The Steel Guitar Forum

Posted: **4 Oct 2014 5:48 pm**

Virtually nothing? Is that a thing now?

Posted: **5 Oct 2014 12:15 am**

Alan, everything you state here means NOTHING to me???????????????????? $:\$ $:\$

Posted: **5 Oct 2014 5:46 am**

b0b wrote:Virtually nothing? Is that a thing now?

Virtually....

Posted: **5 Oct 2014 12:13 pm**

Rick Collins wrote:...Past, present, and future exist simultaneously...

That's impossible, Rick. The past is a record of things that were the present at the time they occurred but no longer exist. As an entity the past does not exist. The future is a word, and merely a word, to describe what is to come, but it won't exist until it does come, at which time it will be the present, and what we see now as the present will be the past, and no longer exist.
Things only exist in the instant of current time, and we only perceive them as time progresses, by which time it is past. In other words, we cannot perceive the present, as it takes a fraction of a second for our senses to pass the information on to our brains and for the brain to process that information and consider it.
Unlike matter and energy, time is not an entity, it's merely the measurement of change. The word "dimension" means a record of measurement, but that measurement could mean abstract things or real things. In talking about time as being a fourth dimension one is mixing two incompatable dimensions, three of which are real, and the fourth an abstract definition.

Posted: **5 Oct 2014 12:39 pm**

Sorry Alan, Eliot has it correctly...

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.â€

T S. Eliot

Posted: **6 Oct 2014 7:47 am**

Alan Brookes wrote:
Rick Collins wrote:...Past, present, and future exist simultaneously...
That's impossible, Rick. The past is a record of things that were the present at the time they occurred but no longer exist.

But Alan consider this metaphor:
All eternity is an endless loaf of bread __ no beginning, no end. The ultimate reality can take a knife and cut into the loaf at any point exposing the selected "happenings".
Our confinement in our "box" of five limited senses and very limited reasoning does not allow us to reason beyond what we consider mathematically ordinary.
For instance gravity, is everyday, expected, and seemingly reasonable. We can make calculations and use gravity for our own benefit; and we can create ways to overcome its inconvenience __ it exist but we cannot explain it as a force. We accept it.
We understand space and time as being integrated __ for our convenience. Space? We cannot describe the "fabric" of space and cannot find the graviton. Physicist declare space as a distance between masses; and declare that if mass were to disappear, space would disappear along with the mass.
We use what we have and work with what we have learned. We don't yet have THE reality.

Posted: **6 Oct 2014 1:51 pm**

The theory that time is a circle, Rick, was proposed by the Ancient Greek philosophers, but there are obvious flaws in it. Firstly, if you went back into the past and changed even one thing, the whole future after that would be changed, but, if the future leads into the past, then by changing anything you're changing the cirumstances that existed before you changed it, which would cause a time paradox.

Secondly, that could only be so if the Big Bang is followed at some stage in the distant future by a Big Crunch, followed by another Big Bang. If so, the second time that particles randomly came together, the chances that they would come together in exactly the same way is infinitessimally small, and, even if they did, evolution would have to occur identically. The problem with that is that latest scientific observation is that the expansion of the universe has already passed the point of no return, and, after the energy of all the stars is used up, there will not be enough gravity left to bring them back together to one singularity, so the universe will keep expanding for ever. An eternity of darkness and NOTHING

Posted: **6 Oct 2014 4:47 pm**

nothing funny about that

Posted: **6 Oct 2014 9:58 pm**

Alan, if you are writing about this biosphere, on this speck of dust, in this heliocentric system, which is moving at 67 degrees to the ecliptic toward the constellation Hercules and located about three-fifths from the center of this black-holed galaxy which we call The Milky Way, I cannot argue with much of your logic.
Surely you must know we are lost in immensity.
You must suspect that what we know as reality is probably not the only reality.
But, this is our home in the universe. We look out at points of light very far away study them and keep records; but, everything we know is prejudiced by our minds and bodies which have been anchored to this world for millennia.
Even in this world only, of what can be known, I know NOTHING!

Posted: **7 Oct 2014 9:47 am**

Unfortunately, Rick, anything beyond our conception, based on our limited senses and intelligence, is outside the scope of discussion. We can conjecture all sorts of things, but then it comes into the realm of religion, not reality.

Posted: **7 Oct 2014 1:23 pm**

I negate! This is not nothing!

Posted: **7 Oct 2014 3:53 pm**

Alan Brookes wrote:Unfortunately, Rick, anything beyond our conception, based on our limited senses and intelligence, is outside the scope of discussion.

Nothing is within the scope of this discussion.

Posted: **8 Oct 2014 10:45 am**

Yes, if anyone posts anything on any subject in this discussion it is topical, because then it would have NOTHING to do with the discussion. In fact it's absolutely impossible to go off-topic.

Posted: **8 Oct 2014 10:56 am**

Nothing is on topic, including this post.

Posted: **8 Oct 2014 12:09 pm**

b0b wrote:Nothing is on topic, including this post.

Nothing is on topic and Nothing is off topic; but, about half of the posts on this thread are only about half __ on topic.

I have a pedal steel and the pedals really are steel.

Now, at least a portion of this post is off topic.

Posted: **8 Oct 2014 2:07 pm**

Alan Brookes wrote:Unfortunately, Rick, anything beyond our conception, based on our limited senses and intelligence, is outside the scope of discussion. We can conjecture all sorts of things, but then it comes into the realm of religion, not reality.

Whoa. Religion!
NOTHING good can come from that discussion !!
Time to shut this one down,b0b

[/b]

Posted: **8 Oct 2014 3:53 pm**

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Posted: **8 Oct 2014 5:43 pm**

I came here looking for something, but found NOTHING.

Maybe I was looking for NOTHING to start with...

Posted: **9 Oct 2014 4:05 am**

Scott Duckworth wrote: Maybe I was looking for NOTHING to start with...

Maybe so; one can't be disappointed, encountering nothing.
Certainly, nothing to get excited over.

Posted: **9 Oct 2014 6:14 am**

There is a lot of comfort in knowing that if this thread were closed down NOTHING would be closed down.

Posted: **9 Oct 2014 3:53 pm**

Apologies.
I meant nothing by it.

Posted: **9 Oct 2014 4:01 pm**

We accept your apology.
We accept your apology.
We mean nothing by that, either. $:\$

Posted: **20 Oct 2014 4:35 pm**

The problem with doing nothing, saying nothing or reading nothing is that you never know when you are done.

Posted: **20 Oct 2014 6:09 pm**

Of all the things I thought I'd find, nothing was here...

Posted: **20 Oct 2014 7:50 pm**

Every day I check in here looking for NOTHING, only to find other people looking for the same NOTHING.
The big question is when its found, who gets it, and what will it be __ NOTHING?

The Steel Guitar Forum

Nothing

Just to be clear...

Re: Just to be clear...