What Is Infinity?

Originally posted by dbates
reply to post by miniatus

 

Well, from your perspective you would always be travelling in a straight line and never reach the end. What is the longest line you can draw on a sphere? The Universe may very well have the same limitation, and time itself may have a similar trick up its sleeve.

This is the space-time curvature that Einstein proposed .

I do agree with that, and I agree it would create the illusion of infinity until of course you realized you've passed through this town twice now.. I was just being tough on the wording as I'm sure others might have done later on.. if you keep traveling north you'll eventually be traveling south.. if your choosing a destination that's northwest of your position but you keep circling north->south->north you'll never get to your destination =)

I don't believe in infinity, I do believe in the illusion of it .. and the the earth illusion is a good way to point that out.

Originally posted by miniatus
I don't believe infinity truly exists..as posted above, it's just a label for numbers too large for us to comprehend.

This is basically what I'm pointing out. Infinity doesn't exist as you would consider it but it is rather a potential for anything to happen. Nothingness doesn't exist either since you are trying to observe while in the realm of somethingness. All you can observe as something is something. But something is that which is finite. If you were to become nothing, you would effectively become infinity.

Originally posted by dbates
reply to post by AeonStorm

 

Sure, you can travel forever in the same direction and never leave the Earth. I often mockingly point to a random direction when someone asks "which way is ..." since any direction will lead you to the point you choose eventually. Now if you want the shortest path that's another matter.

You suggest that infinity has a means to an end by suggesting a direction and destination where as I say that the whole thing is simply an illusion. It's real in the sense that it exists but it's an illusion none-the-less therefore it's not able to be quantified by any means.

I also believe this is the plane on which all thing exist and are built upon. A zero dimensional plane.

To put it simply ... I think everything is built upon an illusion therefore life in itself is an illusion.

Infinite applies to size too. 300 years ago people probably thought you couldnt get any smaller than a grain of sand, but now we can observe a quark as the smallest thing. I bet 300 years on from now we will be observing even smaller than this!

This should help explain... prepare to be amazed!

primaxstudio.com...

Alpha & Omega

Originally posted by Ophiuchus 13
Alpha & Omega

Apple & Microsoft!

You suggest that infinity has a means to an end by suggesting a direction and destination where as I say that the whole thing is simply an illusion. It's real in the sense that it exists but it's an illusion none-the-less therefore it's not able to be quantified by any means.

It is an intresting topic, define illusion what is an illusion ? is it a trick ? it must be something.

To put it simply ... I think everything is built upon an illusion therefore life in itself is an illusion.

I see people calling it an illusion, that it is is not real. But even an illusion must be something.

I once glimpsed infinity while laying down at the top of a sand dune.

I was closely inspecting the tiny grains of sand in the square inch, right in front of my face. My focus widened out to maybe a foot, then 2 feet, the number quickly growing large. Focus widened out to a meter, the number blowing up into the hundreds of millions, then billions....

....in one smooth transition of comprehension, the focus widened out to the down slope of sand in front of me, hundreds of feet of sand, the massive volume of sand below me, and focus widened out to the neighboring dune ahead of me, astronomical numbers, and widened out to all the dunes for miles around and below.....trillions....and all the dunes on the planet, planets, galaxy, galaxies, universe.....

.....and like a state of Nirvana, infinity was this beautiful, simple, thing. It wasn't big. It's beyond size. Infinity is....beautiful.

And then *poof*, the glimpse of infinity disappeared.

It was a very cool experience.

Originally posted by pepsi78

You suggest that infinity has a means to an end by suggesting a direction and destination where as I say that the whole thing is simply an illusion. It's real in the sense that it exists but it's an illusion none-the-less therefore it's not able to be quantified by any means.

It is an intresting topic, define illusion what is an illusion ? is it a trick ? it must be something.

To put it simply ... I think everything is built upon an illusion therefore life in itself is an illusion.

I see people calling it an illusion, that it is is not real. But even an illusion must be something.

I think of it as being both nothing and everything where all possibilities play out in a single instant and all things dwell within that instant. I guess I would define it as an immeasurable point which is why I say zero dimension. But these are just my own thoughts.

How can life be an illusion? I think perception is the answer to that. Take away all your senses and what are you left to perceive life with?

For example if you were born with no senses, from your perception, were you actually born? What would be the difference between this and death? Life is only real in the sense that we are able to perceive it and I guess in that sense we are all alive AND dead.

I always wondered if someone were born with no senses what (if anything) they would experience. I've always been fascinated by this thought.

