h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"It's impossible to go somewhere where the laws of physics do not apply, because we need the laws of physics a) for us to go there and stay there, and b) for it to exist. Granted, not necessarily *our* laws of physics..."

a) why?--it could ahve different laws that would tear us into raw energy, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't go there. We just wouldn't be "we" there.

b) it could have different laws and still exist

What

Implying that no work is possible at absolute zero and below.

Is that my mistake or have I misinterpreted your meaning

"Just because our laws don't work in a black hole, doesn't mean there aren't no rules governing it.
There can't be a way of going where the point of that place is that the way of getting there doesn't apply."

I didn't say thyere are no rules governing it, but they may be completely different rules.

It may be that both places agree enough to allow things to get through, but don't agree perfectly. Maybe things inside a black whole can only go faster than light. At the juming point, an object is just at the speed of light and not quite in either set of rules.

Maybe I'm crazy, though.

Mal. Maybe you have the beginning of an idea there. Maybe we would need the laws of physics *not* to go there or for it *not* to exist. As you say, maybe not our laws of physics; which seems to leave just about any possibility open. Recall also that we are talking about logical rather than physical possibilities. This is becoming very abstruse but hey - why not.

toxx

Maybe
Well, I'm off to bed now. Didn't get any homework done thanks to you infidels. I hope someone mentions me before I come back tomorrow, or I won't have a pretext to drop back in again. Yes, you can tell I'm English!

<>

Maybe I'm crazy, though.

If that's crazy Agnostic Primist count me in, i like that crazy.

Oops. That message should have been addressed to AP.

toxx

Dammit. Cancel my last message. Just saw AP quoting Mal and got it wrong!

toxx

<> Is not that also expressed as every wear at the same time.

Or dare is say Omnipresent

as in.

All original thinkers and investigators of the hidden side of nature whether materialists -- those who find in matter "the promise and potency of all terrestrial life," or spiritualists -- that is, those who discover in spirit the source of all energy and of matter as well, were and are, properly Theosophists. For to be one, one need not necessarily recognize the existence of any special God or a deity. One need but worship the spirit of living nature and try to identify oneself with it. To revere that Presence, the invisible Cause, which is yet ever manifesting itself in its incessant results; the intangible, omnipotent, and omnipresent Proteus: indivisible in its Essence, and eluding form, yet appearing under all and every form; who is here and there and everywhere and nowhere; is ALL, and NOTHING: ubiquitous yet one; the Essence filling, binding, bounding, containing everything, contained in all. It will, we think, be seen now, that whether classed as Theist, Pantheists or Atheists, such men are all near kinsmen to the rest. Be what he may, once that a student abandons the old trodden highway of routine, and enters upon the solitary path of independent thought -- God ward -- he is a Theosophist, an original thinker, a seeker after the eternal truth, with "an inspiration of his own" to solve the universal problems.

Don't that sound a bit like this tread..?or have the 12 hour days finally caught up with my poor old brain
Good night

...and all that sort of math/physics stuff makes my head spin. Give me a good heretic to burn any day.

If there is any deity that professes to have created us then in the past several centuries it has abandon us either through death or boardem. As it no longer sees fit to guide us as its creations we should no longer worship it.
Conversly if through our belief in a higher being we have brought it into existence it should honour us for the life that it now posesses.

little late with the coffee this morning - three pages of backlog to read first!

az

Shame on you. I'll have a . Busy thread last night.

Sorry, but you've gone and done it again. 373!? I give up.

If there are any important posts directed at me in there can the authors please drop links to me? I just don't have the time to wade through 17 pages of backlog before breakfast.

Thanks for the coffee Az, I needed that.

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

All these posts and only one minor prod at me from Della I must be slipping.

Della I would never give you a hard time for being a christian, as you clearly arent one. Not any more than I am a lampstand or an AliG wannabe. Just because you call your self a christian makes no difference, in the same way that the romans incoporated many other religious customs and practices into "christianity" you too have accepted a pagan idea namely earthly reincarnation.

This is my big problem with theists of all hues it is that they follow a path that they choose yet claim that is infact divinely ordained. they pick and mix a moral code that suits them and try to say that (even taking into account the lattitude and tolerance that they show to the faiths of others) this is the right one. I have a lot of time for the pagans on this thread but their placing of so much faith on their feelings about their gods and their choice of paganism puts them in the same self certifying theological cul-de-sac as other faiths.

It's impossible to go somewhere where the laws of physics do not apply, because we need the laws of physics a) for us to go there and stay there, and b) for it to exist. Granted, not necessarily *our* laws of physics..."

Somebodies probably already answered this, but my answer would be that once you are 'there' your physicality makes the law of physics apply in terms of a nothing being the outside of the Universe.
once you are in the nothing it becomes 'something' and it no longer can be termed as nothing.
If you are talking about another Universe however then it would be different

Sorry about that, Math. It was the 160 posts in twelve hours on Sunday that bumped the total up. I could hardly keep up even being online most of that time.

Okay, so is it logically possible to leave the universe, and how synonymous are the terms "everywhere you can get to from here (because of temporal considerations that should probably be expanded to include everywhere you can get to here from)", and "everywhere the laws of physics apply"?

Problem: To what extent do considerations about the nature of physical laws (metaphysical considerations as opposed to the specific content of said laws) count as logical or physical?

I suspect that I'm considering the nature of physical laws as primarily logical, and that toxx is considering them as primarily physical, and this may be the source of our disagreement.

Noggin

Don't you worry about that stuff Montana, I'll soccer 'em
Watch This....(deliberately showing off)

Right Punters...
Are we talking classical Newtonian OR
post Heisenberg OR
contemporary chaos/multiple strand

That'll keep 'em busy M.
regards Oetz

Noggin.

You suspect correctly. There are metaphysical considerations of course, but even so we obtain our knowledge of the laws empirically. From a logical point of view, they are relative to definitions, like most other similar items. Yet laws of nature, however defined, don't constrain what is logically possible. After all, logically they could be otherwise!

toxx