There's no such thing as matter

originally posted by: WorShip
a reply to: neoholographic

"could explain nearly all"

*Human lights small candle in infinite universe* "Look, this is the truth!"

Maybe your data-points don't exist nor something called 4d-spacetime, it's just something we made up.

Nothing we formulate will be "ultimate truth" So it's somewhat paradoxical what you're arguing here. "There is no objective truth, but here, look at my objective new and improved objective truth".

Ok, use data to describe the phenomenon of consciousness/presence/awareness.

This statement...
Makes more since then all the others...
Is the most truthful...
And no replies at all??? hit the nail on the head there....
no challengers????? LoL.

a reply to: Cutepants

Again, you equate the use of the term matter with meaning something called matter exist. You said:

But all throughout his lecture, Susskind talks about matter; the holograms are made of matter. So I don't get why are you saying they prove matter doesn't exist, why is it one or the other? What is a hologram without matter?

First off, the holograms wouldn't be made of matter because they have no volume. They would be projections of light and light isn't matter. Light has no rest mass or doesn't take up any volume.

Secondly, of course he used the term matter, why wouldn't he? Matter is a description that we use to identify an underlying reality. There's no evidence that anything called matter exists and the fact that you're equating the use of the word matter as meaning that there's some quantifiable substance called matter shows the fallacy of your post.

Just using the word matter doesn't mean that matter exists. You can tell me how much matter is in my cup or how much matter is in a car.

This is because there's no such thing. You said:

Can scientists show that surface area exists, any more than they can show that volume exists?

Yes, if they couldn't there wouldn't even be this debate. This is because the surface area is defined by information that can be contained in a volume of space. This is just simple physics of thermodynamics.

The entropy that can occupy any volume of space is proportional to it's surface area. Do you understand what this means?

The laws of physics limits what can occupy a volume of space and this limit is defined by information on a 2D surface area. This can be quantified but matter can't be. Here's a good article from 2011 that explains this. We know even more today like the recent article I posted in the OP.

This strange quality give black holes something that physicists call maximal entropy. Entropy describes the number of different ways you can rearrange the components of something—“a system”—and still have it look essentially the same. The pages of a novel, as Brian Greene points out, have very low entropy, because as soon as one page is out of place, you have a different book. The alphabet has low entropy, too: Move one letter and any four-year-old can tell something is wrong. A bucket of sand, on the other hand, has high entropy. Switch this grain for that grain and no one would ever know the difference. Black holes, which look the same no matter what you put in them or how you move it about, have the highest entropy of all.

Entropy is also a measure of the amount of information it would take to describe a system completely. The entropy of ordinary objects—people, sand buckets, containers of gas—is proportional to their volume. Double the volume of a helium balloon, for instance, and its entropy will increase by a factor of eight. But in the 1970s, Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein discovered that the entropy of a black hole obeys a different scaling rule. It is proportional not to the black hole’s three-dimensional volume but to its two-dimensional surface area, defined here as the area of the invisible boundary called the event horizon. Therefore, while the actual entropy of an ordinary object—say, a hamburger—scales with its volume, the maximum entropy that could theoretically be contained in the space occupied by the hamburger depends not on the volume of the hamburger but on the size of its surface area. Physics prevents the entropy of the hamburger from ever exceeding that maximum: If one somehow tried to pack so much entropy into the hamburger that it reached that limit, the hamburger would collapse into a black hole.

The inescapable conclusion is that all the information it takes to describe a three-dimensional object—a black hole, a hamburger, or a whole universe—can be expressed in two dimensions. This suggests to physicists that the deepest description of our universe and its parts—the ultimate theory of physics—must be crafted in two spatial dimensions, not three. Which brings us back to the hologram.

www.pbs.org...

I have to say that last part again.

The inescapable conclusion is that all the information it takes to describe a three-dimensional object—a black hole, a hamburger, or a whole universe—can be expressed in two dimensions. This suggests to physicists that the deepest description of our universe and its parts—the ultimate theory of physics—must be crafted in two spatial dimensions, not three. Which brings us back to the hologram.

