Page 159 of 172

Posted: 1 Jun 2017 4:46 am
by 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. :eek:

Posted: 1 Jun 2017 4:59 am
by Charlie McDonald
"Oh I got plenty of nothin'...."

Posted: 1 Jun 2017 8:38 am
by Gordon Borland
I got it! Iam going to use NOTHING on my fish hook!

:!:

Posted: 1 Jun 2017 1:44 pm
by Larry Carlson
Image

Posted: 3 Jun 2017 10:16 am
by Alan Brookes
Larry Carlson wrote:when nothing goes right ...go left....
...until there's nothing left. :whoa:

Posted: 3 Jun 2017 8:14 pm
by 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! :?

Posted: 4 Jun 2017 5:43 pm
by Don Kuhn
Sounds like my paycheck

Posted: 5 Jun 2017 2:40 am
by Scott Duckworth
Nothing from Nothing still equals Nothing....

Posted: 5 Jun 2017 12:07 pm
by Gordon Borland
Sorry Scott but that's wrong! In this case nothing is something. It is a result. >:-)

Posted: 5 Jun 2017 12:17 pm
by 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. :eek:

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

Posted: 5 Jun 2017 12:44 pm
by Alan Brookes

Posted: 5 Jun 2017 12:48 pm
by Harold Dye
say what???? :?

Posted: 5 Jun 2017 12:50 pm
by 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. :lol:
Image

Posted: 5 Jun 2017 2:07 pm
by Ian Rae
Alan Brookes wrote: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.

Posted: 5 Jun 2017 3:43 pm
by b0b
Nothing - is that now a thing?

Posted: 5 Jun 2017 4:58 pm
by 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. :D

Posted: 6 Jun 2017 12:21 am
by 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.

Re: Nothing

Posted: 7 Jun 2017 7:59 am
by Charlie McDonald
Bob Knight wrote:
Oo! Oo! I know:

What is seven minus seven?

Posted: 7 Jun 2017 12:09 pm
by 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.
:?

Posted: 8 Jun 2017 6:37 pm
by 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. :\

Seriously now

Posted: 8 Jun 2017 9:54 pm
by 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. :eek:

Posted: 9 Jun 2017 5:55 am
by 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.
Alan Brookes wrote:Maybe I'll try it out on next door's goats and I'll let you know what their response is. :\
Probably nothing.

Posted: 9 Jun 2017 6:57 am
by 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.

Posted: 9 Jun 2017 8:37 am
by Charlie McDonald
Let me be the first to say nothing about that.

Posted: 9 Jun 2017 10:06 am
by Alan Brookes
b0b wrote: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. :cry:
I'm not looking forward to it. :cry:

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