My point was not a comparison between the BB and Genesis. It was a metaphor to describe your attitude of blindly accepting the BB as the absolute truth, which is not much different from believing Genesis creation of the world. You are not even understanding a simple English sentence. — Corvus

And this, again, is just ignorance of the subject matter. It doesn't really merit much more engagement than that.

I think we’re lucky to exist. Sure life is unfair and a struggle at times but we’re lucky enough to experience the good that comes from it. You don’t have to be rich to enjoy it, it’s just a ride and getting off it before it finishes hurts (suicide) so just let life play itself out, don’t put too much pressure on yourself, we’re blessed that we get to exist because when we cease to exist that will be forever and it’s a once only event. — kindred

Not even a reply because it's speaking massively of privilege and doesn't grasp the whole scope of life. Outside of modern society life is pretty brutal, and even in society you have to be born lucky to experience the good stuff. Honestly man...have some perspective.

I think it's often the case that people find that there are fewer reasons for living than there are reasons for dying. Sometimes those people choose suicide. It's a common enough phenomenon and there might be many reasons for it. It's been interesting to read people's responses to your OP. What are the least helpful answers here? — Tom Storm

I think the least helpful answers are the ones that insist life has good points or that one is lucky to be alive. That smacks of hindsight bias. I'm not an anti-natalist myself but I find it hard to argue against their claims and reasoning. People who think life is worth living are lucky and shouldn't speak on it's value.

Without solid explanation backed by evidence and reasoning, the BB is not much different from the creation of the world story in the Genesis of the Old Testament in terms of its coherence and cogency. — Corvus

More ignorance on the Big Bang and what it means. To compare it to Genesis is the height of stupid.

What do you not understand on my understanding of the BB? — Corvus

It's so ignorant that I cannot fathom it.

So, when I hear, "anti-realism", I think of some kind of interpretation like the particle has no real defined traits until observed by a consciousness(or possibly, until interacting with any macroscopic object). At the macroscopic scale, things only appear to be determined because the average behavior of a huge number of random objects is fairly well determined. — Brendan Golledge

The anti-realism is based on a misunderstanding of quantum physics, it still hinges on the notion that consciousness is involved when it's not.

The particles exist but their properties are uncertain, or that they can influence each other from a distance.

But bear in mind the physicists don't use the word realism, that's the public. So this doesn't affect our day to day like people think it does, and at the moment it's still uncertain what it actually means.

So the links in my first post I learned can just be ignored as the people in them don't know what it means, not even the guys who discovered this do.

But that ignores your life. Whatever is keeping you alive does not care a whit about your logic. — Paine

You are keeping you alive when you eat and all that stuff.

“What kind of “greater reason” do you mean? Whats wrong with meaning people create for themselves?” — DingoJones

I already covered that at the start, you’re just not paying attention.

You cannot engage with something incoherent, correct — DingoJones

No it’s not incoherent you just aren’t able to engage with it. If you read the posts you’d see why your questions aren’t relevant.

Problem with the Big Bang theory is, inability for explaining the perfect position, and workings of the matter, space and time in the Solar system. — Corvus

That’s not a problem with it. The workings are pretty much standard for something with no design or intelligence.

It would have been more like total chaos with debris of the rocks, minerals and burnt out matters scattered and floating around in the space even at this time. You see some of the old gignatic stars exploding when they are dying. It is nothing short of the massive nuclear explosion destroying and burning everything around them. — Corvus

Tell me you don’t understand the theory without telling me you don’t understand it.

So space and time are not separate? And motions come from them? I've speculated on this forum that motion creates time as it moves through space so there is no need for a before the Big Bang being it's creater (motion) moves singularly at the moment of the universe's and time's first motion forward. It seems like something coming from nothing but it's not. The primordial singularity is it's own casuality — Gregory

Your speculations mean nothing at all. Space and time aren’t separate, they exist in tandem. Motion doesn’t come from them; it just happens if things exist.

There is no primordial singularity, the universe has always existed.

Why would ice cream be preferable if youre not required to eat it? Why is it preferable to drive your car when you don’t have to drive your car?
These questions don’t need to be engaged with because they are incoherent, and so is your comment above. Once you bring requirement into it you are no longer talking about preferences at all. Incoherent. — DingoJones

They’re not, you’re just not able to engage with them. It’s easier to just dismiss such things rather than wonder why we even bother with them.

It’s true, why eat ice cream if you don’t have to. Why do things that make life enjoyable when you can just die and not need to do such things anymore? Filling life with good things only makes sense when one is prevented from dying and thus must make life enjoyable. But since there is no such restriction then we don’t have to do all that.

