Yes, it is, at least ultimately. They have an inextricable correspondence. High energies correspond to high frequencies and short wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, and low energies correspond to low frequencies and long wavelengths. If you’re thinking of something like heat, bear in mind that heat is not energy, but a measure of energy. Without radiation, there would be no heat. In fact, heat radiation is just another name for infrared light.
That’s the point I was trying to make.
Oy. Well, the OP is impossibly vague as to what the topic actually is, but I came into the discussion assuming that people were making philosophical implications with respect to light/dark as some sort of ethics analogy. The comparison is often made between goodness-light and darkness-evil, and some people call the association arbitrary, stating that perhaps goodness-light are the hypostatized pair or that they are merely the absence of darkness-evil. We’ve shown here why that fails. Some people even attempt to disassociate or reassociate them, but those attempts are all miserable failures owing to the fact that evil cannot be the default ethic since it is destructive, and therefore if evil existed necessarily (i.e., were ontologically perfect), then existence would already be consumed. Upon that argument, some attempt to redefine evil and call it goodness, while calling goodness evil, and then you find yourself chasing a greased philosophical cat in a field full of moving goalposts. So, whatever.
I agree.
I’ll be back when Reeder wakes up and tells us what the hell this thread is all about :).
So infrared light shouldn’t be called such, Cisco? I think I’ll politely step off this semantical carousel at this juncture.
In an attempt to blow on an ember of interest amongst the ash of Reeder’s laziness, I’ll pick up on Lib’s point:
I’m a little confused here. Surely, given that good is constructive, existence would already be perfect by the same reasoning? Can it not be the case that evil destroys at a given rate, and that we happen to exist at a point before total consumption?
(Of course, given my physicalist outlook I believe that[ul][li]Suffering is the thing which exists. “Good” is merely its absence, “evil” its presence.[/li][li]Suffering does not exist necessarily, and therefore neither do good or evil. [/li]The metaphysical does not exist, and ontology is merely an interesting but ultimately pointless discipline, a bit like learning Klingon.[/ul]But I think you knew all that already).
Due respect, Sentient, I would be interested in a serious debate about the nature of existence. But you’ll forgive me for having reservations about playing Agent Smith to your Neo, calmly slapping me about the face and shoulders with one hand as I desperately flail all my limbs in a futile attempt to get in at least a sucker punch. That is to say, I’m sure you can understand that I don’t care to be dismissed as a madman barking Klingon phrases while you look on with bemused disinterest. In any event, I don’t know how you can show that existence is in any way diminishing, particularly given your fai…, er belie…, er rational acceptance of the universe being eternal.
Are we talking about the opposite of light here? For an elemetary partilce like a photon, its opposite is its anti-particle. The opposite of an electron is not “the absence of electrons”, its a positron.
The interesting thing about photons is that they are their own anti-particle. So, I think we must conclude that if photons = light, and photons are the opposite of photons, then light is the opposite of light.
I’m not sure any mention was made of opposites, at least in the OP. Somehow, it was connected to Natioinal Public Radio. I naturally assumed some sort of hand-wringing ethical dilemma.
Of course, Lib, I would never wish to come across as mocking you in any way. My bracketed appendix was merely intended to acknowldege that there are some subjects we can debate earnestly, and others in which I must leave the floor to you since the very founding premises lie outside my worldview. Indeed, I will defend your philosophy if I feel that it is being attacked by those who don’t really understand it (which is quite a few around here) even though it may be diametrically opposed to my own.
I was exploring your contention that good cannot be the absence of evil in this ahem light - I’ll desist if you perceive this as derisive, but I assure you that such is not intentional.
I believe, and can provide supporting evidence, that time itself is about 14 billion years old. This is all the time there is - ie. eternity. I believe that there is no difference between timelessness (which I believe characterises the initial state of the universe) and an infinite amount of time without change.
Mea culpa, Sentient. I should never have suspected anything less from you than sincerity. I apologize. On topic, I certainly understand that you can provide me with empirical evidence of the age of the universe if given the premise that the universe originated with the alleged Big Bang. I can provide it, too. I also understand that you can define both time and eternity in such a way that they coincide with your observations and conclusions. But as you know, I am not an existentialist, and I do not define eternity as the sum of all time. The interesting thing about whatever discussion we might have is that we each can take the other’s side and argue it. I can provide your proofs, and you can provide mine. Just as I can cite evidence for the age of the universe, you can cite logical principles that render that age irrelevant. So, I’m not sure of what interest the debate might be, unless you just feel like sparring for the fun of it, and I’m game for that, I suppose. So, why don’t we start here — essence precedes existence because existence devoid of essence is meaningless. If we are to debate, then our premises must having meaning. In fact, if the universe is existential in nature, then we are not even having a discussion. We are not even shooting electrons to servers because electrons would have no essence, and therefore would be undefinable. Even if essence rose from existence, our discussion is still meaningless since rising from existence is itself a meaningless concept, arbitrarily concocted to assuage existential angst. Therefore, existence exists. (Credit to Ayn Rand.) And it has an essence which contextualizes it. (Okay, Ayn, you may now turn over in your grave.) It is this essence which is eternal and timeless, not in the sense of comprising all time, but in the sense of preceding it. It is not the sum of all time, but the context in which time has meaning. Your ball. 
