I’d like to believe that things have gone better for some alternate me in some parallel universe. I’d like to believe that things have gone better for everyone somewhere.
@huja
How about a universe with a site called Woot!, and that site is still incredibly cool and wonderful, and partners with another teeny site called Amazon, but there was never a buyout, and the Woot! site daily deals totally live up to the amazing deal quality implied by the term Woot!, and so just for fun the Woot! owners also created another daily deal site called Meh (no exclamation point, of course), and the deals on the Meh site also live up to that site name, but everyone loves the Meh site every so much anyway and it makes tons of $ just like Woot! does, and Deals.Woot still exists and never got spammed into useless oblivion and has great ATC forums still, and there is another site called Mediocritee that doesn’t have any t-shirts (yet), and another site called MorningSave that saves visitors the trouble of watching super-enthusiastic daytime talk shows, because the site watches them for you and injects all the enthusiastic talk directly into your brain and then sells you great stuff at great prices, and there is another site called Checkout, which is for some sort of purpose but no one understands what yet, and on the Shirt.Woot site all the artists sell tons of t-shirts, and the shirt blanks are all from American Apparel (which never went into bankruptcy), and the t-shirt designs from Shirt.Woot never ever get pirated, and there is another site called MOOFI where everything is always upside-down all the time, but the deals are still great, and it makes tons of $; and there is another site called Mediocre, which is kind of the Octopus Overlord of all those other sites, including that silly little Amazon site (that teeny Amazon site actually makes a teeny profit tho, every year!), and in Dallas (the Dubai of the SW United States), all the friends and super-fans of Mediocre and all Mediocre’s sub-sites have become super-rich and everyone is all super-happy!!!
And the truly great Mediocre, the ultimate Octopus Overload, eats something called a Bezos every morning for breakfast.
@PlacidPenguin Stephen King and me are purty happy scaring the Bezojesus outta each other, but if someone else wants to hang out, we got room in the treehouse.
When I was a kid, I caught the letters of my alphabet wallpaper rearranging themselves during the night. Nothing drastic, H with G, I with L but it was still weird to witness.
There’s an alternate universe in which Bruce Wayne is poor and I have my shit together. Without money, there’s no Batman; no Batmobile, no Batcave, no utility belts, much less a cool butler and a trusted sidekick. Without Batman, there’s no crimefighting, no hot vigilante action, no pensive brooding on the rooftops of Gotham. In this universe, Bruce Wayne drinks alone in his trailer home in Arkansas.
Bruce has one friend, me. He calls me in the middle of the night.
“Hey, it’s Bruce. Can you come get me? I’m feeling real low.”
I can tell by the sound of his voice that he’s been dumped again. In this universe, Bruce Wayne ain’t that lucky in love.
I pull up outside his trailer in my convertible ‘63 Lincoln Continental. In this universe, Kennedy wasn’t shot that day in Dallas when he rode in a car just like it.
Bruce makes his way inside the car, reeking of whiskey and cigarettes.
“She’s gone,” he says. “Can you stop by the store?”
When we get to the store, Bruce hobbles in. His knees and feet have seen better days. He’s got a couple of vertebrae in his lower back that cracked and healed poorly that gives him constant pain. He has chronic headaches that the VA hospital won’t do anything about, they say it’s psychosomatic.
I buy Bruce another bottle of whiskey and go back to my place. I know that he probably doesn’t want to talk. He just doesn’t want to be alone. I turn on the TV and we watch as he drinks. We watch The Tonight Show with Lenny Bruce. Tonight’s guest is Andy Kaufman.
He’s asleep by the time Late Night with Bill Hicks comes on. During the guest bit when Richard Pryor’s talking about the cure for Multiple Sclerosis I hear Bruce talking, unawake, but not rested. Bruce talks in his sleep and I would let him but when he starts screaming it’s not fucking right, it’s not fucking right, it’s not fucking right, I have to wake him.
When he finally realizes he’s awake, he instinctively moves for the whiskey. He’s shaking so hard he can’t pour it, so he drinks it right out of the bottle.
I sit next to him and hold him close to me.
“It’s okay, Bruce,” I reassure him, “There’s another universe out there in which everyone loves you. You symbolize justice in human form. Children read about you in comic books, adults make movies about you, and you recover from all your injuries.”