Pleasure and Death are alternative goals you can set. As you say, they're mutually exclusive. What you're saying sounds to me like "Given that I'm dead, why should I set as a goal any of those things that can no longer matter to me?" But this makes no sort of sense to me: first, you can't set any goals once you're dead. Second, once you're dead that-which-matters-to-you is n/a. You're gone. It's a category error. It's not that things — Dawnstorm

It’s more like why prefer life to death, which is the end of the pursuit.

Every day you don’t off yourself is a choice to live. It’s not really the default.

You need to expand on these points youre trying to make if you're actually interested in discussion. — DingoJones

I made that point already, such things matter only if you have to live and there is no have to when it comes to living.

space and time within the universe can be motion, obviously.

The universe is in motion due to its own space and time.

It’s not hard to understand.

A lack of imagination or empathy means that the person can't envisage being in someone else's shoes. There is a lack of understanding and low consideration of how their actions can affect others; their emotions or wellbeing.

This can adversely affect relationships. Because if so self-centered, they don't want to listen or know. There is little point in continuing a discussion, about suicide, with someone who sees it only as an argument to win, logically — Amity

Sounds more like you don’t have an actual case to make.

I already addressed this with my “so what” at the beginning.

'Life stuff' might not matter to you - in life or death. But it does to others. If you don't see a need to be concerned or care about people and their emotions, then so be it. I doubt you will be persuaded otherwise. Have you been hurt? Is it worse or better than not being recognised or cared for? Or is being ignored a fate worse than death? — Amity

Not an argument. Like I’ve mentioned before people who argue against it don’t have a real cases to make against it. You say “you won’t be persuaded” but that’s more signaling that you have nothing to offer and rely on people just assuming life is worthwhile and to think otherwise makes you sick, thus proving my point.

Par for the course

There are some objects in the universe in motion, but the universe itself is not. You seem to be in confusion in telling between the objects in the universe, and the universe itself. — Corvus

The universe is in motion. It’s more like you have a limiting notion of movement.

Perhaps this has already been mentioned, but one theory (link here) seems to be that spacetime emerges from a network of entangled bits of information, qubits. This network has no spatial properties, nor temporal durations, and as such it is possibly ubiquitous and eternal, i.e. a domain of the physical reality which doesn't require a first cause. However, as such it allows spatiotemporal and causal phenomena to emerge, and by way of being part of such a domain also spatiotemporal particles can be entangled and act in spooky ways at a distance — jkop

Holographic principle, already junk out of the gate.

Yes, I am saying it can be more moral to trap yourself in a cage of others' love than to end it. Even if your life is so worthless that it might as well not have been, for you, that does not mean others share that valuation. A person ending themselves in that instance deprives others of something they cherish: them. — fdrake

Irrelevant, for reasons I already mentioned. There is no real need to be concerned over what happens to others if one is dead. All that stuff vanishes so why should it matter if other people hurt?

But again, it hinges on death not being the end, which is contrary to nihilism, which, as all nihilists will attest to, is idiotic. Funny in a way how certain nihilists can entertain possibilities from solipsism to an infinite number of universes but not in any way the possibility of an existence after death. — javra

Saying not to do it because there might be an afterlife is, IMO, a stupid argument. Considering there is no reason to think there is one it's about as effective as wet sand.

What a number of philosophical people have done in the face of the challenge is to seek authenticity. Discover who you really are and live life like a sacred dance. Of some kind.

So it takes some courage to direct a firearm into your mouth. It also takes courage to find the way to live life on your terms: to learn to say yes to life as Nietzsche very well might have said. It starts by learning to listen. — frank

I already explained why that argument doesn't work.

Huh? Nothing in life matters because you will die and when youre dead nothing in life matters? Is that what you are saying? If so, why wouldn't the life stuff matter while youre alive? — DingoJones

There is no reason to do it. Filling life with stuff to do only counts if you have to live and you don't.

Struggling? Fighting, Pursuing? Suicide is a possible solution but the most obvious alternative to the unsatisfactory rat race of striving, struggling, and all that is to stop striving, stop struggling. Try to be more in the present moment rather than being busy trying to accomplish something in the future, or fretting over something not done in the past, because "now" is where you live. — BC

The present moment is where one feels pain and wishes to end it, so that's a pretty terrible point to make. The arguments against suicide often appeal to a future that doesn't exist and can't be guaranteed, hence the hindsight bias.

How can science prove an action is random or determined? These seem like philosophical categories to me, not related to science and math — Gregory

They aren't really philosophical categories, they're pretty well defined TBH.

