/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.3311282]

What does /sci/ think about "Nothingness" Can there truly be any such thing? I have honestly had many sleepless nights trying to contemplate this.
Personally i don't think there is any such thing is "nothinginess" there always has to be something.

[Anonymous No.3311329]

It's called Zen. I will leave you with this because there is nothing left to say that won't sound like a riddle out of a horoscope.

[Anonymous No.3311335]

>>3311329
I see where you are coming from, i was actually just watching a alan watts video on the subject.

[Anonymous No.3311355]

>>3311282
>Personally i don't think there is any such thing is "nothinginess" there always has to be something.

I agree.

Zen isn't nothingness. Nothingness is death, cessation of existence

[Anonymous No.3311365]

see: krauss

[Anonymous No.3311372]

"The place where nothingness exists, does not exist."

This really helped me to understand the concept.

[Anonymous No.3311380]

what exactly do you mean by nothingness op? your question is too broad.

you mean absolute vaccum? what happens after death?

what exactly?

[Anonymous No.3311382]

nothingness is an example of the human intellect going beyond its means. the human intellect can only extrapolate based on what it has observed, but humans have never observed 'nothing'; they have no intellectual grasp upon it.

[Anonymous No.3311385]

>>3311380
>what happens after death

entropy is a thing

[Anonymous No.3311388]

>>3311385
well, you're looking at it in a third person perspective.

[Anonymous No.3311396]

Nothingness could be maximum entropy. While you still have energy, it can never, ever again form any thing. Nothing.
I think that's the closest thing to nothingness I can find.

[Anonymous No.3311402]

No, nothingness cannot exist, and does not exist. If it existed, it wouldn't be nothing.

[Anonymous No.3311411]

Can there be such a thing as nothingness?

No, by definition nothing is not a thing.

[Anonymous No.3311422]

Perhaps op, you mean an area of space where no particles, and no energy exists.

Space itself is energy, so again, no.

[Anonymous No.3311425]

Just like infinity.
It doesn't exist either.
Or zero.
They're abstracts. Approximations.

[Anonymous No.3311427]

>>3311380
I mean in both the philosophical sense, the state of "not being" the absence of everything.
also in scientific sense vacuum isn't nothing either, it's filled with virtual particles popping in and out of existence, and we are only beginning to speculate about the properties of dark matter and dark energy

[Anonymous No.3311431]

>>3311335
Don't grasp the concepts, grasp the infinity at hand.

[Anonymous No.3311436]

>>3311282
From an human's point of view, this is nothingness.

"silence"... that gave me the chills :/

[Anonymous No.3311448]

>>3311436
The thing that is coming for all of us, I still fear it. I want to put it off for as long as possible.

[Anonymous No.3311453]

'Nothing', in this context, is a word without meaning. It's an example of a concept that is too vague to be meaningful but so common that people can't grasp that it is meaningless. In common language it is used as a relationship between what is expected and what is a matter of fact -- typically the absence of what is expected (what is expected is usually determined by context). "There is nothing on my plate" is a comparison between what is expected (food, a fork, whatever have you) and the fact that it is absent. Notice there are still unexpected things on your plate, be it residue from the minerals in the water last used to wash the plate, dust, air, etc...

Now people love to forget about this relational fact in an attempt to do philosophy, but philosophy is not about making things more vague, but rather less vague. They usually think it makes them appear deep, but their lack of analytic abilities show here, and anyone with a trained mind cannot help but think any analysis of this concept void of context is rather pedestrian and juvenile.

[Anonymous No.3311470]

You're asking if "Nothing" = "Thing"
0 =/= 1

[Anonymous No.3311478]

Nothing is the set of all elements in the empty set.

[Anonymous No.3311635]

>>3311453
op here again, I'm not trying to invoke any spooky knowledge or trying imply that i know something which is very profound, i just want to see thoughts of the educated people on /sci/.
>Now people love to forget about this relational fact in an attempt to do philosophy
well In order to fully comprehend the the ramifications of a state which is devoid of what we call "everything" we must ponder on that question, let me ask it in another way WHY IS THERE "SOMETHING" RATHER THEN "NOTHING"

[Anonymous No.3311682]

>>3311635
It's simple really, that question doesn't mean anything.

[Anonymous No.3311702]

If there is no nothing, then how could anything move? If everything was a something, then all of existence would be one solid unmoving block.

[Anonymous No.3311780]

>>3311682
op again

You're making an assertion that it does not mean anything but please elaborate why and how it does not.

It's like asking "What happened before big bang" and you can easily avoid the question by saying "There was no before big bang" But Just because we cant perceive something directly, does not mean we can't speculate/discuss it. Hence Metaphysics/Philosophy, sure we may never know any answer to them but to say that discussing it is pointless does not seem right.

[Krakengineer !!5XY+x7grkpt No.3311823]

Pic related.

Empty set is a cool guy. He is nothing and doesn't afraid of anything.

