> we do have a bunch of questions with no answer...
It's ~true, but messy. For example, "scientific thinking" is very often claimed to be the gold standard of how to think, but then it is not at all difficult to find a scientist or some fans who will unironically claim "there is no evidence for God", or even "there is no God"!
Yes, indeed, we as a collective, no matter what we state we know or don't know, are hilarious, especially to God, the creator, the universe (whatever you want to believe in with perceived proof or not). We are hilarious in many ways.
If we see it scientifically, then at the end, our behaviors don't change a thing to the natural order... but hopefully we can all live together on this earth exercising Ying and yang.
I am not an expert on any scientific topic here. You took me to new territories.
There are certainly many interesting things to ponder about, such as how we perceive our world, what is consciousness, why the rules of quantum mechanics are quirky and how it affects the macro world. It really is all interesting.
For each of the problems you mentioned, there is uncertainty even about the definition. Example: Does life have to form on a planet? We think so mainly because it's the only way we've seen that it has happened. But it's conceivable that it could form in an interstellar gas cloud. Or that dark matter (if it exists) could be teeming with it.
Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking we know things we don't. Other times, we overlook the obvious answers. The brain is a funny thing.
Howdy goat guy. This is right up my alley. I haven’t watched a clock in over 20 years. I needed to know for sure time was a temporary construct and meant pretty much nothing.
When you said the difference in “space time” I wanted to shout! You’re on to something.
That is a clue.
At this stage of life I live with only one clock. It came with the stove. Next to the clock is a small sign. It’s over 20 years old and says, “Earth Time”.
If the universe is continually expanding, as we now believe, what happens when it cannot any longer? They’ve dismissed the theory that it reaches a limit and begins to collapse on itself, resulting in another Big Bang, so how does that work now? And if it will never stop expanding how is that possible? Is new matter being generated somewhere to populate the added space? I thought that was supposed to be impossible too. Or does the universe just keep becoming less dense?
I like the theory. It makes deductive sense (although that doesn't mean it will happen!). If you're super interested in a very good read along these lines, one book I really enjoyed is called "The Five Ages of the Universe." It lays bare how little we know, but speculates about the most prominent theories about how the universe will end. Very fun!
This is an interesting topic, not so much the nose knows bc I apparently missed that one, but the idea of things we don’t know. Two of the three you talked about are things most people think they know, aliens and memories. By now, I think we all understand how memories alter over time even if we don’t know the why of it. Aliens on the other hand, follow more of a gut feeling involving what I’ve perceived to be logic- but I guess we don’t really know. I’ve never smelled one, so not even my nose knows. And time is such an abstract, I’m not surprised to see it on this list. Aliens yes, time no lol. Here’s some of my favorite mysteries of all time. If God created the universe, who created God? That one has been ringing in my head from the ripe old age of 5. Another is related to consciousness and free will - do they exist and how. Those random thoughts that pop into your head, where do they come from and why? Oh and ghosts, reality or fiction? Which leads into the afterlife and what really happens when you die? And lastly, I don’t even know who Samantha Fox is. Thanks for that looming rabbit hole.
I was going to say nobody knows what dark matter is, but someone else mentioned it already. So I'll add another one: Nobody knows exactly what the core of the Earth is like. Well, we know some things about it, from seeing how seismic waves travel through it, it seems that everything else is based on modelling and simulations. It fascinates me that we don't know, literally, what's beneath our feet! Here's a nice summary, full of phrases like "still-debated" and "there is currently no consensus on... ": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41725-5
We may not know where the Aliens at but man we’ve got a bunch theories many of which mock the Drake equation as trying to quantify something with variables we can’t tie down. When I peeked down this very rabbit hole I couldn’t believe how much we humans think have thought about this. And with such passion! Nature abhors a vacuum; Humans abhor a mystery
Our ignorance seems to be made evident in the amount of dark matter and energy that supposedly makes up the majority of the universe. Also, we seem to have a very anthropomorphic view of intelligence, and compare everything to humans.
> For instance, nobody knows whether there is alien life out there.
