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Limits

Started by Reginald Ret, November 16, 2011, 07:08:56 PM

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Reginald Ret

It's amazing how limited limitlessness is.
Our limits are our context, without limits we cannot find our way.
Without limits there IS no way.
For a way requires that both direction and movement are possible.
How can we know where we are facing if nothing is to be seen?
One might posit transparent coloured areas as references for movement but even then, colour is the exclusion of other colours.
Thus it limits what you can see where.
To give one absolute freedom is to make one absolutely powerless.
Allow me to posit that movement without the possibility of stopping is the same as not moving at all.
One without limits to follow or fight against, one without walls to break through is no better off than one surrounded by unbreakable walls.
Lord Byron: "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

Nigel saying the wisest words ever uttered: "It's just a suffix."

"The worst forum ever" "The most mediocre forum on the internet" "The dumbest forum on the internet" "The most retarded forum on the internet" "The lamest forum on the internet" "The coolest forum on the internet"

Phox

I shall ponder this for awhile.

Worm Rider

I was thinking about the first and second laws of thermodynamics and energy a while back, and I got to thinking about perpetual motion machines, and how a machine actually needs friction. We could only have perpetual motion if the particles of one object and the particles of an other object could just slide right past each other without any interaction. But if this happens, nothing gets done. Everything would be like dark matter for everything else, flying around invisibly, not causally linked in any way -for perpetual motion to work. A rough approximation is the octopus on roller skates on wet ice -it can flail around a lot, but can't move along a chosen path. In order to get anywhere, you have to have something to push against. Something has to offer you some resistance. You have to have some limit to your motion, otherwise, you are just floating in space, weightless, with no way to change your course. So (I'm going to mention free will here) your will isn't really free unless it is somehow limited, constrained, determined. 

We often talk about entropy and the impossibility of perpetual motion machines as if they were obstacles to be overcome, but I don't think we really want to overcome these obstacles, when we think about what the consequences would be. Our limits define us, like the edges of an object define its shape and volume, it's ability to interact with other objects. Unbounded, boundless, we would be unable to move, for there would be nowhere to go.

Reginald Ret

Quote from: Phlogiston Merriweather on November 17, 2011, 02:33:39 AM
I was thinking about the first and second laws of thermodynamics and energy a while back, and I got to thinking about perpetual motion machines, and how a machine actually needs friction. We could only have perpetual motion if the particles of one object and the particles of an other object could just slide right past each other without any interaction. But if this happens, nothing gets done. Everything would be like dark matter for everything else, flying around invisibly, not causally linked in any way -for perpetual motion to work. A rough approximation is the octopus on roller skates on wet ice -it can flail around a lot, but can't move along a chosen path. In order to get anywhere, you have to have something to push against. Something has to offer you some resistance. You have to have some limit to your motion, otherwise, you are just floating in space, weightless, with no way to change your course. So (I'm going to mention free will here) your will isn't really free unless it is somehow limited, constrained, determined. 

We often talk about entropy and the impossibility of perpetual motion machines as if they were obstacles to be overcome, but I don't think we really want to overcome these obstacles, when we think about what the consequences would be. Our limits define us, like the edges of an object define its shape and volume, it's ability to interact with other objects. Unbounded, boundless, we would be unable to move, for there would be nowhere to go.

The other extreme is simply accepting obstacles but merely makes us content, and frankly it would be dreadfully dull.
Trying to overcome obstacles changes us and our surroundings, even trying to overcome every obstacle won't hurt us.
As you said: winning the fight against entropy is when the real trouble starts, when we try to transcend obstacle-ness.
Obstacleness is an illusion, or rather a matter of perspective.
Let's take gravity as an example: A great obstacle when one wants to travel to the moon but without it walking would become mighty hard, in fact it would lose all meaning.
Lord Byron: "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

Nigel saying the wisest words ever uttered: "It's just a suffix."

"The worst forum ever" "The most mediocre forum on the internet" "The dumbest forum on the internet" "The most retarded forum on the internet" "The lamest forum on the internet" "The coolest forum on the internet"

rong

some thoughts i have had in the past that i think may be relevant:

problems are defined by their boundary conditions. 

even nothing is something, because you can count it:  one nothing.

you can try to see forever if you stand between two parallel mirrors, except you will always be in the way.

"a real smart feller, he felt smart"