the concept of nothingness/zero

[sushi]

the concept and definition of nothing is very hard to grasp.

but i had some kind of revelation.
Nothing= nonexistence or lack of existence.
when we say something that does not exist, it becomes nothing.


if it exist or can be percieved/touched, it must be something.

so in theory, true nothingness is beyond human perception. Everything we percieve is something.
anyone have an alternative answer, or wish to debate against this definition.

 

[Cognisant]

Black and white, on and off, each is defined by the other.

Existence is the absence of nothing.

If this universe exists then every possible universe must exist, that is every universe where the terms of its existence don't preclude its existence, we can describe paradoxical universes by abusing language to describe fallacies that are not immediately obvious. A universe with an all knowing all powerful god for instance seems possible until you ask whether the omniscient being knows the limits of its knowledge or whether being omnipotent it can create something that it itself cannot create, the fallacy was describing the entity in absolute terms.

 

[Black Rose]

my shoe exists. but on my computer, I can erase a 3D model of a shoe. why not in real life? and why not create a shoe from nothing just as in the computer?

 

[Cognisant]

It's not nothing the shoe on the computer exists as a pattern of binary states encoded on your computer's hard drive.

You could, in theory, create a shoe out of air molecules although it would require technology of a degree of sophistication we do not yet possess and a tremendous amount of energy, unless that technology is extremely efficient.

 

[Black Rose]

Why does the shoe on my foot not stop existing right now cog? What prevents it from disappearing? People living inside computers do not know an outside computer exists. To them, their shoe being deleted into nothingness is just as mysterious disappearing as our shoes disappearing would be. Spooky.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Who are these poor bastards who live inside computers?

 

[Black Rose]

Who are these poor bastards who live inside computers?

There is no spoon shoe.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Mr Anderson!

 

[Black Rose]

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

I think Merovingian explained the meaning of the movies in the second movie, the scene where he basically says that Morpheus and co will never escape the "matrix" of cause and effect, and that they don't choose to do what they do. The Matrix is a metaphor for the world in general.

 

[Black Rose]

Smith represents raw destructive power.
Neo represents selflessness surrender.

Neo exerted no effort with his powers.
Smith asserted dominance over his opponents.

By completely surrendering Neo defeated Smith.
The Christ myth (myth?)
Complete receptiveness to death, like stopping bullets, turn the darkness into light.

 

[Cognisant]

Why does the shoe on my foot not stop existing right now cog? What prevents it from disappearing? People living inside computers do not know an outside computer exists. To them, their shoe being deleted into nothingness is just as mysterious disappearing as our shoes disappearing would be. Spooky.

Because that requires energy which has to come from somewhere, when the computer isn't on the simulation isn't running, time for the people in the simulation has effectively stopped (of course they have no way of knowing that) only when the computer is on can changes be made, the shoe data being overwritten with blank data.

The shoe on your foot could disappear right now but someone somewhere had to pay the energy cost for disappearing it.

 

[Black Rose]

the shoe data being overwritten with blank data.

The shoe on your foot could disappear right now but someone somewhere had to pay the energy cost for disappearing it.

Both these quotes imply our world may operate with such things as logic gates at Planck scale. Physics has rules but we are not sure how they work. logic gates of some kind, cellular automata perhaps? nothingness is just black data in the automata.

 

[Cognisant]

If we can figure out how reality works we can simulate it, if we can simulate it we could already be living in a simulation, a simulation which itself might be a simulation.

It could be simulations all the way down.

 

[sushi]

Nothing in physics/physical defintion:

devoid of matter/solid or lack of matter/gravity (which is apprent in outer space)

absense of everything

or non-existence of something

existence/tangiblity is the opposite of nothing

problem is absence of everything is still something.

 

[Grayman]

Why does the shoe on my foot not stop existing right now cog? What prevents it from disappearing? People living inside computers do not know an outside computer exists. To them, their shoe being deleted into nothingness is just as mysterious disappearing as our shoes disappearing would be. Spooky.

My shoes disappear all the time!

 

[Polaris]

The concept of nothing is paradoxical. It's just another human concept that serves to explain something we haven't understood yet because, as you implied, the concept is difficult to understand because it is actually nonsensical. Nothing is nothing....is something.

Nothing does not exist, other than in the human perception.

.....the implications of that are interesting, to say the least...

 

[Black Rose]

My shoes disappear all the time!

They have been taken by The Nothing.

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

Nothing= nonexistence or lack of existence.

There's nothing much more to the concept of nothing in itself. It is used to signify lack of existence of something or everything depending on context. There's nothing really deep to think about it.
Nothing can be a bit tricky in the linguistic sense. Usually a noun is used to refer to some object or at least something even if it's abstract. Nothing signifies 'lack of something'. So linguistically it may appear as if nothing is being treated as something while it being supposedly a lack of something...but that's the problem of grammar and language...there's nothing deep about it.

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

my shoe exists. but on my computer, I can eare a 3D model of a shoe. why not in real life? and why not create a shoe from nothing just as in the computer?

