So, the only people who knew how to read/write or were good enough teachers were concentrated in Constantinople for a few thousands of years? The fact it didn't happen before the fall of Constaninople doesn't strike you as odd?The Enquirer said:
It does, but at the same time it doesn't. Those artists go where the money was, and that was there. It can be reflected in today's world as well. Will Smith was in Independence Day and he was a great, central character and seemed like he had fun making it. But now, for the sequel that is apparently being made, he most likely won't be coming back because he is "too expensive". Rather than make a movie for the fun of it and get paid (still fairly well even if he reduced his asking price) he needs to get paid more to do it. Now this isn't true of all artists, and it wasn't true way back when either, but it was true on a large enough scale to have an impact. This was their career and they needed to earn something so they could feed themselves. And to be fair, I would have done the same thing in order to be able to feed myself.Knife said:
I agree with the first paragraph - artists are people and they need money to feed themselves just as everybody else.The Enquirer said:
This is definitely off the original topic but I'm play ball for a bit anyway.Mick P. said:You can't exist without having a starting point and arguably an ending point. The only thing like that is abstract mathematical precepts, addition for instance. That's called an axiom in the abstract, most people would not call that existence. You have people who understand addition and agree upon what it entails who do exist. But not addition itself.K12 said:I don't really know what you are talking about or what point you're making over all.Mick P. said:You can do anything in a computer simulation, but at some point in the causal chain you arrive at a place where existence cannot possibly exist because the definition of to exist, to be, necessitates an origin. That's the problem. You have to take existence out of the equation, and in order to do that you must wave you hand and proclaim "infinity" (as infinity is boundless, consider Zeno's paradox) or you must be resigned to the conclusion that existence is an illusion.K12 said:I think the main thing about the universe is that it has either existed infinitely or finitely and both those options are mind boggling and counter intuitive.Mick P. said:People don't seem to truly grasp what this actually means. Can you truly conceive of the infinite? Because that is what is required for something to have no beginning and no ending, unless there is some completely alien concept which our minds have be made utterly blind to. And to be infinite and at the same time nothing, as nothing can arrive from nothing. This should reduce everyone to a quivering pool on the floor that could do no wrong to its fellow man, were that all men more than mere animals.Glongpre said:Always been, as in, it has no beginning. But I also haven't researched the topic enough to argue it.broca said:
I have thought about the universe as a cycle though, in regards to the big bang. Like it starts with the bang, then after it expands for a long time, it is sucked back in to create another big bang. But nothing created this cycle, so yes to your last question as well.
How can you speak of such things so casually? Ask yourself this.
Finite doesn't mean that it has a beginning and an end necessarily, just a finite length. The Equator has a finite length but no beginning or end and I think that the universe is kinda the same over a larger number of dimensions (beyond 3D space and 4D spacetime) but I'm not going to pretend I understand what that means.
Our brains don't seem equipped to imagine a paradigm where existence has no meaning, or at least no bearing, and how something like our reality, where existence is front and center, could arise from conditions where existence must be fundamentally impossible, merely an abstract concept that can be programmed into a simulation.
The only thing our brains do seem well equipped for is putting these quandaries aside to go about our loathsome business as if none of this is of any consequence. Try to do that in reverse. Make a simulation where existence is not a rule. Who can even conceive of that? Unless you think you can, you have no business casually brushing these problems away. That's only a kind of denial that is no different from that of the intellectually divested religious adherent.
"To exist" does not require an origin. To have an origin implies that something existed at some point or another but existing doesn't imply an origin. There is no contradiction in saying that something exists without a beginning to its existence.
Infinity isn't completely boundless, something can be infinite and still have boundaries. An infinite line can have a starting point and then stretch to infinity, it has no boundary on only one end.
It makes no sense to claim that existence is an illusion (consider Descartes Cogito)and there's no reason to think that the only other option is claim everything is infinite. The universe's existence is finite or infinite, and it can be each in several different ways.
I think the idea that we shouldn't brush these problems aside in everyday life is silly. There's a quote from Buddha which I can't remember exactly but someone asks him when his teaching is going to explain the origin of the universe. He responds that you don't need to know something like that to live a good life (I'm sure the original quote was more poetic than that) and I agree. We may never get a satisfactory answer to those kind of questions and that's fine. We shouldn't stop asking the question but we can operate perfectly well without an answer to it.
Similarly to say that you exist where there was no starting point, is to concede that something pseudo exists eternally. You're not really thinking this through. PS: Infinity doesn't have boundaries by definition. A pure line really doesn't have a starting point. It has an infinite regress into an infinitely precise number. And complexity really doesn't matter, because in a reality with only the simplest rules you can build an arbitrarily complex simulation. If you have basic senses and just a lot of stuff to compute with you'd fashion any kind of existence you can imagine. If reality isn't enough to convince someone not to do stupid unhelpful shit then there's probably no helping them.
i can easily prove the last one: if something works or not depends on if you can use it for what you want to, you are using a computer so obviously it works. we can also prove you need air (or oxygen to be specific) because you would die if we denied you access to it. proving if computers are working or not just depends on your definition of working, we also know exactly how computers work. computers and oxygen are not made up so we can prove things about them, god on the other hand..Tanakh said:
