I understand that life is simply the result of evolution, but there is a reason to everything and that is what the issue is. We can debate purpose, but in the end purpose is meaning given by sentient beings to a reason behind a phenomenon and any reason can be interpreted as a purpose. When I say the universe would be fine without life, I mean that there would be no noticeable detriment to the universe if life never existed. In that case, why life? What possible reasons are there for the evolution of life from simple chemicals? This is where the debate is and without solid evidence we can continue to take our passes at what the reason or reasons could/can be.

My pass was that the universe simply called for an energy consuming component in order to do something with energy, a byproduct of time. When I say the universe called, I mean that the universe naturally produces uses for any existence, basically cause and effect, thus with energy came life.

Purpose appears to be relative. A purpose can be given, though some creations could have been made with clear purpose in mind. Even in those cases, the very same creations could be used for a different purpose. In that case, a purpose is any result that can be caused by the subject in question. To say something is truly purposeless is to say something has no result or effect. Referring back to my machine world analogy, that would make the purpose of the world “work.”

Well, I would expect there to be issues with metaphysics. After all, if we had solid evidence that could explain it, it would be labeled physics instead right? Though the way you stated the A and B made sense; sufficient understanding of the subject appears to be a necessary condition for anything to be considered physics. For example, before microscopes were powerful enough to detect atoms, atoms were essentially metaphysics. After the existence of said particles were studied and confirmed, it became physics.

I like to see the world as a natural machine. While the machine itself might not have purpose, it works and the components making the machine each have a specific purpose necessary for the machine to function. The world is like a clock, the gears turn and work, but literally, the clock itself has no purpose. Humans can interpret the clock to have a purpose, but in the end it is a complex mechanical construct that does nothing but move a few of its parts endlessly. In this case, life would just be a part of the machine, with its own purpose in keeping the gears going, but overall the machine itself does nothing significant.

Since we appear to be using metaphors as the best way to understand the situation, why not explain it in metaphors as well? A belief is the bedrock and the structure is something supported by the bedrock. What is supported by belief? Well structures are complexities built with specific purposes in mind, so the thing being supported could be similar in that regard. The significance of the structure? A farm is arguably more important than a bar, but each has its own purpose and important is relative. In other words the significance of the structure compared to other structures is a question that leads nowhere. In conclusion, wouldn’t your structure simply be more complex information? Bedrock beliefs are simple pieces of information that are most closely related to the world we directly sense, while the information we formulate using more basic information can be abstract and less related to the objects before us, yet also still be understandable to others through language.

I suppose it is strange to think that something would occur without a purpose. After all, everything has a cause and it would be logical to conclude that that everything would itself eventually become a cause leading to a result, which could also be called the purpose. Why do stars exist? Well, due to gravity and the chemicals it is composed of. The purpose of stars? To us, it would be to release heat and light, to the universe it might be to become a blackhole, neutron star, or even to just use energy.

Time means movement, which means energy. If there was no purpose for energy, what would be the purpose of time? As such, we can impose a purpose on life, that is growth and maintenance in order to use energy. Unlike stars, life isn’t one-time-use in terms of energy. It actively seeks more energy for maintenance and finds ways to consume more energy by growing, while stars use up stored energy and die out. Perhaps the true purpose of life is to give more purpose to energy. Stars use up energy and last a long time, but at the expense of ridiculous amounts of chemicals in order to induce natural fusion. Life may achieve the same result as stars, using energy, but by relying on complex systems and reproducing for longevity. Growth and evolution is simply a way to further improve efficiency. You could even say that the objective of life is to assist stars in that purpose.

As a government with officials elected by the populace, it is theoretically acceptable to trust the government. Unfortunately reality is different and the election process has its own flaws so that isn’t always the case. However, when it comes to more specific questions like how to handle a virus pandemic, I think the current response is simply a logical decision. After all it is only natural to avoid people during a pandemic while understanding viral infection is spread by people. As for how to live the future, just use our brains. No one said to trust the government unconditionally, nor did anyone say the government is absolutely untrustworthy. Put a bit of thought into it and make a decision, isn’t that just life? Once again, however, it is unfortunate that not everyone puts thought into it, leading to many unnecessary issues.

One of the biggest issues of the U.S. is space. The U.S. is enormous, enough to fit in multiple other countries. Prioritizing the individual or the state? There’re so many people, with so many sub-cultures, it’s basically impossible to keep everyone happy and we knew that from the beginning. When faced with a virus threatening the entire world, the U.S. not excluded, the government has greater worries than complaints on individual freedom. Sure, it’s important to enforce basic human rights, but if a giant bomb was scheduled to hit the country and the only way to avoid it was to stuff everyone in their basements(we’re assuming the basements are sturdy enough), the government would do it in a heartbeat, regardless of what idiots think they’d rather hang around outside. While the real life situation isn’t the same, it’s similar in regards to how the government should react. It’s the government’s duty to protect its citizens, and that’s exactly what it’s doing. Why complain?

It is true that the educated man back in those times often dabbled in many subjects. Now we focus on single subjects individually and come together in conventions to create cutting-edge technologies such as smartphones and the like. Reminds me of the biophysics advocates I heard about not long ago.

