Imagine a number line where here (where the centre of the lens of one of your eyes are) is zero. [Which eye is up to you!] The distance between zero and 1 is 1cm. Pick some things (on you, in your house, on earth, the solar system, Milky Way, Universe) and say what number would be on the number line when the line reaches that place, ie., the computer screen 60cm from my head would be 60 on the number line. (You can also get into decimals as well, ie., how far is it from the lens to that dust particle that just landed on top of your lens ?)
The line is straight and can go through things but is affected by space-time. Perhaps it should be thought of as the line travelled by some strange sub-particle as it travels from creation in the lens of your eye (yes direction would matter).
You can easily get up to really big numbers that imply that it would take many years to travel along your number line to get to that number (to make things easy assume travel at the speed of light.) With one of these super-big numbers what would have been happening at zero when the trip started ?
(okay - your eye wouldn't have existed then and if it had, you would've moved over the years - so let just assume I mean where the lens of your eye is now but before it was there!)
Is there a problem here ? What if we are talking about a number that would be at the place at the moment of the big bang. Where is here then ? Does the 3 dimensions of space a trillionth of a second of the big bang represent the whole universe now so that one could say that somewhere in the supertiny universe is the place that 'grows into' here? Or is 'here' somehow independent of the objects in the universe as Newtonian phsyics implies ?
Enjoy the challenge and comment on the strange questions it suggests. And please raise any more weird ideas the challenge implies.
Muhahahahahahhahahaha!
I have secret intelligence! As we speak, you are being watched, watched!
Your country may be safe...... for five minutes!!!!!
Officially Signed and Most Graciously Authenticated, His Most Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Christophe Wilhelm XII, by the grace of God.
spies observing my country
As my country exists in an infinite number of states it is not possible that you could be observing all possible me's. Of course, you could have an infinite number of spies but as your spy (in his infinite number of forns) and my country are not intrinsically linked (like my brain and body are) then it logically implies these four conditions
1. your spies observe my country
2. your spies do not observe my country
3. there are not spies but there is my country
4. there are no spies and there is not my country
Therefore, you can not possibly be observing all of my country.
Furthermore, as 5 minutes is clearly 300 seconds from now then the time is never reached when you can invade my country. So stare all you want.
It's past my bedtime.
Infinitous Observation
However, if my spies exist inside your mind and spy on it from there, then they perpetually observe and feel all aberrations and anomalies which exist in your mind both physical and subphysical.
Have you checked lately? I seem to have mentally invaded your surreal country. :-)
Officially Signed and Most Graciously Authenticated, His Most Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Christophe Wilhelm XII, by the grace of God.
Solipsism or ......?
So my country's only an internal state of my mind? And if so why not everything else (since your spies are internally represented in there as well).
Which of course leads to solipsism. If so, then you are just another figment of the electrochemical events / states in my brain. Therefore, your spies are not your spies as you don't exist independently of me - they are therefore my spies.
Alternatively of course, I could be an emergent property that arises from the neural events in your brain & so my country would be your country & so why would you bother spying on it in the first place?
There is a third possibility (of course!) that my country is real (even in all it's infinite possibilities (perhaps an infinite number of universes coexist simultaneously) ). & that your spies are wasting their time hanging out in my mind.
In fact, my country is like a complex computer program which I designed but the ramifiations of the program running I can not predict or control (perhaps like the Spinozoan-Einsteinean God). Therefore, while the country initially existed only in my mind it has taken on properties that are logically coherent with it's initial state but have not been predicted or selected by me. Consequently again, your spies are wasting their time hanging on in the limited finite structures of my mind .
Finally, I've known along about your spies & I've been feeding them contradictory information. When it is all compiled the contradictions will cancel out all the data & leave you with exactyl nothing.
Is this slightly off topic for this challenge ?
But..........
There is a fourth possibility!
What if your country is real and my spies are real too? They just observe (they are physical being though) like a leech on your brain and if you were feeding them contradictory information they would know about that so they weren't listening. Or....... your country doesn't exist and nor do my spies and we are just talking about a figment of our imaginations!
Officially Signed and Most Graciously Authenticated, His Most Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Christophe Wilhelm XII, by the grace of God.
SURE
If my country is real then spying on me wouldn't be much help - esp. if I was a Spinozean inventor of countries & was letting it now run its own course.
All contradictory comments are in ciphers that make them look true. Hence, your spies would not recognise them, & if your spies do correctly detect a contradiction - then both the orignal idea & it's inverse (the contradictory) would automatically self-destruct.
But of course you know the truth about my country & your spies.
Very Good.
I disagree with the first section of that but,
NEITHER OF THEM EXIST.
Officially Signed and Most Graciously Authenticated, His Most Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Christophe Wilhelm XII, by the grace of God.
P.S If you want to continue this, I'll continue it on the random ideas page.
P.SS That bit above and this bit are Officially Signed and Most Graciously Authenticated, His Most Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Christophe Wilhelm XII, by the grace of God too.
RANDOM IDEAS
I'm trying to figure out how to get a coherent message out of random ideas!
Any further comments will be on the RI page & be suitably random (p=0.878 for being on the random ideas page; but p< .0001 for the ideas being suitably random).
Multiverse
The idea of more than one universe is interesting. I think Nick's notion of an infinite number of universes coexisting simultaneously sounds like God. Of course, the problem with this extremely vague idea is that it can't ever be observed or tested.
There could well be more than one universe, but why infinite? Infinity is an abstract concept that cannot exist in the real physical world - it's a quantity that can never be obtained.
INFINITY ONLY AN ABSTRACT CONCEPT ?
so paradoxes are everywhere but nowhere ? generalised mathematical laws that hold for the open set of numbers do not exist ?
infinity is not a quantity it's a concept - to do with sets or a single thing being open ended, unbounded yet nevertheless not including everything (ie., the infinite set of primes does not include the composite numbers) - I can not accept infinity is only a mental construct, a creation of the thinking mind - infinity must have some reality (however paradoxical that is)
infinity is like the mind - maybe both are epiphenomena but each is necessary to explain the world we experience