As somebody who “converted” to Atheism a few years back, I still get plenty of moments of Wonder where non-belief feels terribly wrong emotionally. Silly evolution.
This idea leads me to questioning identity as well, though more mathematically. The confusion could be nothing more than psychological trouble arising from considering un-provable assumptions in our logical system. In my case, I was conflating the Reflexive axiom (which says a=a) with the Identity axiom, from here:
But that isn’t a catastrophic error, the nub is in the nature of an axiom:
Your conundrum is that something can’t come from nothing. Mathematically speaking, that is merely an assumption,* it isn’t proved*. It is possible to posit a system in which the reflexive and identity axioms are absent:
[A]
Yeah, AFAICT math collapses when you do that and there isn’t, uh, ‘distinction’ I guess, outside the ‘realm of analysis’. It doesn’t make any sense, but perhaps the universe doesn’t owe you that?
With reflexivity, 0=0. With identity, a+0=a. In the context of something-from-nothing, 0+0=0. But again, these are unprovable mathematical assumptions and need not apply to the actual universe.
3.8 billion years of life on Earth - which to my mind is basically “forever,” and in that entire span there was never some kind of cosmic catastrophe that wiped it all out.
It seems that in my lifetime we’ve been under constant threat of that imminent possibility; it’s very hard to fathom the extent to which chronology itself has seemed to stack the odds against it happening, even given recent developments like nuclear weaponry etc.
I’ve heard something to the effect of, when you go back to the big bang then the laws of physics, causality, and pretty much everything else break down. That doesn’t seem right either, but frankly it seems that causality would have to break down for us to exist.
Because of my fading memory, this is a mix of paraphrase and verbatim.
Steve Martin, early 80’s (IIRC), imagining an Atheist who dies and suddenly finds himself standing before God in the Judgement Throne:
“Oh, this is real?” (grinning, cringing, squirming nervously)…“But in college they said this was all bullshit”… “How many times did I take the Lord’s name in vain?? I don’t know, I didn’t keep track”… “Oh, you did, huh? A million and six?? Jesus CHRIST!”
..
We’re very capable of wiping ourselves out, but life on earth is going to be around for a long time no matter what we do.
From what we’re learning about extrasolar planets, Earth may be in an extraordinarily favorable planetary system.
I also don’t get why those ocean liners don’t capsize.
This is more mundane than most of the things being discussed here, but… that business of how much length you have to add to a rope around the Earth to get it to be one foot off the ground.
You must have a different definition of waste than I do. Having spent money on something that is not used is waste. And don’t “waste” your time steering me to that ridiculous wikipedia article on sunk costs - I’m not buying.
Yeah! Those liners look like gigantic wedding cakes, towering way up into the air, and their keels seem to be so very shallow… (Actually, I just Googled, and failed to find any good cutaway diagrams of how deep their keels are. But, for instance, the pics of that ship in Italy, lying on its side, seems to show a very shallow keel.) Anyway, yeah…
And, re the rope, holy hand grenade! You’re right! That’s massively counterintuitive! It falls right out of some very, very simple algebra, but it doesn’t feel right! (I’m getting six feet, three and a third inches, and a little bit more, yeah?)
Maybe I don’t completely understand evolution, but the concept on the very small scale seems bizarre to me.
I understand that a faster cheetah will be more likely to have surviving offspring. I understand that the giraffe with the longer neck will be more likely to survive and have offspring.
What gets me is the thought that someone with eyelashes (or eyebrows) is more likely to have surviving offspring. An eyelash making the difference between having surviving offspring and not. Or that at some point enough people were subject to conditions such that those that shivered survived while those that didn’t perished. It seems like such a fine line. You would think a hundred other factors would influence that, from body fat to metabolism. But the difference was shivering. And there are so many other traits it boggles my mind.
Don’t get me wrong. I realize evolution is real. But it seems strange some of the features were the difference between offspring or not.
It’s not of question of who reproduces and who doesn’t. It’s a question of who has 1 offspring on average, and who has 1.01. Over time, that matters.
It bothers me that if you take a thousand people and pit them against each other tournament style in a game of rock-paper-scissors, you’re guaranteed to end up with one person who’s seriously just won 10 some odd games in a row. Doubly so for a million and so on.
Cooking is the Devil’s work. My steak goes from gross to delicious via magic. Chemistry only works in the laboratory, not in my kitchen.
I think of this when I hear someone talking about wanting to “Save the planet!”
:rolleyes:
I was weak, and bought a few sets of Mega Millions numbers (hey, half a billion has cachet to it), and came up with another along the lines of my OP:
It feels like having multiple random picks with the same Mega Ball reduces my chances of winning the grand jackpot. I know it doesn’t (though it perhaps reduces my odds of getting one of the minor prizes), but it still felt that way.
Wi-Fi. It obviously works, since I am able to submit this post, and I understand intellectually how it works, but when I’m using it, especially to do something like stream a movie, I feel pretty amazed.
anything wireless amazes me, I still don’t. fully understand how radio works (like fm)