The universe. The Big bang, time, quantum mechanics. Is our universe infinite? Is it the only universe? Did the Big bang start ours and will it end with a big crunch and will that collapse just cause a big bang that repeats and if so what iteration of that cycle do you suppose we are in? And does each universe behave the same, similar laws and physics and such? Stars, planets, etc?
Deconstructing from religion. It was a lot. I'm better now, but being stuck in it all was overwhelming and was like being in an existential crisis every day until it ended. I just went along with it and kept it all inside for decades and it wasn't fun.
Consciousness and our sense of self. Is consciousness an illusion? What even is "me"? It includes all the gut bacteria and mitochondria with different DNA than us and our brains are these amazing pattern recognition machines that also have abysmal memory storage and recall, but can notice the tiniest of nuance sometimes, but also can't remember where we put the thing we were just holding 2 minutes ago. And all the while our brain is confidently telling us "I am me" and is processing all the inputs like sights and sounds and interpreting all that into what we think we see and what we think we heard. But did we? How would we know if upon seeing the color red our brain interprets that as blue and we confidently declare we see red.
In the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, there was mention of a Shawken Device which, if operable, could destroy the universe.
This has led me to conclude that the universe probably isn't infinite.
In an infinite universe, all possible things should be happening at the same time. This would necessarily mean that someone invented a device/mechanism/reaction that could destroy the universe, and successfully activated it, thus ending the universe.
There are only two possible conclusions that I can draw from this thought experiment, which are not mutually exclusive:
Relativity proved that time isn't a constant thing where all things occur at "the present". You can have situations where person 1 sees an event happen as A B and person 2 sees that same event happen as B A.
That means time isn't some absolute framework that reality exists in, but something more like a property of matter or space or something.
Also the speed of light seems to be applicable here. Or more accurately, the speed at which events propagate through space. If you pushed a button to end the universe wouldn't that event only go at light speed out in all directions? So maybe the button has been pushed (maybe an infinite number of times too) and all the shockwaves just haven't gotten here yet.
In an infinite universe, all possible things should be happening at the same time
Misunderstanding of infinity.
E.g.: 1.101100111000... is an infinitely long number, yet it will never be bigger than 1.2 nor smaller than 1.1, it does not contain all digits, nor does it contain all possible combinations of 0s and 1s.
The universe. The Big bang, time, quantum mechanics. Is our universe infinite? Is it the only universe? Did the Big bang start ours and will it end with a big crunch and will that collapse just cause a big bang that repeats and if so what iteration of that cycle do you suppose we are in? And does each universe behave the same, similar laws and physics and such? Stars, planets, etc?
Deconstructing from religion. It was a lot. I'm better now, but being stuck in it all was overwhelming and was like being in an existential crisis every day until it ended. I just went along with it and kept it all inside for decades and it wasn't fun.
Consciousness and our sense of self. Is consciousness an illusion? What even is "me"? It includes all the gut bacteria and mitochondria with different DNA than us and our brains are these amazing pattern recognition machines that also have abysmal memory storage and recall, but can notice the tiniest of nuance sometimes, but also can't remember where we put the thing we were just holding 2 minutes ago. And all the while our brain is confidently telling us "I am me" and is processing all the inputs like sights and sounds and interpreting all that into what we think we see and what we think we heard. But did we? How would we know if upon seeing the color red our brain interprets that as blue and we confidently declare we see red.
In the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, there was mention of a Shawken Device which, if operable, could destroy the universe.
This has led me to conclude that the universe probably isn't infinite.
In an infinite universe, all possible things should be happening at the same time. This would necessarily mean that someone invented a device/mechanism/reaction that could destroy the universe, and successfully activated it, thus ending the universe.
There are only two possible conclusions that I can draw from this thought experiment, which are not mutually exclusive:
Relativity proved that time isn't a constant thing where all things occur at "the present". You can have situations where person 1 sees an event happen as A B and person 2 sees that same event happen as B A.
That means time isn't some absolute framework that reality exists in, but something more like a property of matter or space or something.
Also the speed of light seems to be applicable here. Or more accurately, the speed at which events propagate through space. If you pushed a button to end the universe wouldn't that event only go at light speed out in all directions? So maybe the button has been pushed (maybe an infinite number of times too) and all the shockwaves just haven't gotten here yet.
Misunderstanding of infinity.
E.g.: 1.101100111000... is an infinitely long number, yet it will never be bigger than 1.2 nor smaller than 1.1, it does not contain all digits, nor does it contain all possible combinations of 0s and 1s.