Bruce exhales loudly and looks up.
“And this in this other universe,” he asks, “What are you?”
“Bruce,” I say, “Don’t you concern yourself with that.”
-Bucky Sinister, The Other Universe of Bruce Wayne
That a bunch of people switched universes and now a movie doesn’t exist, or a children’s book author’s name is spelled differently makes no sense if you actually have a grasp of multiverse theory.
If there are infinite universes and they’re able to interact with each other, shouldn’t every possible interaction take place at every possible time? If they’re not able to interact with each other, who cares? At that point how is it different from religion? Or we sticking to the 7 universe thing or whatever it is? Never got that far into physics.
@f00l Just did a quick perusal. Looks like religion to me. I’ll read more about it eventually, but I’ve already got a pile of fiction I have been meaning to get to.
“Multiverse” seems more “fav SF premise” than religion to me: and is used in fiction that runs from terrible to truly great.
The concept or hypothesis arose from certain perspectives on that slippery weasel, quantum mechanics. That the concept of multiverse is not now testable does not not imply the concept can never become testable.
It’s one of those “reach-far” aspects of modern physics where the hypothetical of the imagination sometimes runs far ahead of any sort of verifiability.
To me, no harm no foul on that one.
/giphy multiverse
One Star Trek TOS episode that uses a primitive similar idea, in this case, parallel mirror universi of matter and anti-matter
Personally I want to live in a different universe. One where I had a full time job and not all this temp and part time crap. Or a zillion dollars so it wasn’t an issue (would prefer the job though).
Math itself is the fundamental reality, and our observations of the universe are just imperfect perceptions of its true mathematical nature. So take that and stick it in your algorithm.
@accelerator
Math is and is not. In and of itself.
And it Is and is not the ultimate alternative reality, smultaneously and logically co-existent. Or not co-existent. Or not simultaneously.
And it is and is not what we think it is. It is and is not what anyone will ever think it is.
Only it is. Only it isn’t.
And the Plato’s Cave allegory is only a tiny partial reflection of math’s reality or lack thereof. (Said “reality” existing or not existing, again, simultaneously, and logically co-existent with each other. Or not co-existent. Or not simultaneously.)
And if logic and math, both as conceptual functions of conscious awareness of symbolic relationships, and existing and not existing in and of themselves, are parsed to a truly “quantum” (metaphoric use) degree, they then generate alternative maths and logics.
And that’s a lot of math and a lot of logic. Just about sufficient to fill - or create - a mind. Just about sufficient to to fill - or create - a universe. Or smaller. Or bigger.
(Personal perceptions of pure math [as opposed to applied math])
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
By John Keats
1816
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
(NB: Keats fucked up. It was Balbao, not Cortez.)
As for grasping concepts vs perception: Would we be mistaken? There is no final logical rule; only one possibly valid or invalid within the bounds of a given universe.
One of the wishes on my “very unlikely bucket list” would be to become fluent in Hopi.
**
From Robert Browning (Andrea del Sarto)
… what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-grey,
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
I know both what I want and what might gain,
And yet how profitless to know, to sigh
"Had I been two, another and myself,
“Our head would have o’erlooked the world!” No doubt.
I only believe it when something bad nearly happens to me. Like if I’m driving on the highway and someone cuts me off too closely I’ll say – in some other universe that car actually hit me.
According to the multiverse theory, a new universe is created every time an event has two or more possible outcomes. That means that not only is there one universe where superheroes exist, but infinite ones.
There are also infinite universes where the only difference from another universe is that a single electron in a far away Hydrogen atom went slightly faster in its orbit, then slowed back down. Most of the other universes are probably pretty boring.
Also, if the theory is true, then there must be universes that allow its residents to travel to any other universes.
Paradoxically, there must also be universes that do not allow outsiders to enter.
A far larger set of possible universi (<deliberately corrupted plural, for fun): rather, the logically possible set of potential outcomes, given a starting point of initial conditions (such as a selected NOW, in this case the instant I first click “Say It”), plus all we know and don’t know regarding math, physics, and the current and potential possible states of the universe, to yield future collections of all possible subsequent universi, each of those then generating its own collection of subsequent possible universi.