This is a technically tricky claim. For example, consider people who perceive that they meet entities while on DMT - while it is true that we have no proof of the validity of these experiences, it is not true that because of this we know that these experiences are "just drugs".....*and yet*, many a Scientist or Rationalist will tell you just that! This demonstrates how bad even smart people can be at epistemology/logic, and how counter intuitive it is.
Fair enough. I'll restate this more clearly: I don't think anyone out there knows whether there are aliens out there. Mainly, I just wanted an excuse to debunk the Drake equation.
The existence of aliens or a God is more interesting than most other things though I'd say. In my experience, *even thinking about* such ideas causes psychological discomfort for a lot of people.
One of my favorite questions to ask people is what proof or even evidence is there that there is no evidence for God....it is almost guaranteed to rustle people's jimmies something furious!! There seems to be only like 2 or 3 heuristics people have on the matter, and boy do they have faith in their heuristics. Consciousness & culture are so weird.
Pinging off an earlier comment, if the universe is expanding, what is it expanding *into*? For example, let's say you could get into a mindblowingly fast starship and somehow fly all the way out to the edge of the universe: what would that look like? What would *Beyond* the edge of the universe look like?
There's a Doctor Who episode that took a stab at it, but I'd love to know someday.
Most physicists would say there's no "edge" and the question is the same as what was before the Big Bang. No spacetime, no space and no time.
That said, there are lots of ways this could be interpreted, including what I've come to think of as the Ms Pac Man universe, where you just keep going in one direction until you're on the other side of the screen.
If I say 'nobody knows' I usually mean that while there is some current agreed upon explanation for a phenomena that doesn't actually mean that is how the phenomena operates, just that our current explanation works to explain and work with it. The other meaning I usually associate with 'nobody knows' is the fact that what is agreed fact yesterday turns out to be known nonsense tomorrow, this happens more often than we realise.
On time. You mentioned heat death in response to Lee Troutman's comment and this suggests that the universe is, generally, headed towards entropy. It's breaking apart. The order that was there is diminishing. Yet we humans spend our lives imposing order and clearing up chaos, in revolt to the nature of the universe (if our current understanding is accurate). We perceive time linearly and we assume the past to be before and the future to be next yet if we were 'inline' with the universe that could mean we experience time backwards while our bodies gradually waste away (become more chaotic). Though this is fodder for scifi stories more so than anything else. Time may simply be a creation of our perception and a means by which we measure change, which can be felt by time going faster or slower based on what we're doing. A clock measures an equalised perception of time, watch it and it feels slow, but it doesn't measure time. Time can only be experienced. Time observed is change. Again, this is more crude philosophy thoughts than anything else, haha.
Glad you got a lot out of it! I'm interested in this rabbit hole: our perception of time speeds up or slows down depending on how fun the activity is. Why should that be?
We don't know what's before birth and what's after death and what's the meaning of our existence here.
Or whether there is any meaning at all! Great examples.
Some people believe that they know there is Heaven after death.....it would be pretty awesome of they happen to be right!
The wisest sentence is definitely "Nobody knows". Despite so much we discover and question we really know nothing until we un-know...
"Nobody knows" is speculative though. "It may be unknown" is better.
Whatever the saying you choose, we do have a bunch of questions with no answer...
Your proposal is spot on anyways.
> we do have a bunch of questions with no answer...
It's ~true, but messy. For example, "scientific thinking" is very often claimed to be the gold standard of how to think, but then it is not at all difficult to find a scientist or some fans who will unironically claim "there is no evidence for God", or even "there is no God"!
Humans are hilarious.
Yes, indeed, we as a collective, no matter what we state we know or don't know, are hilarious, especially to God, the creator, the universe (whatever you want to believe in with perceived proof or not). We are hilarious in many ways.
If we see it scientifically, then at the end, our behaviors don't change a thing to the natural order... but hopefully we can all live together on this earth exercising Ying and yang.
I am not an expert on any scientific topic here. You took me to new territories.
Andrew will be pleased!
There are certainly many interesting things to ponder about, such as how we perceive our world, what is consciousness, why the rules of quantum mechanics are quirky and how it affects the macro world. It really is all interesting.