Originally posted by miniatus

Originally posted by Ophiuchus 13
Alpha & Omega

Apple & Microsoft!

reply to post by Cryptonomicon


I had something similar happen to me where I saw everything in a single moment and it was perfect and was pure logic. Everything just made sense. It was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had!

I wish I could have held onto it.

Thanks for sharing!

Infinity is a circular concept, technically it's the end that's not the end. Think about that. The fact that it's non-discrete is what allows it to behave in such odd ways.

The universe is everything, there are dimensions within the universe that we cannot percieve, I believe that time is one of the dimensions that we are not equipped to percieve. We can measure the effect time has on the earth and nearby galaxies but I think that certain parts of the universe could either be running backwards or completely frozen.

Atoms are programmed to percieve time in a linear and forwards fashion. As we and everything is made up of atoms then we cannot tell if we are going forwards, backwards or if we are frozen.

Free will is an illusion. Time is not on a loop however the big bang + the resulting big crunch + the absence of free will = the fact that conciousness is eternal, we live this life over and over in the exact same way on a loop. Concious energy may be finite, so after we die we could live another billion lifetimes as different humans, pets, or even extra terrestrial beings before the big crunch and the next big bang.

To sum up my thoughts I beleive I have written this post countless times before and will do it countless times again. I have been and will be writing this post forever.

The German Mathematician Georg Cantor proved in his theorem that not all infinities are equal; some are larger or smaller.

I'm no mathematician, so I would never try to attempt to explain this. Take a look at the following link

Cantor's Theorem - Wikipedia

Also, take a listen to a potted history of Georg Cantor on BBC podcast 'A Brief History of Mathematics' - Part 7. You should be able to get this on ITunes

It's really hard for us to contemplate infinity, as it's the only thing we know of that doesn't have a beginning or an end. It just always was... & always will be.

I'm no Math expert either, but this theory like most theories are using numbers to describe the nature of something that can't be percieved or measured.

I think the answer to "What is infinity" will come from philosophers rather than physics boffins.

How can life be an illusion? I think perception is the answer to that. Take away all your senses and what are you left to perceive life with?

For example if you were born with no senses, from your perception, were you actually born? What would be the difference between this and death? Life is only real in the sense that we are able to perceive it and I guess in that sense we are all alive AND dead.

I always wondered if someone were born with no senses what (if anything) they would experience. I've always been fascinated by this thought.

Very interesting reply from you, even with all your senses taken if someone would bump into you you would feel it. Even if we percive objects by different means I think it's safe to assume they are there even without us being around, my existance does not define the objects around me.

Close your eyes, blind fold your self and walk towards a point without perciving anything, without thinking anything, at a point you will bump into something because it's there, the object is in your path way without you thinking about it, perciving it, thinking of it, it is there. It's what I call sudden change, when you do not sense and think anything at all and then the accident happens awaking you to the situation of how things are. So the object will block the path way because it's there without even you thinking it's there.

If nothingness is really nothing, then it can't turn into something, even if something came into being based upon nothing there must still be the idea which requires mind and the mind is not nothing.

reply to post by pepsi78


I think you missed the point when I mentioned 'no senses' as in complete and total sensory deprivation. You would experience nothing of this physical world. That includes; acceleration, deceleration, inertia, or even pain. You would need the sense of touch for the aforementioned things.

I can appreciate what you say when you stated that objects exist without anyone to perceive that object. As I said previously, an illusion is something real in the sense that it exists but it's an illusion none-the-less. I even believe reality to fall within the realm of illusion. This is just my opinion.

I do believe that, to a degree, objects define you and you define objects as well only because I believe everything is interconnected and that is the only way for any type of communication to take place. All this in a zero dimensional plane that is itself an illusion.

The truth is most things philosophized about are going to be forever debatable unless someone can prove without a doubt one way or the other. For now I feel there is truth in my beliefs.

Do your beliefs go beyond what is seen and observed?

I think you missed the point when I mentioned 'no senses' as in complete and total sensory deprivation. You would experience nothing of this physical world. That includes; acceleration, deceleration, inertia, or even pain. You would need the sense of touch for the aforementioned things.

Even if you were say made out of rubber or iron and did not have any perception any feeling at all you would still bump into the object, the object preventing you from moving further.

Do your beliefs go beyond what is seen and observed?

Well yes, of course, just because you can't see it does not mean it's not there. Take x rays, you can't see them with the naked eye but they are there. They would appear as a trick as an illusion to you since they would pop up into existance before your eyes let's say. But they were there all along. Our vision, the spectrum of it is very limited, we can extend that and see other things with special vision but not that far away. It's why I think reality is a factor and that darkness is covering it up.