What is the force?

CaesarEJW wrote: I LOVE YOU!

CaesarEJW wrote: You're kidding, right?
Yes, we know quite a bit relative to our past, but you obviously forget how vast the Universe is.
ALL POSSIBLE ATTAINABLE KNOWLEDGE
Do you not understand that statement?
I am not just talking about physics and mathematics, I literally mean everything.
And ask any scientist, what we know is vastly outweighed by what we do not know.
The matter that you and me interact with, are made out of, visible matter, only makes up 11% of the known universe. The rest is dark matter and energy, which we know nothing about, besides that it exists. So right there, evidence of "other things" out there.
Oh, and let's not forget the other dimensions, which we also know very little of besides their existence.
So more "other things".
The inner workings of the quantum realm, still bewilder even the brightest of us!
Or how about what happens on the other side of a black hole? Is there an other side? It's unknown, but i would dare to also classify this as an "other thing".
Hell, the majority of our own damn ocean is unexplored!
How many "other things", unknown things, do you propose exist there? I bet there is a crap ton!
I could go on and on, seriously, there is plenty of evidence for my statement.
I LOVE YOU!

I agree with you on this one. we know approximately 0.0003 or 0.0001% of all the knowledge there is so we have a long way to go (of course this is just an estimation based on right now and just an example of how advanced we are compared to everything else judging based on how we're a 0.7 class civilization)

How do you come up with that number?

It is said that when Chairephon asked the oracle in Delphi whether there was a wiser man in the world than Socrates it allegedly answered in the negative. Socrates was at first surprised by that response, believing that he new so little and that surely someone out there must be better in this regard. So he sought out to riddle and question the population, asking men who thought themselves wise until they could answer him no longer. In the end he concluded that the oracle must have said as it did because unlike the wise men he exposed as knowing very little indeed, he himself wouldn't have the arrogance to think himself a wise man in the first place, and was wiser in that sense thusly.
I find it debatable whether it was fair of Socrates to conclude that one is unwise or unknowing for at some point breaking under the weight of ever more pedantic questioning. Nor is it a mark of humility to declare oneself wiser than the rest after making such an effort to humiliate them.

Nowadays it has become something of a must for amateur philosophers to emphasize how little it is they believe they know. Humility is a virtue after all, and thery think it so humble to show off to the world just how virtuously humble they are. Then some go one step further. Instead of speaking for themselves they try to "share" their virtuousness with the world, say of us all how little we all know.
Well, I shall not be so bold as to speak on others' behalf, especially ones who did not elect me to do so. But one of the things I for one do not know is just how much there is to know or whether that is an amount it makes any sense to speak of at all. I'm not aware of a means to find that out either.

So when people come along and say things like

CaesarEJW wrote: If you made a pie chart of all the possible attainable knowledge in the Universe, so far our species, while certainly clever (but not wise!) in the ways of manipulation of matter and energy itself, we have only yet carved out a slice from this pie chart, thinner than an atom.
The tiniest possible sliver.
This is just an analogy of course, but you see what I am getting at?
We have barely broken the surface of reality, our knowledge is woefully limited!

the first question that comes to mind is how on earth they could possibly know this. I'm certainly not privy to that information. Is then someone else? I'd love to see their reasoning.
But what we get instead for questioning such a bold assertion usually goes along the lines of "You're kidding, right?" instead of any kind of computation or demonstration of the quantities involved. Come to think of it, just how do they measure the "amount" of knowledge anyway? Oh well.

For we do know for certain, that we know nothing for certain.

Look, you can use the royal "we" for yourself if thou so pleaseth, your highness, but some of us actually do know quite a few things for certain. In Euclidean spaces, the Pythagorean theorem holds. I know this for certain. I can prove it for certain. I can derive from it that, for instance, the square root of two is an irrational number and know that for absolutely certain, too. I can prove Schwartz's theorem and L'Hospital's rule and it didn't took me a semester's worth of study to learn those proofs. I know for certain that all bachelors are unmarried, I know for certain that the contrapositive of a conditional is equivalent to the positive, and I know for certain that De Morgan's laws are true for propositions and for sets. I can keep going. There is any number of things we know for certain and some of us would be delighted to educate your highness about them, too.

However, the majority of happenings in this Universe lay outside our natural framework, hence the development of things such as math, which allows us to comprehend that which would otherwise be incomprehensible.

Well here is something I don't know. I don't know what you are talking about here. What does this mean?