If you can't grasp this then I don't know what to tell you.

Again, the maximal entropy that can fit into any volume of space isn't proportional to that volume. So the cup sitting on my desk can't be an actual cup made of something called matter occupying the space because if it was it would collapse into a black hole. The laws of physics won't allow it.

It goes even deeper as you connect entropy, information and possibly gravity to entanglement. Specifically, spacetime being an error correcting code which would be the same codes we use in quantum computers.



You said:

I am assuming that matter and volume do exist

Yes, you're making these assumptions without a shred of evidence to support anything that you're saying. Why do you make this assumption? Is it because you heard someone say the word matter and now you believe it exists? If I saying flying pink unicorns, will you blindly believe they exist?

I don't think it really even matters.

Isn't matter a question of OUR senses?

a reply to: gell1234

Plenty of things matter whether we sense them or not.

For example, if a tile falls off a roof, and hits someone on the head, it still injures them whether not they sensed it coming or otherwise.

a reply to: stormcell

Think i read somewhere that Pions/Mesons may also play a part with regards to the mediation of the strong nuclear force.

To be honest I'm rather a layman where particle physics are concerned.

a reply to: neoholographic

Some times you just have to ask yourself... what is the matter with matter or does it really matter? After all a rose is just a rose because someone called it a rose. It is not its appearance nor its oder which define it as a rose. If you were the first one to see a desk, what would you call it? Maybe a toy box? If so, from that point on every such like item would be called a toy box. So, what is in a name? The floor is still just as hard when you do a face plant.

So, I guess it turns out that matter is the term which we use to point out the fact of a large number of atoms are being gathered together very closely, and therefore creating an object which we surmise to be solid when taken into the greater context of our other surroundings.

originally posted by: dashen
I definitely do not trust atoms.
They make up everything
Badum

I don't trust them either, they are spooky.

originally posted by: neoholographic
First off, the holograms wouldn't be made of matter because they have no volume. They would be projections of light and light isn't matter. Light has no rest mass or doesn't take up any volume.

Secondly, of course he used the term matter, why wouldn't he? Matter is a description that we use to identify an underlying reality. There's no evidence that anything called matter exists and the fact that you're equating the use of the word matter as meaning that there's some quantifiable substance called matter shows the fallacy of your post.

Just using the word matter doesn't mean that matter exists. You can tell me how much matter is in my cup or how much matter is in a car.

This is because there's no such thing.

So light doesn't exist either? But the holograms are made of light? What is the light projected through/on? Itself?

I am not saying that matter exists only because we have a word for it, please don't put words in my mouth. And indeed we can quantify matter, in different ways; weight, volume, moles. As you said, I can tell you how much matter you have in your cup, if I can measure it accurately. Even if I can't tell you what matter "is".

Now can you tell me how much hologram is in your cup? In a car?

originally posted by: neoholographic
Can scientists show that surface area exists, any more than they can show that volume exists?

Yes, if they couldn't there wouldn't even be this debate. This is because the surface area is defined by information that can be contained in a volume of space. This is just simple physics of thermodynamics.

What? First you kept saying there is no volume, now you use volume to define surface area?

originally posted by: neoholographic
The entropy that can occupy any volume of space is proportional to it's surface area. Do you understand what this means?

This is essentially the holographic principle. The highest amount of information possible within that space can also be represented in two-dimensional form on it's surface. One of the problems with your interpretation might be that, on a black hole, the information is represented as fluctuations on the surface; I don't see how these fluctuations would be possible in only two dimensions. But that is irrelevant to my argument.

originally posted by: neoholographic
The laws of physics limits what can occupy a volume of space and this limit is defined by information on a 2D surface area. This can be quantified but matter can't be. Here's a good article from 2011 that explains this. We know even more today like the recent article I posted in the OP.

Yeppers, but keep in mind that the 2D surface exists in a 3D space.

originally posted by: neoholographic
I have to say that last part again.

