The Gaming Den

DrPraetor wrote:To quote Paul Krugman quoting John Meynard Keynes: "In the long run, we are all dead."

Well indeed, even if humanity does outlast our Sun, we're not surviving the heat death of the universe. Nothing is eternal, and you can't plan for anything lasting forever.

Koumei wrote:

DrPraetor wrote:To quote Paul Krugman quoting John Meynard Keynes: "In the long run, we are all dead."

Well indeed, even if humanity does outlast our Sun, we're not surviving the heat death of the universe. Nothing is eternal, and you can't plan for anything lasting forever.

I dunno. I always considered that we exist at all to be a pretty resounding proof of concept that occasionally something will just shit out matter and energy to troll non-existence. It is a strange question to ask "what caused the big bang?" in that time and space (and therefore our concept of causality) only came to exist after the big bang and don't extend beyond our universe, but there has to be some rhyme or reason to the process that generated the big bang. And there's always the slim hope that someday we'll be able to understand and utilize that rhyme or reason to do the same thing, just on a smaller scale. In order to acquire free stuffs.

Honestly, I think being able to generate free matter/energy (same thing, whatever) is more promising than FTL.

"To troll non-existence" is a nice turn of phrase. I may steal it one day.

I think this might sum the attitude up:

DSMatticus wrote:but there has to be some rhyme or reason to the process that generated the big bang. And there's always the slim hope that someday we'll be able to understand and utilize that rhyme or reason to do the same thing, just on a smaller scale. In order to acquire free stuffs.

Current theories include the idea that nothing is the most ordered anything could be, therefore entropy creates disorder by creating a bunch of positive energy and negative potential energy at the same time.

Kaelik wrote:

DSMatticus wrote:but there has to be some rhyme or reason to the process that generated the big bang. And there's always the slim hope that someday we'll be able to understand and utilize that rhyme or reason to do the same thing, just on a smaller scale. In order to acquire free stuffs.

Current theories include the idea that nothing is the most ordered anything could be, therefore entropy creates disorder by creating a bunch of positive energy and negative potential energy at the same time.

Crazy. So, is this supposed to be cyclical, on a scale of tens of billions of years (or whatever)?

RobbyPants wrote:Crazy. So, is this supposed to be cyclical, on a scale of tens of billions of years (or whatever)?

Well, since time doesn't exist outside the universe. Probably not?

Also, the Heat Death of the universe it not actually nothing in the strictly mathematical sense used here. It's actually everything, because there are all those particles moving around doing shit, it's just all shit that doesn't help us in any way.

Some people think that maybe after heat death, gravity will slowly drag everything together and it will all sort of cancel out to nothing, which might result in more nothing which could spontaneously generate a universe again.

Other people say that's impossible, and I'm not a physicist, so I can't tell you who's right.