The world doesn't seem to be moving in that way or physically in motion. — Corvus

Except it is.

We don't know how large the universe is, how old it is, and even how it began. — Corvus

Yes we do, yes we do, and we have some solid ideas.

The universe will always remain as the deepest mystery in which we are born, live and perish into. Is it real? What is real? — Corvus

Not really. Some parts of it are mysteries but we know quite a bit about it. It's real for sure, as for asking what is real...that's often a useless and dumb question.

Of course, theology has had a lasting impact on scientism here, because the move from the universe as an organic whole to one defined by "laws" that are inscrutable, and some initial efficient cause, is not what you get when you simply "strip away superstition," but is rather Reformation theology, whose influence remains potent even in the hands of avowed atheists centuries later. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well no, not really. We have evidence and studies for this unlike religion. As for what consciousness is, it's an emergent property of the brain. There is no hard problem to solve here.

Stuff like this kinda makes me question the use of philosophy at times, like trying to complicate matters that are already solved while offering nothing useful to act on. Science may have started off as such but clearly has come far and distinguished itself since then.

Maybe in regards to ethics and morality philosophy helps, anywhere else...meh.

Is there a way you'd prefer people to respond to you in the thread? — fdrake

I guess some indication that my replies and posts are being read and engaged with.

The whole "love" thing I covered at the start and yet it just feels like people are simply saying shit without reading how I covered that part.

Love only matters if one has to live and in death there is no concern over any of that stuff, even the pain that would follow from your death. To make a case against it you'd have to engage with why living would be preferable when it's not a requirement to be alive.

Can you give an example(s) of math being used to describe the physical world without using philosophy? That seems impossible to me. The math only measures. What it measures is up to our apparati. Any measurement implies knowledge of space and time, and hence Kant and the whole mess — Gregory

It's pretty much done every day, you don't really need philosophy to do that. The fact it pans out and leads to discoveries that we can manipulate and act on sorta implies it doesn't matter what philosophy thinks about it.

They just mean surreal as not typically compatible with classicality. — Apustimelogist

I still don't really understand it.

True. Quantum Uncertainty is not a practical problem, it's a philosophical problem. For all practical purposes, the physical world still works the same way under 20th century Randomness, as it did under 17th century Determinism. Now that you know the ground under your feet is 99% empty space, are you afraid to take the next step over the quantum abyss? A stoic philosophical response to quantum scale indeterminism might be : "don't sweat the small stuff" — Gnomon

The 99% empty space isn't true, and that's also a misunderstanding of what is at work. The spooky stuff of QM isn't something to worry about since it doesn't happen at our level.

OK, you win, I'm an idiot. I'll just point out though that as long as you're judging it on whether or not it 'works', you're still only thinking about yourself and haven't tried it yet. — unenlightened

You didn't even read the original post I made which addresses why your argument fails.

Never mind that I've done that before and it doesn't lead to meaning or value or anything you mention.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=16295625758829094935&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1#d=gs_qabs&t=1734279682125&u=%23p%3DF6i2K0qxJeIJ

Yeah I couldn’t even understand that much. Like I said you guys overestimate what the knowledge of most people is on this.

What the hell do they mean by surreal there anyway?

It seems to be a positive way to express the uncertainty of quantum physics. A particle can be either located in space (position), or measured for movement (momentum), but not both at the same time. Real things can be measured both ways, so what's wrong with quantum particles? Are they not things? Are they not real? — Gnomon

Well it’s not much of a problem per se because this only applies to very small stuff, not our day to day.

This is something I've wondered about. Is it possible to have a scientific understanding of some aspect of the world without an ontology? Without a story about what is going on? This question comes up in the context of quantum mechanics. Is that the Copenhagen interpretation? Is that enough? If there is no way, even in theory, to verify or falsify the many worlds interpretation, does it even mean anything? — T Clark

The interpretations are just a way to explain the math which is air-tight. The story for science is to assume realism and an external world because otherwise science becomes pointless to perform.

that was a bad answer, definitely not 100.

Let me see if I can use other words that you can accept more. If one considers only oneself, and only from one's own point of view, then it is clear that satisfaction is only ever transitory, suffering and death are inevitable and the sooner life is over the better. — unenlightened

The same applies to your so called love. At the end it’s still about you and feeling better for yourself it just happens to help others. Though that said that doesn’t mean there is value in it. Like I already explained and why your logic still falls short.