For each of the problems you mentioned, there is uncertainty even about the definition. Example: Does life have to form on a planet? We think so mainly because it's the only way we've seen that it has happened. But it's conceivable that it could form in an interstellar gas cloud. Or that dark matter (if it exists) could be teeming with it.
Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking we know things we don't. Other times, we overlook the obvious answers. The brain is a funny thing.
Don't get me started on all the "can AI be conscious" conversations!
What kind of life form is really in the deepest depths of the oceans? The parts we've never been able to get to. That's what I want to know.
Yes! There's plenty right here on Earth that we really don't know. I suspect we'll have our minds blown more than once.
Hold up, back up!
I'm getting mixed messages here.
Just last year, you told us "The Nose Knows" (https://goatfury.substack.com/p/the-nose-knows) - now suddenly nobody knows?
Get your stories straight, man.
As for my favorite unsolved mystery: What really happened to Samantha, Fox Mulder's sister?!
Is a nose a body? It might still be accurate to say both if not.
No "body" knows, but a nose does.
I know a few things about Samantha Fox.
Wait...are YOU the nose, then?!
We may never nose.
Howdy goat guy. This is right up my alley. I haven’t watched a clock in over 20 years. I needed to know for sure time was a temporary construct and meant pretty much nothing.
When you said the difference in “space time” I wanted to shout! You’re on to something.
That is a clue.
At this stage of life I live with only one clock. It came with the stove. Next to the clock is a small sign. It’s over 20 years old and says, “Earth Time”.
Yay!
If the universe is continually expanding, as we now believe, what happens when it cannot any longer? They’ve dismissed the theory that it reaches a limit and begins to collapse on itself, resulting in another Big Bang, so how does that work now? And if it will never stop expanding how is that possible? Is new matter being generated somewhere to populate the added space? I thought that was supposed to be impossible too. Or does the universe just keep becoming less dense?
I should stop now.
Heat death is very fun to think about.
😄
At least that’s a ways off.
If it happens.
I like the theory. It makes deductive sense (although that doesn't mean it will happen!). If you're super interested in a very good read along these lines, one book I really enjoyed is called "The Five Ages of the Universe." It lays bare how little we know, but speculates about the most prominent theories about how the universe will end. Very fun!
Thank you. Sounds interesting.
Super interesting. I would lend you my copy, but since we're not in the same place at the same time (does that even matter to the universe?!?), here's a link: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Ages-Universe-Physics-Eternity/dp/0684865769
Yes, from my perspective it has to do/be in Now.
This is an interesting topic, not so much the nose knows bc I apparently missed that one, but the idea of things we don’t know. Two of the three you talked about are things most people think they know, aliens and memories. By now, I think we all understand how memories alter over time even if we don’t know the why of it. Aliens on the other hand, follow more of a gut feeling involving what I’ve perceived to be logic- but I guess we don’t really know. I’ve never smelled one, so not even my nose knows. And time is such an abstract, I’m not surprised to see it on this list. Aliens yes, time no lol. Here’s some of my favorite mysteries of all time. If God created the universe, who created God? That one has been ringing in my head from the ripe old age of 5. Another is related to consciousness and free will - do they exist and how. Those random thoughts that pop into your head, where do they come from and why? Oh and ghosts, reality or fiction? Which leads into the afterlife and what really happens when you die? And lastly, I don’t even know who Samantha Fox is. Thanks for that looming rabbit hole.
Laura, I cannot answer all of these existential questions, but one is much easier to start addressing than the others: https://youtu.be/pXEN57rFnIM
Nice article. I really like that quote you included from Contact.
Sagan had such a wonderful way of putting things.
I was going to say nobody knows what dark matter is, but someone else mentioned it already. So I'll add another one: Nobody knows exactly what the core of the Earth is like. Well, we know some things about it, from seeing how seismic waves travel through it, it seems that everything else is based on modelling and simulations. It fascinates me that we don't know, literally, what's beneath our feet! Here's a nice summary, full of phrases like "still-debated" and "there is currently no consensus on... ": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41725-5
Yes! This is a great example. I bet most folks have no idea how little we actually know about this.