The inescapable conclusion is that all the information it takes to describe a three-dimensional object—a black hole, a hamburger, or a whole universe—can be expressed in two dimensions. This suggests to physicists that the deepest description of our universe and its parts—the ultimate theory of physics—must be crafted in two spatial dimensions, not three. Which brings us back to the hologram.

If you can't grasp this then I don't know what to tell you.

What is the issue here? Have I disputed this?

What seems to be implied is that there is a higher 2D reality, perhaps one step removed from "our" 3D experience, and all the events we see have prerequisites in or are encoded in that 2D substrate. Much a like a hologram works. I think maybe we are misunderstanding each other a bit.

Think about it this way; the information content of the sentence "think about it this way" can be expressed in binary code as well as in English. But that doesn't mean the English language doesn't exist.

originally posted by: neoholographic
Again, the maximal entropy that can fit into any volume of space isn't proportional to that volume. So the cup sitting on my desk can't be an actual cup made of something called matter occupying the space because if it was it would collapse into a black hole. The laws of physics won't allow it.

If you put the right amount of cups together and squeeze into a small enough space, then they will collapse into a black whole. You forget that entropy is affected by density too. Your argument is a non-sequitur.

And how do you even know that your cup has more entropy in it than it should? Have you measured this?

originally posted by: neoholographic
You said:

I am assuming that matter and volume do exist

Yes, you're making these assumptions without a shred of evidence to support anything that you're saying. Why do you make this assumption? Is it because you heard someone say the word matter and now you believe it exists? If I saying flying pink unicorns, will you blindly believe they exist?

If I say regular old horses don't exist, will you blindly believe they don't exist?

When I said I assume that matter and volume exist, it was in response to your assumption that they do not exist. Pot, meet kettle. If you don't want to answer my questions, then at least answer the one you posed yourself:

originally posted by: neoholographic
If there's no matter occupying a volume of space then what's projecting the reality we perceive and why? You may want to stay blind to these issues but most people don't.

a reply to: Cutepants

A long post full of nothing.

You don't provide any evidence to support anything you're saying. This is why I post videos and articles with Scientist supoorting what I'm saying because it's not just an opinion. Everything you say is just a meaningless opinion without a shred of evidence to support anything you're saying.

For instance, there was no response to this:

Entropy is also a measure of the amount of information it would take to describe a system completely. The entropy of ordinary objects—people, sand buckets, containers of gas—is proportional to their volume. Double the volume of a helium balloon, for instance, and its entropy will increase by a factor of eight. But in the 1970s, Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein discovered that the entropy of a black hole obeys a different scaling rule. It is proportional not to the black hole’s three-dimensional volume but to its two-dimensional surface area, defined here as the area of the invisible boundary called the event horizon. Therefore, while the actual entropy of an ordinary object—say, a hamburger—scales with its volume, the maximum entropy that could theoretically be contained in the space occupied by the hamburger depends not on the volume of the hamburger but on the size of its surface area. Physics prevents the entropy of the hamburger from ever exceeding that maximum: If one somehow tried to pack so much entropy into the hamburger that it reached that limit, the hamburger would collapse into a black hole.

Again, this isn't conjecture or opinion. Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein discovered this. So when you say this, it's just asinine. You said:

When I said I assume that matter and volume exist, it was in response to your assumption that they do not exist.

Nope, it's not an assumption. There's no evidence that they do exist. You haven't provided a shred of evidence that says anything called matter actually exists. You haven't provided evidence that matter isn't anything more than a description of data points that we perceive as an object.

Again, tell us, how can matter and volume exists when an object occupying a volume of space can't be an objective three dimensional object? Again:

Physics prevents the entropy of the hamburger from ever exceeding that maximum: If one somehow tried to pack so much entropy into the hamburger that it reached that limit, the hamburger would collapse into a black hole.

Again, this isn't an assumption or an opinion, physics prevents it.

If you're going to make the blind assumption that matter and volume exists, you have to provide evidence that overcomes Physics not just your blind opinion.

Here's more:

"We already know that the universe is a hologram," Bousso says. "It applies not only to the observed universe but to your room, the interior of a black hole, and any other realistic situation we can imagine."