Therefore, I posit (but offer no proof) a reason for living that is self-overcoming, or self- transcending. This is illustrated in the film Groundhog Day, in which suicide fails utterly to end life but results in a repeating life that goes nowhere. This repetition only ends when everything is put into the day to make it better for everyone. — unenlightened

That movie is a terrible example because the loop really only breaks when he wins the girl over, didn’t really have much to do with helping others. But again, it’s a movie it’s not reality and obviously the lesson of most films is to reinforce positive social norms. Try again.

As long as you think only of yourself, you will keep coming back to the same miserable thoughts again and again. I wish I could be more clear about this for you, but I cannot disprove the platitudinous nonsense of your "platitudinous nonsense". If you want to understand, you will begin to understand, but if you don't want to, then you will have make do with the thin satisfaction of winning the argument, and you will miss all the richness of life. — unenlightened

Oh I know this doesn’t work because I’ve done this most of my life and it’s just as hollow and empty as the pleasure of the self you seem to place less importance on.

The words and usage here is slippery. What exactly is your issue? You have received answers and are dismissive. — tim wood

They aren't answers thought. Love isn't a reason it's just platitudinous nonsense, same with making meaning. I gave the case at the start why such reasons don't hold water.

Jacob Barandes presents a completely realist interpretation of quantum mechanics. Its one version of what you would call a stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics. — Apustimelogist

I'm not reading all that, summarize into English. I don't understand why people assume everyone understands this on the level that they do. Do any of my replies indicate that I have the level of understanding to know what the video is talking about let alone you?

This is an inaccurate description of the participatory universe. At any rate, was the problem with Consciousness Causes Collapse that von Neumann and Wigner didn't know math? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's not, that is EXACTLY what he means by the participatory universe and it's pretty much regarded as false.

Also consciousness doesn't cause collapse, that's another one that people keep getting wrong due to a misunderstanding of what observation means in physics.

And if these go a step further into making claims about "free will," that's another place where good philosophical reasoning will be wanted. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And that's when you know philosophers have gone off the deep end on this one.

Quantum physics is one area where philosophy needs to stay out, since the interpretations aren't accurate reflections of what is going on. You're also citing all the weird interpretations that aren't really widely accepted either. You make a very weird case.

A therapist, who just might suggest "euthanasia as a treatment option", as is slowly becoming the new normal in "civilized" societies? — baker

Pretty sure they don't do that.

I don't know how physics couldn't inform philosophical debates or vice versa. It cannot solve them, but empirical examples often play a major role in metaphysics. Physics seems to tell us something about part-whole relations, information transfer, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

From what I see it can’t, especially in this case where the interpretations of quantum physics aren’t even close to the math that is taking place. They’re watered down guesses to explain the math, which is the most solid one ever. But since philosophers commenting on this can’t do the math behind it their works about what it means are effectively useless.

Science may have been a part of Philosophy at one point but science has come quite far since then and made strides that set it apart. Meanwhile philosophy hasn’t really changed much or advanced much of anything and is still hung up on the same old debates.

You’re also not right about science and the particulates. That’s exactly how science advances, that’s why there are all those seemingly random experiments and weird stuff they do all the time, it’s not a straight line. By studying particulars as particulars you get to the unifying stuff.

For instance, Sabine Hossenfelder portrays retro-causality (and so models like the crystalizing block) as a sort of garble created by uniformed hucksters. It isn't. Hucksters might promote it, but the key work in this area was by John Wheeler and Rodger Penrose, two of the biggest names in the field, and people take it seriously. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Because it is. It’s also funny that you cited two of the weirdos who back it. Wheeler thinks we manifest the universe with consciousness, which we don’t and as a quantum physicist he should know better. Penrose also has wooed theories about consciousness despite what we know about the brain today.

So you’re not really helping your case by citing the weirdos in the field. I knew I heard those names before and it’s because of their crackpot ideas. At least when it’s not related to black holes.

No one actually takes retro casually seriously in the field, it’s sorta like flat earth there.

As examples, the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations reject realism, and the de Broglie–Bohm theory rejects locality. — Michael

Sorta, I think the Copenhagen is saying that nothing exists unless you look at it, but that’s not true. The particles still exist, just that some things about them aren’t defined. Many worlds isn’t against realistic quite the opposite.

Its actually what the math seems to say (at least to probably most people) but at the same time, this is very strongly interpretation dependent so not everyone sees it that way. — Apustimelogist

Even still you have to posit an external reality with peer review otherwise there isn’t really a point to science.

Even the crazier interpretations don’t say the universe doesn’t exist.

Are you just substituting "local" for quantum and non-local for classical? — Gregory

Not really, more like non local is quantum and classical is local. But the term refers to proximity.