[Anonymous No.3311824]

>>3311780
>"There was no before big bang"

That's actually what scientists will answer to the question. :)

[Anonymous No.3311899]

>>3311780
The issue is that you're creating an idea by inconsistently and incorrectly using a term.

[Anonymous No.3312003]

>>3311780
If you prefer: you can ask the question because there is something (the universe, you). Not the other way around.

Or is it just a clever of saying nothing? i dunno lol

[Anonymous No.3312145]

>>3311899

[Anonymous No.3312185]

>>3312145
wat

[Anonymous No.3312238]

>>3312185
>Slang that means "Give me a break." Or anything similar in meaning.
>"I got laid last night!"

>"Nigga please."

[Anonymous No.3312244]

>>3312185
When you accidently bump into/are in the way of a black girl. Then when you try to say sorry you get slapped in the face with a "Nigga Please!" followed by a string of insults including ones aimed at your ethnicity, mom, fashion sense, Etc. And it all ends with a snap of the fingers and a bob of the head and she walks off. Leaving you in a total state of confusion.
Johnson: Oops!, I'm so-
Shaquandaya: Nigga Please!, You look like you just came out of the thrift store with yo cheap ass. Yo mom was a poor white trash hooker and you look straight up retarded! Crazy fuckin' crackas, think they can accidently walk into me!
Johnson:...What just happened?

[Anonymous No.3312249]

>>3312185
op here, i already defined what i meant by "nothingness"
>The issue is that you're creating an idea by inconsistently and incorrectly using a term.
How am i incorrectly and inconsistently using the term?
As to call the discussion foolish This is a direct quote from wikipedia "However, "nothingness" has been treated as a serious subject worthy of research for a very long time. In philosophy, to avoid linguistic traps over the meaning of "nothing", a phrase such as not-being is often employed to unambiguously make clear what is being discussed."
"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr., speech at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 8, 1952"

[Anonymous No.3312264]

>>3312244
>>3312238

[Anonymous No.3312292]

>>3312249
Basically. When we reach the desert that is the end of kowledge reviewed by peers, nothing on /sci/ will be deemed worthy of conversation.

That is kind of normal. And kind of annoying at times.
Your personal opinions and criticize will, by default, considered naive or ignorant at best .
Unless someone is feeling like being creative instead of being only repeating what other, more worthy individuals concluded (not from their ass most of the time, from years and years of study)
That doesn't mean that nothing good can come from non-experts/researcher, it only means that the odds that it is the case are very, very slim (supposedly, remember that probabilities can not really predict anything , since they are but mere educated guesses in the end).

[Anonymous No.3312342]

>>3312292
I understand your point bro, and that was my sole intent, to make people think, i think some very bright and creative people browse this boards and we could have a healthy discussion.
Yes i know that science too can be a dogma, dogma that empirical evidence is the only thing that prevails and that is not necessarily a bad thing albeit a limiting one.
I stated at the beginning the intent is not to invoke any spooky knowledge but merely to discuss the possibilities.
I just spent 2 hours watching a BBC documentary on the topic(4:30 am here now) which anyone interested on the topic would find interesting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ8rd7AkMmY

>captcha religious ntrawase

[Anonymous No.3312504]

>>3312342

I'll take a look, thanks

I'm starting stephen hawking's " a short story of time" then " The Grand Design" . , I'm kind of excited about it

[Anonymous No.3312533]

>>3312504
op here
I own both and have read through them both, i wouldn't say i read each and every word but i find many things repeating itself and writing style isn't really that engaging but from a scientific perspective they are good reads.
You should also check out Brian greene's books, amazing stuff.

[Anonymous No.3312562]

>Personally i don't think there is any such thing is "nothinginess" there always has to be something.

I've thought similar things too OP (and I'm sure most people here do as well).

However, I think the problem is that it is so incomprehensible that we cannot even ask the question properly.
For example you said:
> i don't think there IS any such THING [as] "nothinginess"

Do you see the problem? You are wording the question in such a way that "nothingness" is itself "something".

[Anonymous No.3312603]

>>3312553
Exactly, This "Everything" comprises what we call reality, a familiar, comforting and relying thing that makes sense.

If we completely remove all the stuff there is what is it that is left? Is What left truly "nothing" It's confusing and it's as if it's hard to even talk about in human language because if you can see my point.

Aristotle believed that nature abhorred vacuum( them perceived as nothing) a thought which was later shattered, and then brought back again in a way by quantum mechanics. scientifically, is it possible to have "nothing"?
Philosophically Why is there something, rather then "nothing"? Why is there "being" rather than "not being"

[Anonymous No.3312654]

>>3312603
Because there isn't any alternative to "being" . There is no being actually. This is a human concept used to navigate in this reality.

[Anonymous No.3312674]

>>3312654
op here
interesting, mind elaborating?

[Niveus !qyCeV9YlYI No.3312766]

Absolute nothingness doesn't exist. That's why there's shit, and not nothing. If it was possible for nothingness to be all that there was then there wouldn't be shit. But there is shit, so it's impossible. The only shit that's possible is the shit that is, everything else is just a bunch of bullshit.