My dad looks a lot better today

Protentious Airplane Thoughts #1

(Just imagine me in an Oxford classroom, gesturing to a room filled with smartly dressed intellectuals. Then you may grasp the pretentiousness.)

The indoctrination of world problems into everyday consciousness is incompatible with our ability to process information and produce empathy. The machine of information is pushing the machine of humanity at an every increasing pace; one that we've been unable to keep up with since the invent of nightly news.

I believe we have lost our sensitivity to issues outside of our everyday life. Even when seemly local issues are discussed on social platforms, apathy and cruelty dominate the dialogue. 

Over saturation is one possible cause of this systemic lack of connection to public problems. Anonymity and comfort are two accessories. As is numerously highlighted by people smarter than me, the glass you view your Facebook feed through is a shield. It protects you from the realizations that language matters. Language shapes the lens with which we see the world. It is a cultural force of nature and its tides have slowly been growing more aggressive throughout this and the previous decade. 

Our technological revolution has unburdened us with the hardship of dealing with one another. Whether it's purchasing a ticket for a flight, checking out of a supermarket or calling to get out of jury duty we are met automation. We touch more screens on any given day than human hands. There is a social pandemic of reclusion and it distorts how much we truly need each other. We've lost our taste for fresh fruit and now pretend to prefer canned peaches because its easy. 

My only hope is that together we can realize the magic at our fingertips can link us closer together if we only choose and commit to trusting one another. Its a hard choice to make when the very magic lies to us about the freightening creatures outside your door. This wedge between us must be reshaped or shattered or bypassed completely if we are ever to once again shift our culture towards empathy.

A shred of a thread that I read on Reddit

I read an article on reddit about how there might not have been a big bang, and that the universe might have just existed forever. Could barely understand it because it had lots of sciencey terms that I don't know, so I looked in the comments for basicification and found a fun thread, here 'tis:


Maybe we invented a false concept called beginning and end.

this is my favorite so far. maybe we're finding out the concept of infinity is more relevant

Infinity is so hard to understand it seems more of a possible false concept. as long as there are actions doesn't that explain beginnings and ends.

I find infinity easier to understand than nothing, I can't wrap my mind around a true nothingness.

1. You can't make something from nothing 
2. Something exists. 
3. Therefore, there could never have been nothing. 

If 1 is true, we essentially have an infinite regress where "something" has always existed. If 1 is false, and we can create something from nothing, well I can't even begin to try to imagine how...

On the quantum level, some theories state that random chance can actually create something from nothing. Given enough time, one of these fluctuations could be large enough to create a universe.

What is fluctuating, and what is causing the fluctuation? If nothing exists, what is the something that is doing the fluctuation? If there is absolute nothingness, how can time pass? Isn't time a facet of the universe itself?

Quantum foam. I am not a scientist, but my basic understanding is that at a small enough scale (the planck length) mathematical models break down and everything appears to be random gibberish with things popping in and out of existence. As for time, I don't now. Though I do wonder if maybe quantum mechanics in some way could be time independent? Maybe only emerging as a phenomenon on realtavistc scales at the Big Bang.

That is something.

It is something and then it isn't. Something appears were there was nothing before. Sure it came from somewhere, but who says it was here?

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I'm at work so I'm not gonna write commentary, but I will say that in the 3 hours I've been here I've peed 4 times.