Another thing (besides our innate ignorance) is for certain however.
Something philosophers and religious folk have guessed at, something science has proven.
It has been called many things, and viewed under many different lights, from many varied perspectives, but I believe, underlying this all, is the same phenomenon.
And this is the principle of balance.
The laws that govern the Universe, and its structure, are improbably, but perfectly balanced.
Our planet's existence, and our own for that matter, was only possible because of a series of perfectly balanced accidents.

What do you mean by balanced? How i the world does science "prove" anything and what does the principle of balance say exactly anyway?

I dare not digress any further for fear of doing myself and others a disservice, for my knowledge of science is only on a basic theoretical level.
But from what I have seen, learning about this and that, balance exists everywhere, in every aspect of reality, if you only look for it.

Well, sure, seek and ye shall find, as the Bible puts it. If you look for it, you'll find what ever any place. But what is balance in this context? How do I recognize it when I see it? And if it is everywhere anyway, then how can I meaningfully tell that it is, if there is no direction I can look to compare the thing that has balance to one that doesn't? It's kind of this same problem all of these absolute statements have. "Everything is energy". "The Holy Spirit is all around us". Were a statement like this accurate, we couldn't tell that it was.

CaesarEJW wrote: You're kidding, right?
Yes, we know quite a bit relative to our past, but you obviously forget how vast the Universe is.
ALL POSSIBLE ATTAINABLE KNOWLEDGE
Do you not understand that statement?
I am not just talking about physics and mathematics, I literally mean everything.
And ask any scientist, what we know is vastly outweighed by what we do not know.

Where is the demonstration? Obviously you think you have some kind of estimate of "how much" there is out there to know. What is that number and how did you come by it? How did you come by "how much" we know also? Setting aside how irrelevant it is what any or every scientist would estimate on that question, just how many/whom did you ask? I for one would not have answered like that because I try to only say things I can vaguely understand the meaning of, let alone things that I believe are accurate. I don't know the weight of knowledge, so I couldn't say whether what we have of it is "outweighed" by what we don't or what that even means.

The matter that you and me interact with, are made out of, visible matter, only makes up 11% of the known universe. The rest is dark matter and energy, which we know nothing about, besides that it exists. So right there, evidence of "other things" out there.

Dark matter and dark energy aren't just some mystery goo we suddenly found as we were walking through outer space, you know. It's not that we know of their existence and nothing else about them. Rather, the evidence indicates forces of a particular character that are not accounted for by conventional matter and energy, and we know this because we know how those work and we know how dark matter and dark energy must be different. "Dark matter" and "dark energy" are names we put to those things. They aren't just some objects that came with nifty paper labels and no functional description. We know some minimal facts about how they work well before we gave them a name.

Oh, and let's not forget the other dimensions, which we also know very little of besides their existence.

Angle/direction is a dimension. Distance is a dimension. So is mass. And time. There are a few more. What "other dimensions" are you speaking of? "Other" than what exactly? And if its going to be some sci-fi parallel universes stuff as I expect is what you mean, I'd be delighted to see what evidence you have that would lead you to think that we "know" of their existence (what ever existence even means then).

The inner workings of the quantum realm, still bewilder even the brightest of us!

Hmm barely. If you walk in with strong classical intuitions - a likely scenario if you spent much of your time studying classical physics - then yea, some of those are going to be shattered. Some of the things you will see will seem unintuitive at first and perhaps difficult to put into intuitively sensible words. But mathematically the theory makes perfect sense and the predictions it makes are some of the most accurate we have ever had. And it's not even particularly difficult either. I for one find classical electrodynamics a decent chunk more challenging than quantum theory.
There are people who work with experiments regarding quantum physics and most of those experiments are improving measurement accuracy, not actually seeking to discover anything new at this point because of the sheer completeness of the theory we already have. This notion that quantum physics is incomprehensible is outdated by well over half a century. It is one of the most robust, best understood theories in all of science and unless you walk in with heavy biases, little in it is even really that surprising considering the principles and observations it is derived from and designed to account for.

Or how about what happens on the other side of a black hole? Is there an other side? It's unknown, but i would dare to also classify this as an "other thing".

If memory serves, you did stipulate that you are talking only about attainable knowledge. I'm not convinced that there exists in principle a way to find out what lies beyond the event horizon, not unless we discard relativity. There is in my estimation a good chance that this is a thing that is unknowable, and as such doesn't factor into your computation of how much we know as a fraction of how much there is to know.

Hell, the majority of our own damn ocean is unexplored!
How many "other things", unknown things, do you propose exist there? I bet there is a crap ton!
I could go on and on, seriously, there is plenty of evidence for my statement.

