There is this idea of a Boltzmann brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain Think Fred Phelps with the power of Q. He gets his though--that's why PREACHER is my fav' TV program now--and The Saint of Killers my hero. The sad thing is--skeptics don't have a hell for their enemies. Most unfair. Hypatia should be living a life of ease now, with the likes of Savonarola and Torquemada having their still living heads on a pike. But we don't believe in infinite pushishment for finite sin. Last night on Coast-to-Coast AM (I know its crap--but it is either that or reg' talk radio) the host was mourning the passing of a guest--who sometimes talked about the afterlife. But if he really believed that--he would not have wept so bitterly...
It's a really enjoyable show. All kinds of clever science fiction and pop culture references, and interesting threads of storyline continuity interwoven throughout the series. Kor
I'm still catching up on the TV series. Loved the graphic novels. I think they've done a great reinterpretation of them. When I first heard they were going to try, I was wondering how in the hell they'd manage. Turns out, they've managed quite well.
Friends and family, okay, but I fail to see a situation where there do not exist steps out. Barring being in prison for life or something. They might be really difficult steps that seem completely overwhelming but they exist. The point is, work to get back out, maybe you will succeed, maybe you won’t. Wait for a miracle, you’ll be waiting a long time.
I really don't know about rock bottom. I don't think I ever experienced it. I've never been seriously sick, I am lucky I was wise enough not to do destructive things, so I am still in good shape at 59. I have many friends that step up when it's needed though I make sure it almost never happens. I needed friends a couple of months ago for reasons I've already exposed and they were there!! What more can I ask for? To me aside from being really sick (which is something that could happen to anyone of us), nothing is truly irremediable, In my country at least, I am certain there are countries where things get easily complicated and I think I know which they are. I will never go there, you can be sure of that.
I found the episode delightfully metaphysical myself. I like the notion that if a higher power exists it would intentionally try to use a "light touch", because a god that routinely performs miracles would foster dependence among its followers, but a god that erred on the other end of the spectrum could cause its followers to lose hope.
An interesting quote: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Guth It becomes very tempting to ask whether, in principle, it's possible to create a universe in the laboratory—or a universe in your backyard—by man-made processes. "A Universe in Your Backyard," in Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1996) ed. John Brockman. It turns out that the energy of a gravitational field—any gravitational field—is negative. During inflation, as the universe gets bigger and bigger and more and more matter is created, the total energy of matter goes upward by an enormous amount. Meanwhile, however, the energy of gravity becomes more and more negative. The negative gravitational energy cancels the energy in matter, so the total energy of the system remains whatever it was when inflation started—presumably something very small. It may be that all you need is compression--maybe a single black hole--to bud off a universe. If it can be done in a lab--that argues for a mortal deist approach. Once the universe buds off--you can't get to it to interfere.
They'd be nothing left of the lab,, the planet, or the solar system after a few days, the local stars after a few years but other than that, it sounds like an interesting experiment.
So you're saying that it would expand in dimensions perpendicular to ours? Well, I guess with ten dimensions, there are seven left to choose from...
Well, there's the brane universe theory, that says that our universe expands only in three dimensions but is extremely thin (thinner than a nuclear particle) in seven additional dimensions. That means that there could be billions of billions of universes a micron away from us but we can't touch them since we're confined to our universe.
In that case, there's no such thing as a truth. Everything is "just a theory". As Descartes pointed out, the only thing that we can know ourselves is that we exist because we think, but that doesn't even allow us to know for sure that other people exist also.
Descatres also believed animals and other creatures were clockwork automatons and routinely jabbed knitting needles through living puppies' bodies to "prove" it in the classes he taught.
I didn't cite Descartes as a role model. I think he was an asshole and in many ways, a fraud but even a broken clock is right twice a day. I just said that his "cogito ergo sum" was spot on, though little else I am afraid. If you want to "get me" then throw dirt on Baruch Spinoza. Him I like!
Ah, getting to look back at someone of 400 plus years ago and pass judgement on them. A favorite past time of many today. At the time I'm sure he was cutting edge and innovative, probably considered a genius.