Nothing

[Harold Dye]

I went to the bank yesterday to withdraw some funds. I presented my check and the teller left for a moment and then came back and said "I'me sorry sir but there's nothing there". I said how can that be and she said you have put nothing in the account and I said I have nothing to put in that's why I'me trying to take something out. I quickly came home and logged in here and there's nothing here either.

[Charlie McDonald]

"Oh I got plenty of nothin'...."

[Gordon Borland]

I got it! Iam going to use NOTHING on my fish hook!

[Larry Carlson]

[Alan Brookes]

when nothing goes right ...go left....

...until there's nothing left.

[Gordon Borland]

How can you be left with nothing? How can nothing go anywhere yet it seems to go on and on. There is nothing to do except forge ahead or left uh....I am going to see what the Chinese think about nothing!

[Don Kuhn]

Sounds like my paycheck

[Scott Duckworth]

Nothing from Nothing still equals Nothing....

[Gordon Borland]

Sorry Scott but that's wrong! In this case nothing is something. It is a result.

[Alan Brookes]

"Nothng" is a noun meaning the absence of "thing".
Like all other nouns referring to absences, such as "cold" being the absence of "heat", "stillness" being the absence of "motion", or "none" being the absence of "one", you run into problems when you give those words meanings in their own rights, other than being the lack of something that DOES have a meaning. That explains 99% of all the posts.

People are referring to "nothing" as though it were a "thing".

[Alan Brookes]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEEy615Jzg4

Gimme dat ding.

[Harold Dye]

say what????

[Alan Brookes]

A THING is an old Viking word meaning "meeting place" or "parliament".

The Isle of Man Parliament is known as THE THING.
So, I guess, to Vikings, "nothing" means "anarchy", which is what most of them seemed to want most of the time, anyway.

[Ian Rae]

The Isle of Man Parliament is known as THE THING.

Alan, it's called the Tynwald ("place where the Thing meets"). But I don't mean to make a big thing about it.

Anyway, all this talk of things is taking us off topic.

[b0b]

Nothing - is that now a thing?

[Gordon Borland]

Nothing - is that now a thing?

A result is a thing. It is a result. Nothing is nothing except when it is not.

[Ian Rae]

In set theory, nothing could be the zero element if testing for a group, so it could belong to the set of things. But it's been 45 years since I studied it, so a bit of a nothing post really.

[Charlie McDonald]

Oo! Oo! I know:

What is seven minus seven?

[Gordon Borland]

Ten years of talking about just what the brain can do to make us make sense out of what we think. I think actual nothing does not exist. The concept of nothing does exist in our human mind. If I could just talk to a cow just laying in the field just looking around. "Hey cow what are you doing?". Cow "Ruminating". I doubt any living creature except man would say "nothing". Of course I have nothing to prove that.

[Alan Brookes]

Next time I see a cow in a field I'll try that out. Unfortunately, I live in the suburbs of a big city, so I don't see that many cows.

Maybe I'll try it out on next door's goats and I'll let you know what their response is.

[b0b]

What do you experience when you're unconscious? Nothing. It has happened to me. I know nothing is real because I've lived through it several times in my life. I'm not talking about sleep; I remember sleep. I mean when you totally check out. You experience nothing. Then you come back from nothing and time has advanced without you. It's so strange but I know nothing exists from personal experience.

I have nothing planned for next Wednesday. Seriously.

[Charlie McDonald]

I would say that I've had b0b's experience, but I'm reminded of the words of Brother Dave Gardner:
"Do something again? You can't do anything again. You can do something similar...."

But seriously I couldn't predict that this thread would weave itself into the cloth of existential nothingness, the source of
all our concepts about nothing, including fear of a void.

I suspect encountering nothing--no up, no down, no sight no sound, in or our, joy nor sadness--is a reversion condition
into the pattern we experience in utero, when consciousness hasn't developed beyond consciousness itself
in a warm, dark environment. There is a body there, but it doesn't know it yet.
It would be a primal state. Taoists and others would call it non-being. Being comes from non-being.

I suppose I used to call it time travel. It was not disturbing in itself except the later realization of temporary amnesia.
I didn't find that 'nothing' happened during such times. Apparently I was speaking. Driving didn't seem to be a problem;
you'd never know where you'd end up. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, kind of a zero-sum that looks like nothing but isn't.

Maybe I'll try it out on next door's goats and I'll let you know what their response is.

Probably nothing.

[b0b]

There's a theory floating around that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, embedded in each atom. Does the electron know that it's spinning? I wonder.

[Charlie McDonald]

Let me be the first to say nothing about that.

[Alan Brookes]

There's a theory floating around that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, embedded in each atom. Does the electron know that it's spinning? I wonder.

Does the Earth have consciousness? Maybe it does.
As far as ourselves being unconscious, and not dreaming, if we were totally unconscious we wouldn't wake up. While the conscious part of our brain is not functioning, most of our brain still is, because it's regulating our body heat and digestion, regulating our heart beats, and ensuring that we breath. It even makes us move around in our sleep so that we don't accumulate blood unevenly.

Of course, after we die no brain activity continues, because we no longer have a functioning brain.
I'm not looking forward to it.

Still, I mustn't get too gloomy, or I shall get NOTHING done today.