There is plenty of things we don't know, yes. But you came at it with a pie chart as if you had done some actual accounting of how many things they are. Even assuming they are finitely many. I wouldn't say that listing a few of them - and with mistakes at that - quite cuts it. Would you?


Geez, what a lenthy post this has become...

"You have touched the Force. What does it feel like?"

"It is like a cloud, a mist that drifts from living creature to creature, set in motion by currents and eddies. It is the eye of the storm, the passions of all living things turned into energy, into a chorus. It is the rising swell at the end of life, the promise of new territories and new blood, the call of new mysteries in the dark." - Kreia

So for all the talking about the literary (what's the adjective form of video game?) force, we don't exactly have the force powers of any Jedi or Sith.
So how does that statement cash out for you?

Daniel L. wrote: "You have touched the Force. What does it feel like?"

"It is like a cloud, a mist that drifts from living creature to creature, set in motion by currents and eddies. It is the eye of the storm, the passions of all living things turned into energy, into a chorus." I- Kreia

That part of it is the way in which I would say I picture the idea of the "spiritual/emotional" part of the force. Call it a eloquent way of saying vibes. That is at least to me, I happen to like that game a lot lol. Some of those statements are pretty good I think as far as tying it to the myth Jediism stands on.

Much Love,
Kobos

I'm stating some basic Socrates, which is something along the lines of "True wisdom is knowing that you know nothing".
I'm much more a philosopher than a scientist, so of course I embarrassed myself a bit, however I was only using dark matter and junk to point out that our knowledge is incredibly limited, which is not suprising considering that the modern form of scientific inquiry has been around for a short time relative to how long our species has existed.
The Universe is huge beyond the scope of our cognitive ability to perceive it, the scale of the damn thing is almost impossible for us to visualize.
So I feel it is safe to assume that there is quite a bit of shit we don't know about.
That's what I was mainly getting at.
Also, the principal of balance....
If you don't understand what I mean, that's your own limitation.
Not everything is comprehensible through objective data, there are somethings that are only comprehensable through
intuitive and abstract means.
Such as the concept of the Tao.
And thats all I'm getting at.
Also I'm a goddamn weirdo, so its hard for me to put my thoughts into words sometimes, so its no surprise that we have come to this minor impasse.
But you are correct my friend, just know I only meant to explain from a philosophical perspective.

CaesarEJW wrote: I'm stating some basic Socrates, which is something along the lines of "True wisdom is knowing that you know nothing".

Yes, exactly. You are telling us all how truly wise you are.

The Universe is huge beyond the scope of our cognitive ability to perceive it, the scale of the damn thing is almost impossible for us to visualize.

How do you know?

Also, the principal [sic] of balance....
If you don't understand what I mean, that's your own limitation.

Bwahaha! Well aren't thou holier than me, then! Truly, I am beneath thine wisdom and my gratitude for wasting any of thine precious time on lowly me is so boundless as the universe itself.

Not everything is comprehensible through objective data, there are somethings that are only comprehensable through intuitive and abstract means.

Yes, and some things are only comprehensible by your intuition in particular and if someone doesn't get it without your laying them out, well, that's really on them, isn't it. Too bad...

Also I'm a goddamn weirdo, so its hard for me to put my thoughts into words sometimes, so its no surprise that we have come to this minor impasse [sic].

Oh, please, don't beat yourself up like that. No, you are explaining yourself perfectly well. As you said, I'm just too limited to grasp your wisdom, that's all.

But you are correct my friend, just know I only meant to explain from a philosophical perspective.

What stopped you?


The reason I have no clue what you mean by balance is that you made no effort explaining what it is you could possibly mean by that. If the laws that govern the universe are "perfectly balanced" as you put it, what other universe exactly are you comparing ours to? What would a non-"perfectly balanced" universe look like, what makes you think that such a thing would be possible, and by what criteria would you try and tell the difference? In other words, when you say something like that, what do you mean? How do we know balance when we see it?

Rex wrote: So for all the talking about the literary (what's the adjective form of video game?) force, we don't exactly have the force powers of any Jedi or Sith.
So how does that statement cash out for you?

We don't have them yet, but they're possible in my view. What would be important is how that sort of power is used..

Think of Joseph Campbell's recount of Jesus in the wilderness..

He had the personal temptation of turning stones to bread. Using your power for person enrichment.. Body

He had the social temptation of the mountain top. Using your power to dominate the will of others.. Mind

Then he had the Transcendent temptation on top of the Temple. Using your power pridefully and seeking more power for power's sake.. Spirit

So I don't think "if we have that power" is the question. I think it's more "how would we use it"..