Things that cause you to question

[Lenin64]

Pretty much everything we can see is matter. What in the world is fire though?

 

Plasma, I believe.

[NoMoreDead]

Ever since I took physics, I have random thoughts about how much energy an object has when it's traveling through the air. Another similar situation is when I "shoot" an empty bottle/can/bag into a garbage can, and it takes a whole bunch of crazy bounces and then goes in. I begin to wonder; "What are the exact odds of that happening? What other factors acted upon that."

 

 

 

I dislike this quite a bit. It makes me think way too much about an empty Pepsi can.

 

 

 

I also often have strokes of genius (or at least I'd like to think of them as genius) at the most inopportune times. I'll be in the middle of a History test, and I'll randomly think about a brilliant new way to approach situation X or problem Y (Like a new way to arrange my room so that I have more space, or a slightly faster way to solve a math problem, or a musical lyric that I'd love to write down).

 

 

 

I have a feeling I'll be contributing a lot to this thread :

[Skull]

I question my perception of reality and how it differs from that of others. Is the way we sense things actually the same? Or is it totally different for some unexplainable reason? Like say what I understand to be blue may look totally different to someone else, even if we're both seeing something we understand to be blue. What goes on inside the heads of people around me? Are those people actually there, or are they a projection if my imagination? Am I actually lying in a mental institution in some world foreign to me seeing what I think is reality, but is actually contained within my mind? Is what I believe to be real actually just a program occupying my mind while my body is being used as a power source by artificially intelligent robots? (Ok, I stole it from the matrix... but it really makes you think, something like that could be going on and we'd be none the wiser.)

 

 

 

Give me the red pill and show me how deep the rabbit hole goes.

 

 

 

Seriously, sorry about the matrix references, it's just a great movie and it fits with the topic.

[Kenshinjapan]

Time, how once each second passes, it's gone forever.

[fgfuyfyuiuy0]

since i saw the truman show i constantly imagine that my life is being filmed by thousands of tiny cameras and that everyone around me is acting, now i pass the curse onto you. there is actually a psychological stage where you think that everything you do is being watched and judged by other people, its supposed to occur in adolescents but i guess i never outgrew it :|

 

 

 

doesnt really fit here but i quite often think about how far people have come in terms of this.

 

 

 

If you were trapped in the jungle with access to rocks and things, how long would it take you to make a battery or something else seemingly simple? because all the items are there to create it, but i wouldnt even know were to start.

 

 

 

thats how i put technology in perspective when i start to take it for granted

 

 

 

Yeah. I was around like 8 or 9 when I saw The Truman Show. Since then, my sister and I would question if we were on t.v. as well :

 

 

 

 

 

As for technology, it all differentiates. My dad always asks people "Would a plane from today's time work in 2,000 B.C?" It stumps people for a while, but they usually always say yes. It's because we had the materials to make the things back then, but it took time to learn what we could make. If you took a plane to 2,000 B.C, it would fly no different than it does today. Very strange.

[Zierro]

I question my perception of reality and how it differs from that of others. Is the way we sense things actually the same? Or is it totally different for some unexplainable reason? Like say what I understand to be blue may look totally different to someone else, even if we're both seeing something we understand to be blue. What goes on inside the heads of people around me? Are those people actually there, or are they a projection if my imagination? Am I actually lying in a mental institution in some world foreign to me seeing what I think is reality, but is actually contained within my mind? Is what I believe to be real actually just a program occupying my mind while my body is being used as a power source by artificially intelligent robots? (Ok, I stole it from the matrix... but it really makes you think, something like that could be going on and we'd be none the wiser.)

 

 

 

Dude, I thought the exact same thing before. :-# Kind of scary isn't it? I mean, if you think about it, life as you know it could just be your own perpetuation of what the universe is. The Matrix was such an awesome movie.

 

 

 

Another thing I think about is dreaming. What if reality is really our dreams, and our dreams are really reality?

 

 

 

I like this thread, cause I like mind-[bleeps].

[Lateralus]

The nature and definition of crime is something I've been thinking about lately. I met my dad for lunch a week or two ago, and we had quite a good discussion about it. He's doing a law course through the Open University (I swear he's addicted to it, must be his 3rd or 4th course through OU alone) and one of the thinking points was how you can accurately define crime, and how accurate crime statistics can actually be. Crime figures depend on the police force as much as they do on criminals. For example, trends have been observed where recorded arrests go up when the police receive an influx of personnel (seems obvious), and go down when they want an influx of personnel. If they need more assault arrests, then they become less picky about what actually constitutes an assault. It's interesting that policemen are subject to the same kind of pressures and habits that are seen in any other workplace, when the nature of their work is so different.

 

 

 

I also think it's interesting how many people have referenced solipsism. Of course you have to recognise that ultimately you can't know anything but your own mind, but I don't spend much time pondering on it.

[fgfuyfyuiuy0]

 

Another thing I think about is dreaming. What if reality is really our dreams, and our dreams are really reality?

 

 

 

I like this thread, cause I like mind-[bleeps].

 

 

 

I thought about the dreaming thing too. What if your whole life up until recently, is a dream? What if you are some 3 year old fantasizing about how life is/what it is. All the things you 'learned' are things you dreamed up.

[cheese666me]

i question existance. sometimes i think whats beyond death and whats beyond the thing beyond death and whats beyond the thing beyond the thing beyond death and so on. i do that to a point that i think what would happen if i didnt existed. i mean, not imagining a world without me but a... me without me :shock: its kinda hard to explain :?