We may not know where the Aliens at but man we’ve got a bunch theories many of which mock the Drake equation as trying to quantify something with variables we can’t tie down. When I peeked down this very rabbit hole I couldn’t believe how much we humans think have thought about this. And with such passion! Nature abhors a vacuum; Humans abhor a mystery
Good point. We'd rather make something up than admit we just don't know!
Our ignorance seems to be made evident in the amount of dark matter and energy that supposedly makes up the majority of the universe. Also, we seem to have a very anthropomorphic view of intelligence, and compare everything to humans.
Agree with both!
> For instance, nobody knows whether there is alien life out there.
This is a technically tricky claim. For example, consider people who perceive that they meet entities while on DMT - while it is true that we have no proof of the validity of these experiences, it is not true that because of this we know that these experiences are "just drugs".....*and yet*, many a Scientist or Rationalist will tell you just that! This demonstrates how bad even smart people can be at epistemology/logic, and how counter intuitive it is.
Fair enough. I'll restate this more clearly: I don't think anyone out there knows whether there are aliens out there. Mainly, I just wanted an excuse to debunk the Drake equation.
It's kind of neat that it is possible that someone actually does know though eh?
Well sure! It's possible that people know all sorts of things I don't think anyone knows, though.
I have to admit that there could be someone out there who knows whether any gods exist, and if so, which ones. I'd admit the same about aliens.
The existence of aliens or a God is more interesting than most other things though I'd say. In my experience, *even thinking about* such ideas causes psychological discomfort for a lot of people.
One of my favorite questions to ask people is what proof or even evidence is there that there is no evidence for God....it is almost guaranteed to rustle people's jimmies something furious!! There seems to be only like 2 or 3 heuristics people have on the matter, and boy do they have faith in their heuristics. Consciousness & culture are so weird.
This was cool, and I really enjoyed reading it and thinking about the topics raised.
Hey, thanks!
Pinging off an earlier comment, if the universe is expanding, what is it expanding *into*? For example, let's say you could get into a mindblowingly fast starship and somehow fly all the way out to the edge of the universe: what would that look like? What would *Beyond* the edge of the universe look like?
There's a Doctor Who episode that took a stab at it, but I'd love to know someday.
Most physicists would say there's no "edge" and the question is the same as what was before the Big Bang. No spacetime, no space and no time.
That said, there are lots of ways this could be interpreted, including what I've come to think of as the Ms Pac Man universe, where you just keep going in one direction until you're on the other side of the screen.
Also: nobody knows for sure!
If I say 'nobody knows' I usually mean that while there is some current agreed upon explanation for a phenomena that doesn't actually mean that is how the phenomena operates, just that our current explanation works to explain and work with it. The other meaning I usually associate with 'nobody knows' is the fact that what is agreed fact yesterday turns out to be known nonsense tomorrow, this happens more often than we realise.
On time. You mentioned heat death in response to Lee Troutman's comment and this suggests that the universe is, generally, headed towards entropy. It's breaking apart. The order that was there is diminishing. Yet we humans spend our lives imposing order and clearing up chaos, in revolt to the nature of the universe (if our current understanding is accurate). We perceive time linearly and we assume the past to be before and the future to be next yet if we were 'inline' with the universe that could mean we experience time backwards while our bodies gradually waste away (become more chaotic). Though this is fodder for scifi stories more so than anything else. Time may simply be a creation of our perception and a means by which we measure change, which can be felt by time going faster or slower based on what we're doing. A clock measures an equalised perception of time, watch it and it feels slow, but it doesn't measure time. Time can only be experienced. Time observed is change. Again, this is more crude philosophy thoughts than anything else, haha.
Thanks for the post, was good to ponder.
Glad you got a lot out of it! I'm interested in this rabbit hole: our perception of time speeds up or slows down depending on how fun the activity is. Why should that be?
On the time “speed up”:
When you are 5 years old, a year is 1/5th of your existence.
When you’re 50, it’s only 1/50th.
☺️ you’re welcome.
Sure, but that doesn't help explain why time flies when you're having fun, and draaaaaags when you're not.