A theroy by Georg Cantor might have ruined my life.

Tailspin -- opening post wrote:All my life creativity has been my passion, especially storytelling. My life's ambition is to be an author.

[My father] explained to me [someone's opinion].

I was crushed.

[Someone's opinion] . . . sucked all the happiness out of my life.

[Someone's opinion] [possibly means that my preconceived notion regarding my life's ambition may not be so after all.]

However,

Tailspin -- opening post, continued wrote:If you could only put one letter in a book you would have a maximum 26 different possible books. And the way things are is simply a much larger scale of this statement.

. . . Yes I know the creative possibilities of man are infinite but in this case it doesn't matter because human language is not infinite. It doesn't matter if we keep coming up with new ideas and concepts if we have no means left to express them.

Note that a letter is a symbol. Words are symbols meant to convey concepts. Any symbol will do, so long as the concept is communicated to (understood by) the receiver. Whoever said that 26 is the top limit for the number of symbols?

Tailspin -- opening post wrote:Yes I know the creative possibilities of man are infinite . . .

Given that the symbols to communicate are also a creative product of man, can this now make sense to you?

Tailspin -- opening post wrote:What I need to get over this is to know for certain that this theory is not true.

One thing an emotionally mature person learns is that certainties are hard to come by in this life. Learn how to live with uncertainty, as life is funny that way. A mind stuck in certainty is not a creative mind; it closes off possibilities.

Tailspin -- opening post wrote:If this theory is true then I cannot be a writer and if I cannot be a writer I will be miserable for the rest of my life.

Tailspin -- opening post wrote:Yes I know the creative possibilities of man are infinite . . .

Tailspin wrote:Appearing to be infinite is not the same as being infinite and creativity being infinite is what is so important to me.

Are you merely confused, or are you pulling our chains? Are you looking for a reason to be miserable for life? Are you using someone's opinion as an excuse?

Excuses Begone!

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i'm sure if you like you could spend years arguing this way & that in your head over why it is finite or infinite. raise 100 arguments for 1 side & 100 for the other.

i think i'm more pragmatic. like i said, i'd just realize that regardless of how things are in theory, in reality that question doesn't matter due to the limitations of your life span, senses, memory, etc, etc, etc.

but to each his own i suppose. carry on. tally ho & so on.

Let me be clear.

These two theories are far too horrible for me to live with and there is absolutely nothing that would convince me to live with them.

To me at least they do matter, they might have gigantically and nothing will convince me otherwise.

And I do not want to hear anything about how they don't matter and how I should live with them. I created this thread specifically to find out if they are true or not, nothing else.

I need to hear that they aren't true.

that's nice. but you already heard that and didn't want to listen.

what if i introduce you to the theory that we have no free will? and life could be predetermined from start to end?

bert_ernie wrote:that's nice. but you already heard that and didn't want to listen.

You're right, a few people have said this series aren't true and I still haven't gotten over it.

bert_ernie wrote:what if i introduce you to the theory that we have no free will? and life could be predetermined from start to end?

I might end up believing that if it were backed with some facts and sound theories.

Lately my focus has been more on the part about the possibility of the finite arrangement of matter . This morning I went back to the science forums to ask them about it again but this time more specifically. This is what I got:

Timo:
Usually, the position of objects is described by coordinates that are real numbers. In that picture the number of locations of a single atom in any finite space is infinite. Subsequently, the number of possible arrangements of N atoms is infinite, too. You might make a lot of magic statements claiming that quantum mechanics or the Planck scale were having and answer to your question. But I do not expect that they have any more merit than the classical picture. All those cases would merely be trying to make a very strong statement about reality of nature based on a mathematical approximation to it.
The possibly more interesting/relevant question possibly is: Could you tell an infinite amount of states apart from each other? Let's assume a perfect watch, where the pointer for the minutes is perfect and always points to the exact fraction of a minute: Could you tell two very similar states apart from each other? Probably not, even though I would not know where and how to draw the line between two states being distinguishable or not. This straightforwardly leads to another question: Could you even tell that the pointer has an infinite amount of states? At least human perception could not tell the infinite amount of states apart from a pointer that has only 100000000000000435122 possible states.
In my experience "infinite" is often overrated, and "practically infinite" usually is the more relevant property. The disadvantage to this stance of course is that statements start to depend on the context (particle physicists approximate millimeters with being an infinite distance, whereas architects disagree on this approximation).

Spyman:
We don't know if the Universe is finite or infinite, thus it's possible that there are infinite locations and infinite combinations.

We don't know if there is a finite smallest length, thus it's possible that there are infinite different locations in a finite length.

Possibilities could be limited and finite, but we don't know that for sure yet, it might as well turn out that variations are unlimited.

It sounds to me like your are supporting both sides of this argument. I.E.


