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i was just wondering what people opinion on the idea that everything may or may not be true and nothing can ever be truly known. it's always my favorite philosophy

I wouldn't have minded. Quantum mechanics are quite interesting, but then, my interests are varied and number in the near hundreds.

As for the "philosophy of everything may or may not be true and nothing can ever be truly known".. *shrugs* I have no strong feelings about it one way or another.

I am a strong believer that knowledge is everything and nothing. It's all summations, conclusions and ideas of other people passed around like a nasty mind virus (see other thread). If history has taught us anything, it's "Just because something is widely accepted, certainly does not make it true."

I am always questing for knowledge, yet I am fully aware that much of this knowledge is useless, may be half-truths or complete bullshit. So, in my quest to learn SOMETHING I learn NOTHING... or the equivalent thereof.

And the physical world... it's all here, or so we believe. For all we know, this is the Matrix and we're being fed the sensory information... or this is one giant dreamlike anomale. Existance is merely awareness... so is it possible that the first atom in the universe became an atom b/c it was aware of itself? ha ha...

wheeeeee... *mind spins in circles*

To avoid modern physics and astrophysics and science, I'll steer the thread towards pragmaticism. Does it really matter if what we 'know' is real or not real? If this subjective 'truth' works for us, would it not work the same if it was unreal?

For anyone familiar with the Occult, there is a branch of magic called "Chaos Magic" which has an catch-phrase: "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted"

This blends in well with the Buddhist doctrine on sunyata, or emptiness. We don't ask "if" things actually exist, because we know from experience that they do. Rather we question "how" they exist. Sunyata delves into the possibility that everything we see is illusory - these are not fixed, concrete things we see before us. They are temporary convergeances of circumstances.

Just think of your computer. It's not a single unit, is it? It's a collection of a hard drive, a processor, RAM, a modem, et cetera. Even those things can be further broken down into smaller and smaller parts. "Computer" is simply a concept, or a name that we give to a temporary collection of stuff. Human beings are the same way.

So how do we exist, proposes sunyata? We exist as a series of causal relationships. We are impermanent, but real (but not real in the way that we're used to thinking of "real"). This philosophical school of thought ties in nicely with what quantum science is telling us about our universe in which we find ourselves. In particular, with the nature of particles to be either a wave or a particle depending on the circumstances. Or the fact that atoms don't have "orbits" of electrons, rather they have a generalized cloud of probable locations for electrons.

This is to say that these things don't exist except in relation to other things. As a relationship. In this case, in a relationship with an observer. When we look at a particle, it collapses into either a wave or a particle. It enters into entanglement, as it's called (I think).

... what is it with Buddhists and Quantum Scientists? They should just get married already whee

Damn. xd



o.O...I'm a quantum-scientist-in-training...but I'm also a follower of some of the tenets of Buddhism...o.O...