He refers to the surprising fact that information capacity depends on the flat surface area surrounding a volume, rather than the volume itself. Put another way, doubling the side length of a cube only increases the maximum information inside by 4, rather than the logical 8.

Say you're allowed to bring a notecard of information into an exam with you. Wanting to maximize your advantage, you'd logically use a sharp pencil and write as small as possible. Even better, if the rule specified only the size of your learning aid, you could bring an SD card loaded with digital textbooks instead. In daily life, how much information we can store depends heavily on the medium we use to store it.

But the holographic principle establishes a natural limit to our information packing games. Eventually, if we cram enough SD cards into our exam room, the pile will collapse under its own weight and form a black hole. Calculating this limit – the maximum amount of information you can gather in one place – turns out to depend not on the volume of the room, as one might logically expect, but somehow the surface area of the classroom.

www.csmonitor.com...

Here's the kicker:

Even more shocking, that calculation makes no assumptions about what's inside the classroom or what the ultimate nature of reality is: atoms, quarks, or superstrings. It's medium-agnostic.

So when energy is added to a system it's mass varies and is proportional to r squared.

This is about Physics, not your opinions or asinine assertions. There NO EVIDENCE that any quantity called matter exists. Matter is just a description of data points that we perceive as a 3 dimensional object. You ASSUME this 3 dimensional object is material and made out of some magical, elusive substance called matter but there's not a shred of evidence that supports this. This is why your posts are filled with opinion and not any evidence to support anything you're saying.

If we didn't sense it we wouldn't know...senses are all we know.a reply to: andy06shake

a reply to: Cutepants

This supports exactly what I'm saying and shows you don't have a clue as to what matter is. You said:

I am not saying that matter exists only because we have a word for it, please don't put words in my mouth. And indeed we can quantify matter, in different ways; weight, volume, moles. As you said, I can tell you how much matter you have in your cup, if I can measure it accurately. Even if I can't tell you what matter "is".

LOL, this proves my point.

You said we can quantify matter in different ways and then you described different data points!!

You haven't showed any evidence that matter exists in fact you say:

Even if I can't tell you what matter "is".

Of course you can't tell me what matter is. Nobody can because matter is just a description of a collection of data points that we perceive as 3D objects.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: dashen

It's what makes up/govern atoms and is below the protons, neutrons, and electrons that really interesting.

Probably Turtles all the way down really.

You may be on to something there, but you're not the first. The Cosmic Turtle is an enduring mytheme in the creation stories of the Hindu religion (Akupāra), China (pinyin: áo), and the Iroquois and Huron natives of North America.

a reply to: neoholographic

To restate your argument using your own words: matter does not objectively exist because it is just a description of a collection of data points that we perceive as 3D objects.

Neither Cutepants nor I disputed your definition of matter. But there is something very eccentric about saying matter does not objectively exist merely because it turns out to be essentially different to the way some people once conceived it to be. Of course one could say a thing does not objectively exist if it proved to be a purely subjective phenomenon (illusion etc.), but that is not what you're saying.

If a plumber says there's congealed matter blocking your drains, will you insist that it does not exist? Or will you say, "you really shouldn't call it matter, because it's just a collection of data points with no objective existence"?

We seem to have fallen down a semantic trap here.

You provided plenty of sources to support your point, but can you quote any one of those scientists who state that matter does not exist?

a reply to: gell1234

So if you get shot in the head from 2k distant by a sniper with a .50 rifle you would sense it?

Our sense might be all we know or at least have at our disposal to interpret and decern the reality we think we experience but they don't necessarily need to be engaged for the world to come along and bite you on the arse.

People die instantly to a fashion all the time long before the central nervous system ever has a chance engage any of our senses.

a reply to: EvilAxis

Your post proves my point. There's just blind belief that matter exists. You said:

You provided plenty of sources to support your point, but can you quote any one of those scientists who state that matter does not exist?