This, starting at the very beginning of that which we label and understand as being “Time”.
I’d like to believe that things have gone better for some alternate me in some parallel universe. I’d like to believe that things have gone better for everyone somewhere.
This universe exists entirely within my mind, and I chose to imagine this poll tonight, so sure, why not.
@awk
You imagine and choose a universe and a poll, therefore you exist.
Tu selige cogitet et universum et singula capita igitur tecum est.
Or did I choose to imagine your post? Then it must be I who exists.
Libet aut post te imaginari? Et sic qui debet esse existit.
@f00l OR, Galactic Goat imagined a dimension in which mediocrebot created a poll which compelled @awk and @f00l to to reply.
I see your esoterica, and raise you one eternal inflation.
PS: @PlacidPenguin, it’s a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind.
/giphy Twilight
@ruouttaurmind
I’m well aware, but…
@ruouttaurmind said:
This personal consciousness is sufficient unto me, for creation of all possible multiverse…
Haec sat est personalis consciousness ad me: quia omnis creaturae potest multiverse…
in this best of all possible worlds.
in hoc maxime omnium esse mundos.
@PlacidPenguin said:
Précisément.
Of course. There’s a version of Earth with a daily deal site called, WOW! They have good stuff every night at unbelievable prices and free shipping.
@huja
How about a universe with a site called Woot!, and that site is still incredibly cool and wonderful, and partners with another teeny site called Amazon, but there was never a buyout, and the Woot! site daily deals totally live up to the amazing deal quality implied by the term Woot!, and so just for fun the Woot! owners also created another daily deal site called Meh (no exclamation point, of course), and the deals on the Meh site also live up to that site name, but everyone loves the Meh site every so much anyway and it makes tons of $ just like Woot! does, and Deals.Woot still exists and never got spammed into useless oblivion and has great ATC forums still, and there is another site called Mediocritee that doesn’t have any t-shirts (yet), and another site called MorningSave that saves visitors the trouble of watching super-enthusiastic daytime talk shows, because the site watches them for you and injects all the enthusiastic talk directly into your brain and then sells you great stuff at great prices, and there is another site called Checkout, which is for some sort of purpose but no one understands what yet, and on the Shirt.Woot site all the artists sell tons of t-shirts, and the shirt blanks are all from American Apparel (which never went into bankruptcy), and the t-shirt designs from Shirt.Woot never ever get pirated, and there is another site called MOOFI where everything is always upside-down all the time, but the deals are still great, and it makes tons of $; and there is another site called Mediocre, which is kind of the Octopus Overlord of all those other sites, including that silly little Amazon site (that teeny Amazon site actually makes a teeny profit tho, every year!), and in Dallas (the Dubai of the SW United States), all the friends and super-fans of Mediocre and all Mediocre’s sub-sites have become super-rich and everyone is all super-happy!!!
And the truly great Mediocre, the ultimate Octopus Overload, eats something called a Bezos every morning for breakfast.
/giphy "operation overlord"
/image “bezos for breakfast”
@f00l
That Bezos does look kinda yummy.
@f00l
Sounds like a nightmare.
Nightmares are usually fun.
This is an exception.
@PlacidPenguin
It’s just me and Stephen King hanging out out here in the treehouse, playing “Let’s Suppose”. Wanna join in?
@f00l
Kinda busy at the moment, but if you ask nicely, @carl669 and/or @KittySprinkles and/or @mfladd might join you.
@PlacidPenguin
Stephen King and me are purty happy scaring the Bezojesus outta each other, but if someone else wants to hang out, we got room in the treehouse.
@huja 'Looks like someone enjoyed 420 to the fullest
@huja do you know if Wow! is accessible from this dimension? Suprisingly, Google could not find it.
@huja
When one is called to duty…
When I was a kid, I caught the letters of my alphabet wallpaper rearranging themselves during the night. Nothing drastic, H with G, I with L but it was still weird to witness.
@elimanningface People shouldn’t give kids LSD
@katylava Agreed however I am not sure Stranger Things would have been as good if people did not.
I can’t remeber - did they give the kid, her mom, or both LSD? Eh, it was probably in everybody’s drinking water.
They’re definitely the Borenstahn Bears.
/image Futurama Universe A and Universe 1
/youtube Yakko’s Universe
Bernstein all the way.
There’s an alternate universe in which Bruce Wayne is poor and I have my shit together. Without money, there’s no Batman; no Batmobile, no Batcave, no utility belts, much less a cool butler and a trusted sidekick. Without Batman, there’s no crimefighting, no hot vigilante action, no pensive brooding on the rooftops of Gotham. In this universe, Bruce Wayne drinks alone in his trailer home in Arkansas.
Bruce has one friend, me. He calls me in the middle of the night.
“Hey, it’s Bruce. Can you come get me? I’m feeling real low.”
I can tell by the sound of his voice that he’s been dumped again. In this universe, Bruce Wayne ain’t that lucky in love.
I pull up outside his trailer in my convertible ‘63 Lincoln Continental. In this universe, Kennedy wasn’t shot that day in Dallas when he rode in a car just like it.
Bruce makes his way inside the car, reeking of whiskey and cigarettes.
“She’s gone,” he says. “Can you stop by the store?”
When we get to the store, Bruce hobbles in. His knees and feet have seen better days. He’s got a couple of vertebrae in his lower back that cracked and healed poorly that gives him constant pain. He has chronic headaches that the VA hospital won’t do anything about, they say it’s psychosomatic.
I buy Bruce another bottle of whiskey and go back to my place. I know that he probably doesn’t want to talk. He just doesn’t want to be alone. I turn on the TV and we watch as he drinks. We watch The Tonight Show with Lenny Bruce. Tonight’s guest is Andy Kaufman.
He’s asleep by the time Late Night with Bill Hicks comes on. During the guest bit when Richard Pryor’s talking about the cure for Multiple Sclerosis I hear Bruce talking, unawake, but not rested. Bruce talks in his sleep and I would let him but when he starts screaming it’s not fucking right, it’s not fucking right, it’s not fucking right, I have to wake him.
When he finally realizes he’s awake, he instinctively moves for the whiskey. He’s shaking so hard he can’t pour it, so he drinks it right out of the bottle.
I sit next to him and hold him close to me.
“It’s okay, Bruce,” I reassure him, “There’s another universe out there in which everyone loves you. You symbolize justice in human form. Children read about you in comic books, adults make movies about you, and you recover from all your injuries.”
Bruce exhales loudly and looks up.
“And this in this other universe,” he asks, “What are you?”
“Bruce,” I say, “Don’t you concern yourself with that.”
-Bucky Sinister, The Other Universe of Bruce Wayne
Day to day, more concerned with this iteration. At least in public.
Have a feeling theres a bunch of doctor who references to be made
Pre-Crisis Earth-2 4 lyfe
There’s a multiverse, just the universes cannot access or affect each other, so it’s all just academic.
Multiverse theory makes sense.
That a bunch of people switched universes and now a movie doesn’t exist, or a children’s book author’s name is spelled differently makes no sense if you actually have a grasp of multiverse theory.
@sanspoint it’s not about making sense. it’s about fun thought exercises.
If there are infinite universes and they’re able to interact with each other, shouldn’t every possible interaction take place at every possible time? If they’re not able to interact with each other, who cares? At that point how is it different from religion? Or we sticking to the 7 universe thing or whatever it is? Never got that far into physics.
@Pantheist TLDR?
@Pantheist
You don’t need to get that far in order to go that far.
@f00l Just did a quick perusal. Looks like religion to me. I’ll read more about it eventually, but I’ve already got a pile of fiction I have been meaning to get to.
@Pantheist
“Multiverse” seems more “fav SF premise” than religion to me: and is used in fiction that runs from terrible to truly great.
The concept or hypothesis arose from certain perspectives on that slippery weasel, quantum mechanics. That the concept of multiverse is not now testable does not not imply the concept can never become testable.
It’s one of those “reach-far” aspects of modern physics where the hypothetical of the imagination sometimes runs far ahead of any sort of verifiability.
To me, no harm no foul on that one.