 

 

 

EDIT: oh, about the mirror thing. when i was a child i used to think there was another world at the other side of the mirror but i couldnt pass through it because my other self who was trying to do the same wouldnt let me :|

[Yomyth105]

I used to wonder what would happen when u died and if this world is a fake. kind of like the matrix but this was before i have seen that movie :?

[amoeba_009]

I went camping with a friend and was telling him how the stars are millions and millions of miles away. That we're jsut organisms on a planet, he turns around and says, what if dog is spelt c-a-t. :o I laughed and laughed, but i understood what he had to say, a few hundred years ago, the world was flat, now its round, whos to say its not a trapizoid.

 

This may sound stupid but whatever, i was walking to the YMCA and i was looking at people, and they looked at me, and i realised, damn, they see through their eyes, not mine, they have their own worries, family, destination, life And it blew my mind. :oops:

[Tbfgraphx14]

As a child I never understood how people at the south pole never fell off the earth, and then someone told me gravity keeps them on, and I thought "aren't they upside-down then??" :P

[Stilev]

how humans came to be, like i know theoretical why, and i know evolution, tissue, organs, multi organ organisms blah blah blah, but it is still so bloody amazing that we have come to be, but we (as humans) are incredibly complex and the things that make us up are pretty much the dumbest things next to a rock, yet with enough of these stupid little guys come together in just the right way, and just the right events happens, this little guys have the capacity for great understanding. i dunno once you really start getting into advanced biology and psychology you start to realize that its pretty god damn amazing and i dont think enough enough people appreciate the miracle that is the human

[Yomyth105]

As a child I never understood how people at the south pole never fell off the earth, and then someone told me gravity keeps them on, and I thought "aren't they upside-down then??" :P

 

 

 

yeah but in space there is no directions. who is to say that the ppl in the north pole should be falling off? :-k

[a b c]

The thing that couse me to question is after we die our body still here but what happens to what we learned, to what we saw to what we dream... they just die with us or they float in the air?

 

 

 

Also why are we carbon-based live things? is possible i can be other element?

[Tbfgraphx14]

Yea I understand it now. Another thing that always made me wonder, was how animals control themself, or what it would be like to be an animal, or plant, just non-human, or not conscious or whatever you call it. It seems hard to comprehend. I've always had a problem understanding other's situations. Like if someone gets hurt in the arm, I'll just be like "get up and shake it off", not realizing their pain, and then it happens to me and I realize how much it hurts. Oh yea, what if somehow you trasplanted every item of your body with another person. Would you still be you? I wouldn't think so because you'd have the other persons memory and such.

[nickeley102]

what makes us us if our whole bodies are replacing themselves every few months

 

 

 

you are an entirely different set of cells then you were at the start of the year, but your the same person... :|

[fastortoise]

Time, how once each second passes, it's gone forever.

 

For many years, I lay awake for hours thinking about time alone. Not everyday though, only when someone brings up the subject or gets a bit too poetic. I normally like letting my imagination run, but this is just unhealthy.

 

Thanks Ken, now I won't get any rest

[warri0r45]

what makes us us if our whole bodies are replacing themselves every few months

 

 

 

you are an entirely different set of cells then you were at the start of the year, but your the same person... :|

 

 

 

That's something that's always fascinated me as well, but materially you don't change. An atom is the same as any other of the same element, so the idea that we don't really change as much as our metabolic turnover would suggest isn't that hard to understand.

 

 

 

As for what makes me question, pretty much everything. I'll think about something and ponder it for a while but there are just so many things I don't know. It's always fun to wonder though.

[cheese666me]

what makes us us if our whole bodies are replacing themselves every few months

 

 

 

you are an entirely different set of cells then you were at the start of the year, but your the same person... :|

 

 

 

your brain cells dont change :?

[fgfuyfyuiuy0]

 

This may sound stupid but whatever, i was walking to the YMCA and i was looking at people, and they looked at me, and i realised, damn, they see through their eyes, not mine, they have their own worries, family, destination, life And it blew my mind. :oops:

 

 

 

Oh, I question that all the time. I wonder how those people think and stuff. Like when I am passing them, I am seeing them as just another person I will never see again. You wonder when they see you, if they think that as well. Also, what are they thinking about and what do they see. How has life been for them, etc.?

 

 

 

That one gets me every time -.-

[warri0r45]

what makes us us if our whole bodies are replacing themselves every few months

 

 

 

you are an entirely different set of cells then you were at the start of the year, but your the same person... :|

 

 

 

your brain cells dont change :?

 

 

 

Well, they're "different" in the sense that metabolic turnover changes the molecules that make them up. It's been estimated that upwards of 95% of all the matter in a human body is replaced over a year.

 

 

 

Although I suppose the DNA would be the component of the cell that would remain largely unchanged. It's only "replaced" when the cell dies and another one takes it's place. As you said, for neurons (and muscle cells, for example), that doesn't happen.

[Kenshinjapan]

Time, how once each second passes, it's gone forever.

 

For many years, I lay awake for hours thinking about time alone. Not everyday though, only when someone brings up the subject or gets a bit too poetic. I normally like letting my imagination run, but this is just unhealthy.

 

Thanks Ken, now I won't get any rest

 

 

 

Anytime :twss:

[dsavi]

I'm going to leave this thread before my head explodes.

[Lateralus]

I forgot to mention; if I ever need to relax, I quite like looking at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. If that doesn't set your mind wandering, I don't know what will. Makes you realise just how small we really are. There are estimates of around 10,000 galaxies in the picture.