Your right, I’m not a physicist, but nonsense like the things I post can get surprisingly good answers such as the explanations from Gnomon and Prothero. I went from braindead to brain full, and I think I’m satisfied with that.

I just realized, heat is the movement of particles then wouldn’t the core of the star be cooler because the pressure restricts movement? As a result less movement means particles will be easier to stabilize. No wonder you can find radioactive particles in stars.

All particles are moving to some extent in what we call heat, so it wouldn’t be too out there to say that all matter is what matter does. We use it in every day language too: “He is running.”

That is strange. According to the conservation of energy, fusion would generally consume energy in order to build the molecules/atoms right? Perhaps when combining atoms together the individual atoms stabilize each other, so the energy needed to stabilize each atom reduces to the degree where energy is actually released in the creation of molecules. Lighter atoms probably don’t need much energy to be stable to begin with, so the extra support results in excess. As for the fusing of two atoms...this is a star right? That thing is so dense it can stabilize its own atoms through sheer mass, so excess energy is produced instead of being consumed.

This whole thing reminds me of when I first came to understand heat. High school teaches heat makes particles move more quickly without explaining the reason behind it. That is a misguiding statement, since the very movement of particles is heat. Similarly matter might be structures composed of energy given a new name. Walls made of brick are called walls after all.

Converting mass to energy is essentially disintegrating the bonds between the atoms in the bomb within a short time and space, resulting in large quantities of energy and force. Basically haven’t we just taken the hypothetical energy constructs known as matter and returned it to its base form? That just seems to reinforce the lack of difference between the two. Since you brought it up, unstable elements require more energy to temporarily exist in that state so, wouldn’t it mean it uses energy to be matter?

Considering the real world, ethics may just be a privilege. I just recently read a scenario which seems relevant in which there was essentially an apocalypse and humans had no hope for the future. In the scenario presented, humans acted just like beasts and lived for self-satisfaction when the sudden realization of imminent demise was upon them. While it would be difficult to predict a realistic conclusion, in life or death situations ethics has no place. However, it is exactly because we are not in a life or death situation, nor the animals we contain in our farms and breeding grounds, that ethics has its own place. As for eating meat, depriving yourself of natural nutrients out of sympathy for unknown animals halfway around the world is ridiculous, though I won’t tell anyone not to. Similarly, over-eating meat indicates low self control. Harming animals in general without good reason seems impulsive and childish to some extent, there are more proactive ways to vent that are less psychopathic.

That does make sense. On top of that you also mentioned e=mc2 and matter is energy. It’s interesting how mass is usually associated with matter, but is also in the formula for energy. Then it is also said mass can’t be destroyed nor created, and I think I remember hearing something similar about energy. The only differentiation between mass and energy appears to be the fact we can sense matter since it has structure capable of transferring and reflecting energy waves. This is also weird, matter isn’t energy because it releases energy? Sounds like a self-defeating argument, so what is the differentiating factor?

I understand that much, but the issue is the reality here in that matter appears to able to sub divide indefinitely, providing no concrete foundation. This furthers my impression that matter is like an “illusion” or icon as Gnomon mentioned, rather than an actual existence.

I don’t have much to say about society as a whole except humans will be humans and we can’t expect everyone to be perfect. I guess it would be enough to try to get along as best as possible. I live in Japan and after getting hit by two nukes the people there are super friendly. Maybe it’s because peace became more important, so aggressiveness was instinctively avoided after that disaster. On the other hand I often hear stories in America where anger appears to be the go to emotion. And no, I’m not saying throwing nukes everywhere will solve our problems.

The concept of good people reminds me of the criminal justice class I took. The idea behind the development of a criminal includes many factors including childhood environment, peer pressure, etc. If we take the inverse of that, we might end up with what you would consider “good” people. After all, habits are hard to break and being raised to be a good person might just result in that. Of course some exposure to the other side for comparison should be important. As for more mythological topics you could go into american indian legends, chinese mythology, japanese and pacific islander creation myths, middle eastern myths(which if I remember are related to greek and roman myths to some extent), and even inuik legends(people who live at one of the poles I think).

What I’ve always found interesting is when my high school textbooks always described light energy as having both particle and wave characteristics without ever explaining the reason for that. My idea is that different quantities of energy waves will naturally form different Geometrical shapes by interacting with each other. I refer to the relationship between atoms in the formation of molecules. Three atoms with similar interaction will form a triangle, but four make a tetrahedron. Energy waves might be able to do something similar and it just so happens light forms a structure with the characteristics of particles.

Wouldn’t that be because a neutron is too small to actually encounter any of the matter within our bodies? It’s like a comet flying through space, the chances of hitting anything are pretty small. Which goes back to my original issue regarding models. While we represent chemical particles as balls and forces as sticks, those balls are mostly empty to begin with and the parts that make up that ball are in a similar situation. To clarify, the go to example would be atoms. An atom model is a ball and the intermolecular forces are sticks, but that atom in reality is made up of electrons, neutrons, and protons. The relative distance between the electron and nucleus is described as the distance of a football field from the perspective of the electron. But the electron model itself is a ball, and that electron is made of smaller particles we know as quarks. Who knows how much empty space there is between the quark particles? Not to mention the particles that make quarks and so on. There’s so much empty space that it makes me question if anything is really there. It kind of feels like a paradox.

