me to buy powder these days. Damn libruls!"
3. It's kinda like work. "Damn libruls won't tell me what to do."

1. That's what a catch bag is for. And it's why they created revolvers.

2. The guy who owns the biggest reloading supply store in these parts is a neighbor. I can get powder delivered.

3. It IS work. But the results are worth the job.

[Sal]

Time travel is impossible.

The usual sci-fi motif of traveling to the past and alter events so that the time traveller isn't even born is often used as a plot device, it even has the name the Grandfather Paradox. Although that isn't why time traveling is a paradox, but a time loop between 2 states, in essence a superposition, as Minutephysics has explained in a short YouTube vid explaining why.

I think time travel isn't possible for a different reason: The Law of Conservation of Energy. This natural law seems consistent throughout nature, so with it I can assume that the combined energy and mass of the Universe is a constant - that's one of the implications of this natural law - which we even have a good general idea what that value is for the Universe; it's always the same, AFAIK. Most physicists think this value is 0, which means the mass and energy in the Universe squares out, or so it seems. We also see this in quantum foam, where particle and antiparticle are created and almost immediately annihilated from vacuum energy or some such thing.

What do you think would happen with this constant value if we, hypothetically speaking, were able to build a device that could traverse time like we travel on roads?

If this device travelled through time t0 (present) to time t1 (past/future), then the device would disappear from the Universe at t0, removing some mass and energy, and appear in the same Universe (I suppose) at t1, adding that additional mass and energy of the device. You can probably already see where I'm going with this. At both t0 and t1, there's a discrepancy of the constant energy of the Universe as per Law of Conservation of Energy, at t0 it's less than zero, while at the same time it's greater than zero at t1, for the same Universe. This is a paradox just as much as 2kg can't simultaneously be 3kg for any mass at rest.

---

To add, I think the normal way we view time itself has an inherent intuitive assumption about the supposed property of time as extant of the Universe, of how there's a past, present and future. We obviously remember the past, but that's because our brains construct them in the present, not because we supposedly have some connection to the past through our memories, IOW memories can be thought analogically as recordings. We see this problem better when we ask nonsensical questions about "what happened before the Big Bang?" when time itself, supposedly, came into existence then. I'm of the position that time doesn't exist, not in the way we usually think of time anyways. I think of time as an emergent property of the Universe, not as an ontological existence.

[ignoramus]

Sal, is it possible that time travel together with the multiverse theory will not break the law of conservation of energy?

One may ask: but that won't make a difference, even if you "poof" someone into a different universe, it still spontaneously "creates" this matter from nothing, right?
So far, so good, but what if the sum of all limitless universes is all that matters, then these scenarios may possibly all balance out in some way?

As a distraction, does, could, time travel exist without consciousness?

[Sal]

The multiverse would still have the same problem, unless the rules somehow change when time travelling, which I suspect they don't.

The only way to resolve, from what you suggest, wouldn't be traveling through time exactly, but use a device that created a time displacement (which is the sci-fi technology used in the Terminator franchise for instance). Time travel in this sort of way, could conceivably be possible, since it's no different than displacing 4d water in a 4d container. The balance would be, in essence, "take" something from time t1 and "replace" it at t0 and at the same instant going from t0 to t1 as a result of this time displacement. This way the Law of Conservation of Energy is not, conceivably, broken because it is still a constant value. Also, this switcharoo, doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing - but you would need some form of "anchor" for this to be possible, seeing as everything the Universe moves around a lot, planets, stars, galaxies, etc.

As for time travel without consciousness, sure, why not. People think that wormholes have this property. I'm not so sure.

[Rhizomorph13]

Time travel is impossible.

The usual sci-fi motif of traveling to the past and alter events so that the time traveller isn't even born is often used as a plot device, it even has the name the Grandfather Paradox. Although that isn't why time traveling is a paradox, but a time loop between 2 states, in essence a superposition, as Minutephysics has explained in a short YouTube vid explaining why.

I think time travel isn't possible for a different reason: The Law of Conservation of Energy. This natural law seems consistent throughout nature, so with it I can assume that the combined energy and mass of the Universe is a constant - that's one of the implications of this natural law - which we even have a good general idea what that value is for the Universe; it's always the same, AFAIK. Most physicists think this value is 0, which means the mass and energy in the Universe squares out, or so it seems. We also see this in quantum foam, where particle and antiparticle are created and almost immediately annihilated from vacuum energy or some such thing.

What do you think would happen with this constant value if we, hypothetically speaking, were able to build a device that could traverse time like we travel on roads?

If this device travelled through time t0 (present) to time t1 (past/future), then the device would disappear from the Universe at t0, removing some mass and energy, and appear in the same Universe (I suppose) at t1, adding that additional mass and energy of the device. You can probably already see where I'm going with this. At both t0 and t1, there's a discrepancy of the constant energy of the Universe as per Law of Conservation of Energy, at t0 it's less than zero, while at the same time it's greater than zero at t1, for the same Universe. This is a paradox just as much as 2kg can't simultaneously be 3kg for any mass at rest.

---

To add, I think the normal way we view time itself has an inherent intuitive assumption about the supposed property of time as extant of the Universe, of how there's a past, present and future. We obviously remember the past, but that's because our brains construct them in the present, not because we supposedly have some connection to the past through our memories, IOW memories can be thought analogically as recordings. We see this problem better when we ask nonsensical questions about "what happened before the Big Bang?" when time itself, supposedly, came into existence then. I'm of the position that time doesn't exist, not in the way we usually think of time anyways. I think of time as an emergent property of the Universe, not as an ontological existence.

In the documentary film, "The Langoliers" Written by notable physicist Steven King, it is demonstrated that the past is eaten by large bags with teeth and before the past is eaten it wears down in quality as time leaves it behind.