Dark is not natural, it’s a lifestyle choice.
A particle can be at rest, but if it does, its position becomes smeared out across the entire universe.
But I think the intent of your question is a good one: It is fair to say that no particle can ever be observed to be at rest, because then we would know both its position and its momentum with zero uncertainty.
Essentialism versus Existentialism it is then! (I don’t think that idle old Reeder can complain that we’re hijacking a vehicle that he’s merely released the handbrake from and forgotten about.)
I must admit, this debate is one in which the physicalist struggles to jump off the fence since both sides look distinctly uncomfortable. Existentialism demands “free will” (whatever that is) which a physicalist must pretty much deny by reducing a “choice” to a vastly complex calculation having a bewildering multitude of inputs from any number of sources; sensory, memory, chemical-emotional, even utterly random. The “angst” of Sartre and Kiergaart, the fear of choosing poorly, thus becomes merely another input to be fed back into the near-miraculous calculating machine comprising a kilo of offal in our heads.
On the other hand, essentialism offers an equally distasteful creed: that everything has an “essence” (that which, were it removed, would render the thing a different “type”, say) which can be discovered through “reason”. The words in inverted commas are tricky to translate into physicalism-ese, but not impossible by any means. The universe is so - it is as it is, not some other way. The human brain attempts to somehow encode the universe into memories incorporated in strings of dendrites which are filed and cross-referenced in a system of byzantine complexity even by the time we are two years old, and that complexity keeps increasing exponentially such that the path from certain ‘abstract concepts’ back to physical memory becomes impossible to see. However, ultimately, a kind of “average” of physically cross-linked memories (associated with a piece of language) is all “essence” and “type” are to a physicalist. “Reason” and “meaning” are similarly so, although these are perhaps better characterised in physical terms by a dynamic arrangement of logic gates akin to (but, again, vastly more complex than) a computer chip.
So, Lib, I’m afraid I find it difficult to take sides here since I feel that both positions can be translated into physical-ese to my satisfaction in the same way that quantum mechanics encompasses the Wave versus Particle debate. Some arrangements of spacetime are clearly different to others (a supernova and a saxophone, say) but that difference is only clear to encoding offal, which sorts its encoded memories according to a filing system (ie. “contextualises” or “finds meaning”) in which “essence” and “type” are useful (but still utterly arbitrary) indices.
I don’t know how useful this is, either to you or to the debate. I don’t think I’ve explained myself quite like this before, and so I’ve found utility in setting forth my position for one who could explore it with both charm and rigour. I happen to think that “translating” age-old philosophical dilemmas into physical-ese is the way forward for philosophy these days, and I’ve seen very little of it around (the above being my very own amateurish efforts). However, you should understand that the only reason I even started to explore this position so earnestly was your good self, Lib. Ne Molesti Te Deprimant (to use a more correct version of the oft-quoted Non illegitimi carborundum est).
Hmmm… I’m not sure this would be much fun for either of us, Sentient, certainly not because either of us is incapable, but because we’re going to end up sounding like a Platonic dialog. In the end, it is an argument about meaning. And as you know, I could not have typed any words other than these. 
Fair do’s, I guess a thread dedicated to some subject wherein there is enough common ground for a worthwhile dialectic would worth waiting for, rather than trying to comandeer this one.
Whether or not you could have, you didn’t. To misquote a great mind:
Do, or do not. There is no “choose”.
But maybe I did. How do you know that the server did not fail?
Y’know, I’d agree with you. I think that it would be dark when we don’t have anything.
But we can never prove it.
[QUOTE=asrivkin]
I disagree with the “naturalness” of darkness, inasmuch as I think the question is answerable: everything that’s not at absolute zero gives off radiation (“light”). Nothing is at absolute zero. So, light is everywhere. If we could see in the microwave part of the spectrum, the universe would be aglow from all directions. I suppose the natural, if absurd, conclusion to that way of looking at it is that it’s never actually dark.
[QUOTE]
Yeah, but we’re assuming an absence of light, like there is nothing! Even that microwave stuff - like nowaves!
But you’d have to construct a very artificial environment to do that. Not natural. Or, in any event not what (I think) the OP was asking. Um, not that I know what the OP was asking.
Light is a thing.
An emission of photons fom an energy source (as far as we know) or an emission of energy in wavelengths we can’t see but can qualify as ‘light’ on some level.
Without that emission we have dark. We alrady have dark in those places where light waves/particles/strings/things cannot yet reach, for whatever reason.
Without the actor (light) there is no light, which is dark.
This is the natural state.
Light is being. Dark is the absence of being.