Is Thought and object?

Contemporary physics states that no object should be able to travel faster than the speed of light.

 

Yes.

 

This is correct but thoughts are made up of electricity. I don't think that electricity is considered an object. So to conclude to travel faster then the speed of light we need to be made up of electricity.

But on a serious note...I have no clue what I'm talking about.

 

Why do I feel like Alice in Wonderland....

 

Nothing with mass can travel faster than light. Otherwise it has infinite mass, infinite energy and goes back in time and does a few wierder things. Thats the physicist in me out of the way. Thought is more of a philosophy than a physical concept so I guess the same constraints dont apply. Though as most people dont move fast enough to get out of the way of a ball. I think we can conclude that thought is significantly slower than the speed of light. Most of the time it seems to be slower than the speed jaws move.

 

Fat Tony, human "thought" (a broad term that) embraces hierarchy and therefore is not always linear. So while you might induce a..b..c and so on, it is equally possible in the same time-frame, though not at all predictable, that one can immediately move from a..z.

Thought, as a personal spiritual/mystical experience, is not restricted by physical constraints or the presently understood laws of physics, does not respond to those laws, but indeed it unfolds those laws ...

To impress a girlfriend I once bought a book entitled "Phenonmenological Ontology", which is the area of study of the idea of human consciousness I believe. I only got to about page six, and my girlfriend wasn't impressed, which I put it down to the fact she was blonde.

 

human thought? an oxymoron?

 

Energy has mass and energy is matter. Don't follow conventional science too closely as it is only what we "believe to be true" as of today, remember when the world was flat and theory that going over 100mph in a car would stop your heart(somehow)? The speed of light is not constant, it is a variable, changing based on whatever it is passing through, ie: water, glass, different gasses, etc. Light moves much faster through a vacuum than it does when entering water, hence refraction. Well, if light can be affected by friction, it does have mass and it is a form of matter. After all, if light did not have matter, black holes simply would not exist. The light waves would easily pass right past the intense gravitational pull of the dead star. But they don't...

Light is made up of tiny particles called quanta, I believe it is possible to manipulate light energy. To use light as a sort of propulsion unit, like a jet engine. If we find a way to cause the quanta to push against each other, it could propel things just as fast as the speed of light, assuming the light is intense enough. Unfortunately, this could also be used as a weapon, so it's not a good idea that we, humans, learn how to use such "technology" at our current level of mental/spiritual evolution. I compare it to a submarine using water jets to propel itself.

There is no time, after we realize that and understand it, we will learn how to travel unthinkable distances in the wink of an eye. (no pun intended)

Think about this, the only reason you "see" things is because the light is bouncing off of that object, and the light waves are passing into your eye. Now take away the light, the objects are still there, but you cannot see them. Do they still exist? Yes. Other things surround us everyday, but light does not bounce off of those objects, it passes through them. Can you see them? No. Do they exist? YES! Think about that the next time you're looking at something that you 'see', try looking at the things you DO NOT see.

 

Thoughts are geometric shapes? Like atoms and stuff?

Thoughts are produced by a physical brian so they have to be physical in nature right, making them governed by scientific laws?

All science is is a big game of 'this is most likely what it is...' I mean if you throw a ball up and it comes down there's your theory of gravity, if you make a formula to see if you can predict the balls rate of acent and decent and it is right on consistently there's your law. Does'nt mean that is never gonna change, but there's a real good chance it won't happen in any of our life times. People take science waaay too seriously and just like rligion try to make something concrete out of something that is in constant evolution.

 

thoughts are chemical and electrical signals tuned in particular fashions as to be coherent to the recieving end

example: a modem converts digital signals (zeroes and ones) into audible signals, the aural signals are converted to electrical signals and sent through phone lines and recieved by another terminal that converts them to sount then zeroes and ones again, the reason you cannot just send the digital signal in it's original form through the phone lines is that they are configured for sound signals in electrical form, a digital signal (like travels through an ide cable) would degrade mad fast,

your brain works just like this just in different terms

Thought, electrical signals travels as fast as electricity through neural tissue, and since elevtricity only moves at the speed of light through a perfect conductor, thought is slightly (very slightly) slower than the speed of light

the processes are much slower than that, but the hardware is capable of much more than you do to it in much the same way as a 64 bit system running old commadore 64 games

 

Firstly lets get a few things abut the speed of light out of the way. Some speeds are faster than that of light, thats pahse velocity of light through some media is greater than the speed of light in a vacuum. However the phase velocity of light is not capable of transferring any information. Information is transferred in the group velocity of light which is fastest in a vacuum has has a value of 300000000m/s. The acual rule is that information cannot be transferred faster than the speed of light so anything which does not carry information can go as fast as it likes.

It is true that the path of light is perturbed by a gravitational field, this shows that the photon does indeed intreract with gravity. This requires a relativistic explanation, but the photon has no rest mass. However you will never see a photon at rest, you will see it going very, very , very (8-9m/s) in a dense metal vapour, but never as rest. Gravtiy is coupled to the total energy of a particle so light does not require a rest mass to interact with gravity.