Tailspin (Me):
The placement of atoms is infinte but the difference is so small that it might as well be finite.

I ask agian are all possiblitys finite? Even if they are huge.

And thank you for your answer Spyman but I was hoping for somthing more definate.

And that's as far as I got before the moderator shut down the thread. I didn't know you were not allowed to post the same topic twice. And now I'm feeling uncertain.

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Attention, Energy, Form.
So long as you give your attention to ______,
you are feeding your energy to it, and eventually it takes form.

*
Maybe, creative writing isn't your life's ambition after all. But you are uncertain in which direction to go. You put all your attention upon an artifact of nebulous certainty. So long as you're investing your energy into this question, and waiting for the properly worded answer outside of yourself, you can postpone making any decision about what you do want, because you really don't know what you want.

If you really did want to write, then you'd just write. No one could stop you.

I keep telling people, I'm not using this as an excuse!

The thing keeping me from wanting to write is the thought that everything I believed about art is a lie.

I resent this idea that I'm doing this to myself. Why would I deliberately send myself into the worst depression of my entire life?

My situation has shifted away from the literature thing to this whole matter thing.

Hello? Is there anyone there?

I've really been feeling down the last couple of days.

Tailspin wrote:The thing keeping me from wanting to write is the thought that everything I believed about art is a lie.

-- Why would you change?

I don't follow

Listen, things have gotten even worse for me today.

I had a tumultuous session with my therapist.

Someone on the science website I've been using stated that this theory regarding matter is absolutely true.

I called my father to ask me about it but he just got very angry and said I was being ridiculous.

Now I feel like I've hit rock bottom, I've just about lost all hope and I have absolutely no one to talk to.

I don't follow

Ok, scratch that. I didn't ask it properly anyway.

Came across this in my email today:

YouTube video from James Tripp -- "Living in the Power of Constant Creation"

According to what we've discussed here, there are finite possibilities on absolutely everything, including people. If it's true then you and I are just two possible human beings out of a vast array of possible people.
And no amount of technology can overcome what is apparently a condition of the universe itself.

I called the Samaritans last night and then I spoke to said that, in his opinion, all theories are eventually disproven and discarded as our understanding evolves. Is there any chance that is what happened here? And if so how big of a chance? You've been so good to allow me to go on the way that I have, you think you could put up with me a little longer?

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What is it that you want to create?

i think you are undergoing what is called: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_crisis. that link there had some stuff in there about how to deal with it. you could also google the term if you'd like for further info.

there are some interesting theories out there about life, the universe, etc. ie maybe we have no free will - that it is just an illusion. some people say there is actually no self. that the self is an illusion also. & you've raised some more theories about is the universe finite or infinite?

in a way, fixating on these theories is really the only problem. if how things are in reality is an illusion, but if with our human senses we are unable to tell the difference between free will & the illusion of free will, infinity or the illusion of infinity, then what is the purpose of worrying about these things? how does it affect our day to day lives? it just seems kind of self-indulgent. like you've got your mind in the clouds and in the mean time you're tripping over your own feet if that makes sense. ie you're worrying about big big fluffy clouds/ abstract ideas rather than the bear that is chasing you & trying to eat you. that's what people are trying to say when they're telling you that from their perspective, you're being ridiculous or whatever.

the universe is however it is so you'd do better resolving to accept however it is. or accepting not knowing exactly how it is. the problem is you holding onto & fixating on & worrying about the theory rather than the actual theory. if it wasn't this theory then you may fixate on another theory. & then another.

anyhow i'm not sure what you want, but my advice would be to try not to hold on too tightly to these theories. because noone knows anything really. 1 day the world is made of atoms. then it's quarks or whatever. in some sense reality can't ever be truly known. we all just kindof fumbling in the dark. so spending all your time trying to prove something which can't be proven is futile.

Is there anyone is still there?
Last week I went on this website for discussing scientific matters and I asked them their opinion on this theory. One guy believed in it fervently and wouldn't change his opinion no matter what anyone else said, I'm not entirely sure where all the other posters stand.
My therapist keeps telling me that this is just a theory, and no one can possibly be 100% sure on anything. I actually came up with an argument against this theory, well it wasn't really an argument against it I basically said that given how little we know about reality, atoms and the universe we can't be certain of anything at this point and it is possible that some new information may dispel this theory.
My therapist said simply stop obsessing about it and put it behind me.
But apparently it doesn't seem to be working, I don't feel like I've dismissed it and put it behind me, I feel like I've just given in to a horrible truth.
My therapist said we can decide what to believe but I've never been able to do that. I've always based my beliefs on evidence and not what I want to believe.
I don't want to believe it and I'd like nothing better than to dismiss it as a crackpot theory and never let it bother me again but I don't know how to.