Of course they don't state matter doesn't exist. Most Scientist are materialist like the Biology Professor I debated and they have a blind belief that matter exists. None of these Scientist can explain what matter is or provide any evidence that it exists.

Just look at your posts and the other persons post. It's nothing but opinion. You guys haven't provided a shred of evidence to support anything you're saying.

I try to provide sources to support what I'm saying in post after post.

It's simple, you have to show that the information capacity of any volume of space is proportional to it's volume. I'll quote this again:

He refers to the surprising fact that information capacity depends on the flat surface area surrounding a volume, rather than the volume itself. Put another way, doubling the side length of a cube only increases the maximum information inside by 4, rather than the logical 8.

www.csmonitor.com...

So your problem isn't with me but the facts.

There's no need for anything called matter, just data. The next question is why does the universe store information like you would see in computer data storage? If there's this objective matter and volume why does the laws of physics behave like they don't exist?

It would make more sense to call subatomic particles pixels on a spacetime screen rather than anything material called matter.

Scientist are now saying spacetime could be an error correcting code. Again, if matter and volume exists, why is the universe behaving like a computer rather than anything material? These are the same quantum error correcting codes we use in quantum computers.



Professor James Gates found codes in his equations and guess what kind of codes he found. ERROR CORRECTING CODES!



Now, if matter and volume is so important, why does the universe protect and preserve information with error correcting codes like a computer?

Is it because when the simulation reboots (big bang) it uses error correcting codes to shield information from the noise in order to keep the simulation intact?

The point is, there's no need for any material substance called matter. Materialism is a religion filled with blind believers.

originally posted by: norhoc
a reply to: neoholographic


You know. I have given a lot of thought to this and it does not matter(no pun intended) what we are it does not change the fact that whatever we are or what ever this all is , it is still our reality. If you found out tomorrow we really were a hologram or a simulation would it truly change the way you live? This is still our reality.

I do not have to prove to you you know that you know you exist. That feeling of existence is called awareness. Awareness is the unmanifest side of consciousness. Two sides of the same coin. Awareness imagines consciousness to be. Matter is the manifest form of consciousness. Awareness is what we are. Consciousness is what we witness. Awareness stands beyond time and space at the zero point. The Eternal Now. That is what we ARE. Consciousness is what we appear to be in linear time. Time itself only last 1 Billion Trillion years. An electron only lasts 1 Billion Trillion Years. We are not the vehicle we use to operate in this realm. All universes exist in us not us in them. We are the eternal reality only. Consciousness will Die. At the end of time and space even God himself will leave You. But You as Awareness ever remain.There can only be one reality all other other universes or parallel universes are all an illusion. They are an illusion because they are transitory and reality is the permanent in the transient.

originally posted by: neoholographic
Materialism is a belief and matter is the chief diety but there's no evidence that something called matter exists. It's just a description of a collection of data points that we perceive as objects. We define those objects as matter but that's just a description of something we perceive not something that has any objective existence.

I would say any description we give to anything does not exist in the objective sense, only the subjective. You can't define or substantiate an object by giving 'all its data points', that is only your personal perception that depends on assumptions made prior to description. It won't change the described objects existence or non-existence in any way, it just is, regardless of description. Even the notion of objectivity I would put into question, since nothing can be described adequately by separating it as an object of inspection from its background or context, a definition of a working chair for instance requires a solid level surface to stand on. And also, objective sort of implies a subject operating in the background even if it is not mentioned.

No that's my point...unlike aliens all we can sense is matter...most of us wouldn't sense a sniper..a reply to: andy06shake

a reply to: gell1234

Trust me though mate if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it fall, it still falls.

I imagine aliens, if indeed they exist within the same spatial dimensions as our own race, sense matter along similar lines.

Do you never find it strange that these alleged alien beings 9/10 resemble the humanoid form and seem rather at ease with our atmospheric pressure/temperature and able to move around in our planet's gravity almost as if they were native to our world?

If indeed aliens exist i imagine they will turn out to be of the extra-dimensional variety as opposed to extraterrestrial and probably from a place or plane of existence not to far away or different from our own.