As for things being completely invisible to light, there is no baryonic matter in this universe that can not be seen with light, if you use spectroscopy. However the trouble is that it appears that the majority of matter in this universe may well be non-baryonic. However that too is not quite invisible it interacts with gravity, and recently it looks like we may be onto finding it. AS for using light as form of propulsion is possible and NASA are desiging a mission right now. Potentially its capable of very high speeds because it never runs out of fuel (until it gets a long way from the sun) unfortunately the momentum of a photon of light is so pointlessly small that even by using teh sun it'll takes years to get any real speed. Also this needs to be done in space as there is no way that light can impart enough momentum to push something against air resistance.

Back to thoughts, technically thoughts are electrical impulses which travel at a few hundred km/h (most of this time is charge generation in the cells). Though I supose the maxium limit is 300000000m/s. But as most thought lacks substance is there an upper limit? (Ill stop the bad jokes sometime).

 

Thoughts, to me, are generated by the willful manipulation of mental processes and ideas, which derive from the biochemical makeup of the individual. Thoughts are distinct from material objects, although shaped by them. Changes in thought processes are reflected in changes in the brain.

The ability to conceive of ideas having little or nothing to do with objective reality is an aspect of consciousness.

Update: Dreams can be said to involve thoughts, or constellations of thoughts, and in dreams free will is negated. Similarly, under the use of drugs, thoughts can be random and disordered. However, thoughts are distinct from physical objects. Philosophers resolved this long ago with terms such as "extension" (physical space) and "ideas" (which are immaterial).

So, to continue on in a Socratic manner, thoughts can be conscious and unconscious, although free will is an intrinsic part of conscious thought. This would exclude the mentally ill, who are, in a sense, naturally addled. A distinction should be made between physical reality (extension) and thoughts (ideas).

 

"Is thought an object?"

No, it's an involuntary process... similar to the one that takes place after eating dinner at Filiberto's.

like gas, your thoughts are sometimes processed to a point where they can create enough pressure that it becomes almost painfull to contain them....
so you have to choose how when and where to 'express' it.
yet unlike a mexican dinner, most of our thoughts (however good intent filled they may be) never really amount to shit.

but, as you can see... my thoughts have become an object of expression that others can view through this monitor, so maybe that means our thoughts can become the 'object of something'.

Do you object ?


Hey HSB!
longtimenoc

 

Mmmm that's a yummeh lookin burrito platter!

So what you're saying is thoughts are events, just because you are selling tickets does'nt mean you are a Dead show. (one synaptic firing does not a thought make)

Do you suppose thoughts are both objects and events? Why does it have to be one or the other? You can't have the gas with out the burrito and vise versa right?

*looks around guiltily* Whoever smelt it delt it

You know Love you look different....can't quite place what it is though.

 

it's the moobs, won't quit growing
but I didn't think that anyone would notice.... at least not be so rude as to point them out. thanks a lot HSB!


Do you suppose thoughts are both objects and events? Why does it have to be one or the other? You can't have the gas with out the burrito and vise versa right?

It doesn't have to be one or the other, and if it did.. I wouldn't call it either one of them.. more like a process than an actual 'happening'.
I think I know what your really after with this question too, but it's kinda hard to explain what you were thinking when you proposed it.
something to the effect ov, is what you think your seeing is real?

but I probably shouldn't go there,
'specially not with you!

 

HSB !! if you get a chance check out this movie and let me know what you think about the answer to your question. .
I think you'll like it.

 

actually nothing has been found that goes faster than the speed of light. Although some quantum information appears to but there are ways out of that

 

Have you guys ever thought about something that can already go faster than the speed of light?

As in it's original form was made to go faster than light.

Does it make sense what I'm saying?

 

Thats not as stupid as you might think. One of Einsteins key equations representing a variable, gamma, can be plotted as a graph of energy against velocity. This plot is symmetric around v = speed of light, so it looks like a pyramid, with the apex of the pyramid at infinite energy. This means that a particle at v = 0 would need inifinte energy to be accelerated to the spped of light. However the otherside of the graph has an identical downward slope suggesting that a particle that existed on the other side of the graph would require inifinte energy to be decelerated to the speed of light and as energy is taken away it accelerates. This is usually ignored as not making any physical sense (often in Physics half of a graph makes sense and the rest is ignored and left to mathematicians). However on the off chance it exists the particle has been provisionally named the tachyon. I should point out that many graphs in physics can be plotted for as many values as you like but only a range makes physical sense, it is not necessarily a 'fudge' however with relativity there is no proof that the tachyon does not exist, we just have no reason to suspect it does. It would be a bizarre particle with a very distored view of time. Of course travelling at the speed of light would still be impossible, as infinite energy would be required to slow it down that much.

 

I should point out that gamma plotted against velocity is actually curved not a pyramid but its hard to describe shapes. For mathematically fluent people gamma = (1/(1-(v^2/c^2))) where c is the speed of light and v is the speed of the object. At v = c gamma is infinite.