/giphy multiverse
One Star Trek TOS episode that uses a primitive similar idea, in this case, parallel mirror universi of matter and anti-matter
Here’s the ep preview:
also
/image the philosophy of time travel
But wait! Isn’t a “multiverse” just a really long poem?
@rockblossom
And a really long poem is All And Everything.
And All And Everything is a discarded chewing gum wrapper in the grass.
And a discarded chewing gum wrapper in the grass is a Dance To The Music Of Time.
/giphy "mind cgi"
Personally I want to live in a different universe. One where I had a full time job and not all this temp and part time crap. Or a zillion dollars so it wasn’t an issue (would prefer the job though).
Math itself is the fundamental reality, and our observations of the universe are just imperfect perceptions of its true mathematical nature. So take that and stick it in your algorithm.
@accelerator
Math is and is not. In and of itself.
And it Is and is not the ultimate alternative reality, smultaneously and logically co-existent. Or not co-existent. Or not simultaneously.
And it is and is not what we think it is. It is and is not what anyone will ever think it is.
Only it is. Only it isn’t.
And the Plato’s Cave allegory is only a tiny partial reflection of math’s reality or lack thereof. (Said “reality” existing or not existing, again, simultaneously, and logically co-existent with each other. Or not co-existent. Or not simultaneously.)
And if logic and math, both as conceptual functions of conscious awareness of symbolic relationships, and existing and not existing in and of themselves, are parsed to a truly “quantum” (metaphoric use) degree, they then generate alternative maths and logics.
And that’s a lot of math and a lot of logic. Just about sufficient to fill - or create - a mind. Just about sufficient to to fill - or create - a universe. Or smaller. Or bigger.
Or insufficient. Or not. Or -not.
And of course, there’s more. There’s always more.
/giphy "let’s see what’s out there"
/giphy "if you build it, they will come"
@f00l We would be mistaken if we thought that the concepts that we grasp were on the same level as the things we perceive
@accelerator
(Personal perceptions of pure math [as opposed to applied math])
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
By John Keats
1816
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
(NB: Keats fucked up. It was Balbao, not Cortez.)
As for grasping concepts vs perception: Would we be mistaken? There is no final logical rule; only one possibly valid or invalid within the bounds of a given universe.
One of the wishes on my “very unlikely bucket list” would be to become fluent in Hopi.
**
From Robert Browning (Andrea del Sarto)
… what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-grey,
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
I know both what I want and what might gain,
And yet how profitless to know, to sigh
"Had I been two, another and myself,
“Our head would have o’erlooked the world!” No doubt.
To Grasp
I only believe it when something bad nearly happens to me. Like if I’m driving on the highway and someone cuts me off too closely I’ll say – in some other universe that car actually hit me.
I am the center of my universe.
The rest of those universes… meh.
/giphy center of the universe
Until the mother ship arrives, it don’t matter.
@cranky1950
MorningSave.com has arrived.
/giphy Rick and Morty multiverse
According to the multiverse theory, a new universe is created every time an event has two or more possible outcomes. That means that not only is there one universe where superheroes exist, but infinite ones.
There are also infinite universes where the only difference from another universe is that a single electron in a far away Hydrogen atom went slightly faster in its orbit, then slowed back down. Most of the other universes are probably pretty boring.
Also, if the theory is true, then there must be universes that allow its residents to travel to any other universes.
Paradoxically, there must also be universes that do not allow outsiders to enter.
@DVDBZN
All events have infinite possible outcomes.
That’s, as they say, a buttload of possibly universes.
@DVDBZN the key phrase here is “possible outcomes.” They still need to be possible, not just any old idea anyone can think up is a possible reality
@spitfire6006006
Not any old idea anyone can think up.
A far larger set of possible universi (<deliberately corrupted plural, for fun): rather, the logically possible set of potential outcomes, given a starting point of initial conditions (such as a selected NOW, in this case the instant I first click “Say It”), plus all we know and don’t know regarding math, physics, and the current and potential possible states of the universe, to yield future collections of all possible subsequent universi, each of those then generating its own collection of subsequent possible universi.
This, starting at the very beginning of that which we label and understand as being “Time”.
Think “big”. Think “lots”.
@spitfire6006006
Meant to add this, edit window ran out of time. ; )
/image “Big Lots”
I believe in the underverse