Oh, icons sounds like a pretty good way to describe it. Though we see things by using light, which according to my understanding are collections of specific amounts of energy, doesn’t that mean matter is actually something outside our senses? So we use something invisible that might not exist as an icon for something that does exist, sounds like a pretty roundabout way of doing things.

I’ve thought about that too. What’s interesting about that would be when parts of the body are separated. Often you hear stories about people who lose body parts and feel phantom pains. Since everything is in unison, would I become less “me” if I lose a part of me? The fact that people feel the after effects of losing a physical part of themselves might then be because it damages the very being. Then there is organ transplants. You often hear about people who pick up on habits that the organ’s original owner had, even if the two people never knew each other personally. If I were to put a part of “you” into “me” it would only be natural that part of “me” would start to resemble “you” wouldn’t it? Referring back to how energy is the true substance, transplanting organs not only transplants the function of the organ, but also the way that organ guided energy, a way that was originally unique to the first owner.

I used to be religious and one of the intriguing things I took from that experience was that when they explained past actions that contradict modern teachings, they would chalk it up to human error. After all having a human guiding a human group isn’t infallible, even if that group was supported by an omniscient and/or omnipotent being. Religions can be quite flexible in some ways.

Some people simply don’t feel the need to have love. Or maybe they believe that this world cannot provide the love they desire. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just another way of life. Bet there are plenty of decent human beings out there whom happen to be bachelors.

When I think about emotional topics I tend to focus on the more “scientific” approach first to help organize my thoughts. In the case of life and death, from a biological perspective, living organisms are creatures of order. Personally I believe the “greatest” law of the universe to be balance, and order is the result of one such balance. Order is the organization of particles and the maintenance of the resulting material. As such, living organisms also naturally have such a purpose. This is mainly achieved through reproduction as a replacement after death in order to keep the balance. In other words, having kids and living long is the biological purpose of living organisms. However, humans are more than the average animal. We no longer act mostly on instinct and are capable of decisions contradicting our natural purpose, such as suicide. Perhaps another example of balance is that in exchange for being able to make decisions, we also must fulfill an emotional purpose that directs our decisions in order to maintain the will to live. Not having the emotional purpose does not mean we have no purpose in life, but that we are simply unsatisfied with living without one. Most people will feel the need to have an emotional purpose, so not having one gives the illusion that life is meaningless, making death seem acceptable. As for whether life is worth living, worth is just a concept created by humans, maybe even as a result of the emotional purpose I just mentioned. I see life as something we can enjoy, since nothing is guaranteed after death, we might as well take advantage of the joy having an emotional purpose can give us.

I called it obvious because I can easily prove that there is something there. Even though everything we perceive is a model created by our brains through our bodily senses, verifying the existence of an object simply requires multiple perspectives. If I hold out a pen to someone, that person will see and recognize the pen just like I do, proving that there is in fact an object that we both recognize as a pen in front of us. On the other hand, whether the matter that makes up that pen is substantial or not is debatable, considering our thoughts are composed of electric signals and electric signals are essentially energy, therefore what we feel may not necessarily be the matter of the pen, but rather the energy that the “pen illusion” contains.

Who knows? I could chalk it up to coincidence or mental redirecting. I could even go super metaphysical about it all and talk about how our thoughts are energy and energy influences our surroundings and then tie that to the so-called butterfly effect.

Off the top of my head, I see philosophy as an educated guess taken further. Philosophy is called philosophy and not a theory because it lacks enough evidence and is debatable. Philosophy can appear dry because, some people simply prefer philosophy to be well defended, rather than a collection hazardous guesses. As for art, I see it as a chance for a person to display his/her sense of aesthetic. Sure we can make things practical, but we might as well make things look great while we’re at it!

Lackadaisical I was, ‘leven days ago.

Maybe, though it’s interesting how there are just random things that I just take mental note of and then watch how those things become recurring events.

Late comment, but many asian mythological creatures are chimeras, in the sense that they are composed of many characteristics from several different animals. Some of the more famous ones are eastern dragons and kirins. Kirins in particular are interesting because they were said to have horns and hoofs among other traits, and then giraffes were found in Africa. The Japanese call giraffes kirins to this day.

Other mythological creatures would be the many demons in Japan. One of the ones that come to mind is a humanoid creature with a long tongue said to haunt dirty bathrooms, since they would lick up the filth. I’m sure we can safely assume that the motive behind that particular story was to convince less hygienic people to clean up.

I’m not a physics major or anything like that, but I find it fun to think about these things. It’s true that the only way to really observe time is through change. However rather than the changes being time, I like to see time as a universal law that allows for movement. Without movement there is no true indication of time. In reference to the initial thread, I think the universe could have a been an one-dimensional point, but “after” time came to be, movement also became possible. Energy is mass multiplied by speed(of light squared) and speed only exists when time does. In other words all that mass in the point suddenly had energy and walla, big bang. This is all from the perspective that there was a “time” before time.