Use a 3D printer to create a 3D model of the shoe from the computer.
The shoe is not created from nothing in the computer.
The computer shoe is dependent on the computer, the screen, the display, electricity, processing power, cpu, memory, underlying laws of physics, etc. Multiple factors contributes and maintains the existence of the shoe. It is not just born out of nothing.
So it's not really an exception that we can't create a shoe out of literally nothing, Or may be we can. Doesn't matter.

 

[Black Rose]

There is a shoe on my foot. Can we delete the matter it is made of? From the perspective of people inside computers the computers not exist. Matter can just disappear for them.

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

There is a shoe on my foot. Can we delete the matter it is made of? From the perspective of people inside computers the computers not exist. Matter can just disappear for them.

That people inside a typical computer even has a perspective in a 'literal' sense is in-itself a metaphysically loaded statement.
When you delete the shoe, the state of the hardware gets change. Sometimes the change is merely superficial, in the software level. There's no absolute deletion in a computer.
Also the 'shoe' never existed in an absolute sense...in the sense of being an independent static existence. The shoe you observe in computer is a result particular arrangement of various elements and computers. When the arrangement is changed the shoe may appear to disappear. It doesn't have to mean something substantial was deleted.
In real life in case of nuclear fission\fusion, matter might be converted to energy and all, but I don't know about science.
Also, IRL your shoe can disappear from 'your perspective' if you don't look at it.

 

[Black Rose]

I would wonder why my shoe existed then ceased to exist the next moment if I were living in a computer simulation and never encountered diapering shoes before. For all I know any object I see in front of me could disappear right now because I do not know if I am in a simulation and I am digital being. If I am digital then that changes the nature of consciousness because my digital brain is nothing more than a series of changing relationships likely a dynamic graph where feedback occurs. Always evolving and learning.

So I must consider that Like mesh networks in physics simulations I am a network made of intangible information. I could disappear not just shoes. My consciousness is just information switching states. The shoe is just as real as I am in the simulation, existence and nonexistence, Deletion and erasability. I hope thing don't get weird and things start popping in and out of existence in from of me.

 

[Cognisant]

Well you can get all philosophical about it, a sandcastle on a beach is destroyed when the waves wash it away even though all the sand is still there, it's just been scattered by the waves.

If you're shot in the head with a bullet none of your matter is destroyed it just no longer functions as you, like how a robot that has been disassembled is no longer a robot it's just a pile of robot parts, indeed those parts could be used for many things so they're not even "robot parts".

If you burn a shoe it isn't deleted, the heat driven chemical reaction reduces the complex molecules into their constituent elements, mostly carbon and gaseous stuff (some of which is quite reactive/toxic so don't breathe in burning plastic/rubber) but this wasn't an atomic reaction so all the atoms are still around.

 

[Black Rose]

Yes, when you overwrite my brain file all procedural algorithms to run the file go to default zeros and all the data default zeros so nothing is lost except the Kolmogorov entropy of the program that was me. Certainly, the matter still exists you can make ash and grow a tree with it but I will no longer see, hear, taste, smell, touch Think or Reason again. If I randomly get dirt from my yard that is not a person. If my mom is cremated the ashes are not my mom. When you make the files all read zeros in all the memory of where I am, I am not their no more. An entire VR world could become zeros and not be the world no more. I exist now but I am not a pile of ashes as may be that my body may become. I have intelligence and when that is gone and everything is zeros I do not exist. Regress every connection to a dead connection (a zero) and I do not exist.

 

[Cognisant]

Certainly, the matter still exists you can make ash and grow a tree with it but I will no longer see, hear, taste, smell, touch Think or Reason again.

How does that make you feel?

 

[Black Rose]

How does that make you feel?

immateriality

nonlocal
atemporal

what they call beyond space and time (God)

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

I would wonder why my shoe existed then ceased to exist the next moment if I were living in a computer simulation and never encountered diapering shoes before. For all I know any object I see in front of me could disappear right now because I do not know if I am in a simulation and I am digital being. If I am digital then that changes the nature of consciousness because my digital brain is nothing more than a series of changing relationships likely a dynamic graph where feedback occurs. Always evolving and learning.

You don't necessarily have to be in a simulation to watch things getting disappeared.
Things may disappear due to some unknown never discovered physical law or phenomena or something else, whatever. Who knows anything?
Scientific models are provisionals, open to change as new contrary evidence comes up.
The world may be digital in the sense of not being continuous - i.e made of discrete elements or such. But that doesn't have to mean it's immediately analogous to a home computer. Behavior, mental processing of information may be 'computer programs' in a sense, but it's hard to explain the phenomenological experience with mere algorithms, though I believe the 'mental programs' have some hand in reflectiveness (and subject-object duality) within the phenomenological world. Without the mind, the phenomenological experience may still appear but it will be fractured to the point of being as good as nothing.

So I must consider that Like mesh networks in physics simulations I am a network made of intangible information. I could disappear not just shoes. My consciousness is just information switching states. The shoe is just as real as I am in the simulation, existence and nonexistence, Deletion and erasability. I hope thing don't get weird and things start popping in and out of existence in from of me.

Hmm. Weird things can happen anything regardless of we being in simulation or not. Can happen in the sense it is logically possible (logical possibility in the context of modal logic)