But, don't stop wondering. — kazan

Well the issue with that is we are working with interpretations of extremely high level math, so our wondering is really more like butchering the evidence.

Particles can communicate in sinc with each other faster than light. Some speculate worm holes to explain this, which really means we redefine what space means — Gregory

According to the page on the Nobel Prize site the guy doesn't know how it does that just that it does. But this is only with entangled particles which is odd because entanglement is a local phenomenon

There is still a thriving school of idealist-leaning physicists among other schools of thought. — Wayfarer

Ummm, not really? I've seen a few of them and the only thing they have in common is how they don't understand the science.

Most physicists I've talked to about this said it means nothing. Even on the Nobel Prize website the people who discovered this don't really know how it does it or what's going on.

I think they are saying the noumena is the very small where particles aren't space-bound in the classical sense. The classical is the same classical stuied by humans for thousands of year. As you say, how does this affect the practical realm — Gregory

Well most of the time it leads to people saying shit like "the moon isn't real or doesn't exist if you don't observe it". Bearing in mind that observer and observation don't mean consciousness in QM

that was my initial response to what they said, however after further thought I have no reason to take the person in the Quora answer seriously.

No amount of skepticism changes the fact that I haven’t been failed by “recognizing” there is a behind me. If anything listening to that person actually hurt my ability to remember stuff and almost caused a few accidents

As is obvious to the reader, contrary to what we've been thinking all along, we don't have a definition of existence if perception is our standard/measure. Odd that! — Agent Smith

Except that we do. Also good work showing how useless this sort of thinking is in day to day.

Looking back at the guy in the answer he's obviously wrong. Mirrors aren't an illusion, they show behind us because we can't see it. The part about memory doesn't change that either. Just because we can't remember what was in front or behind doesn't mean there aren't such things. not to mention is there is no behind you a car would never work.

Plus like I said before, there are dire consequences to thinking like the the guy in the quora answer. Break real hard on a busy highway and see how well that holds up.

It's actually kinda interesting how divorced from day to day reality a good deal of philosophy is, at least this topic anyway. I can't believe I took it seriously.

Do you understand Snell's law? If you did you would understand mirages and refraction is just normal behavior of light. — PhilosophyRunner

Again no, those are special instances. And as said before it is playing tricks. Still proving you don’t understand what you cite.

It is clear who doesn't understand what they are talking about, and it is not me. But maybe you can explain your position in detail rather than just repeating that I don't understand? — PhilosophyRunner

Considering all you're doing is parroting one thing it's likely you. Like I said it does deceive in certain instances, like water and mirages, and not others.

There are no tricks in physics, I have no idea what you are talking about. Light changes direction at the boundary of two medium, given by Snell's law. It always behaves correctly according to Snell's law. Always.

There is no trick that happens sometimes. — PhilosophyRunner

Again, it depends on the context, science is more gray than most think. Especially in biology. Like I said you don't understand it as well as you think.

Refraction is never a trick. It is simply the way light behaves when moving from one medium to another where there is a change in wave speed. This is well understood in physics, there is no trick, just the normal behavior of light. — PhilosophyRunner

That’s just not true. Refraction can sometimes be a trick like with water. That is also well understood in physics. I’m thinking you don’t get this as well as you’re making it out

In a sense it can be a trick of the light depending on the where

You mean, how did we invent writing and other means of information exchange? Do you believe that without qualia, the invention and use of writing becomes inexplicable? — goremand

There really isn't a reason to believe qualia exist. It's just another last gasp of dualism.

It is our consciousness (or brain depending on your stance) interpreting the redirected light as a bent stick that is causing the confusion. — PhilosophyRunner

There is no stance, it's really just the brain. That fact is more or less solved at the moment and I am well aware of refraction hence it's not the brain's fault but the light playing tricks, like it sometimes does. It's the same for a mirage.

Ok. — goremand

I mean it's been 5 pages and you haven't really gone anywhere with this.

It seems you are "bundling" concepts together in a (to me) arbitrary way, such that denial of one becomes denial of all. I don't remember ever denying subjectivity, consciousness or meaning as useful concepts, if these can only make sense in relation to qualitative properties you will have to explain why. — goremand

You kinda have to accept other minds otherwise there isn't a reason to take anything you say seriously.

The light traveling from the stick to our retina is behaving as we know it should according to physics, when a stick in the water appears bent. It is not behaving wrongly. It is only our intuitive interpretation of this light that causes confusion. — PhilosophyRunner

No it is behaving wrongly because it appears bent when it isn't. It has nothing to do with the intuitive interpretation of the light, hence why it's an optical illusion.