If you had to choose one, and only one, philosophical question of great intellectual importance to you, what would it be?


a survey that may reflect minds!



thanx and hello, from a newbie.

neutrality

Must be a trick question! Welcome, nonetheless.

My question: what happens when we reach absolute zero?

what is ultimate/absolute reality and its nature? The devil's in the details. Answers like, "it's consciousness", are unsatisfactory. The universe is a riddle. What is its solution? What is its ultimate meaning? Sure, meaning is self-created but this merely side-steps the issue. I want answers, not run-arounds and philosophical/spiritual hand-waving. I want complete understanding.

Currently i think my main question is - Is consciousness a by product of the complexity of the brain? What is consciousness? Is Ego an illusion? Can perfect AI be created?

My second question would be something like what is utopia like? Is it possible to achieve? What is the future going to be like? What are the possible dystopia awaiting us?

Third question would be something along the lines of artificial evolution. With the development of genetic engineering, mind altering drugs, cybernetics and all sorts of technology that is possible to be used to modify our selves - what are the changes we are going to make? Are we going to stick to our emotions or change them? How are we going to change our looks and so on?

What is the future of religion, spirituality and so on?
Are we part of some kind of universal evolution or merely accident?

Why is there such a radical difference between people? Some seem to be fine enjoying the worldly life as it is dictated while some must find answers? Why are only some cursed/blessed with the intellect and curiosity and the will to answers?

Those are great questions, Zhenka! I should have said that!!! Well, I can tell you right now that you've come to the right place for like-minds.
After thinking about it a little bit, my real question goes like this, honestly: How much F*************CKING longer till I get where I'm suppesed to be?!!!

The most important philosophical question is...

Why?

Absolutely NOTHING!!!!!!
But seriously, perhaps that is what was just prior to the primordial particle which became the primordial atom, then ball, and then the BIG Bang.

Question about the other end of the spectrum, 1 + an infinite number of zeros: If the universe is expanding, into what is it expanding?

Very good question Lindsay, I generally avoid astrophysics because if you ask me its more like a pseudoscience. They can basically say whatever the hell they want to.

This question intrigues me also.

But my question would simply be: Who am I?

precisely

I was thinking more along the lines of relativity. If time is relative to movement, and movement is relative to space, how can you even know if you reach absolute zero? It scares me to find out what happens when there is no energy in a system at all, this would be what I percieve to be the state before creation.

I know the answer: Into a big question mark? Sorry, I couldn't help myself!

I believe it is expanding into nothing, which to me is the same as attaining absolute zero, which is why I am interested in this state. Personally I cannot conceive of the idea of nothing...

Flex,

The question of absolute zero intrigues me too. If there is there a maximum fastness.. then a maximum slowness? Hence the superfluid state and our inability to set up conditions that quell it? The opposite of the conditions on matter accellerating to near-lightspeed, impossibly requiring ever more energy to accellerate with an ever-increasing mass?

i'm ignorant of physics.. so please allow for any naivity.

i'd love to know the most consensus-based 'laws' of physics in non-mathematical form. care to point me to any sources?

two questions, that i would like answers to :-)

what form does physics rejection take, of the notion of the shrinking of galaxies instead of or relative to the universe expanding and thus accounting for gravity?

if the big bang is still 'back there in the distance' couldn't it be 'fueling' the expansion.. since, if it's still there, it's not like a conventional inflation that has an external source and transfers it's energy to the periphery and AWAY FROM the centre ..?

all of it... is still back there as well as here goddamit!

one more.. sorry:

if the universe is expanding then it's speed must be faster than light.. but if this is so.. isn't it wrong to say that lightspeed is the universal speed limit.. or doesn't that include the universe's expansion?

again, sorry.

Then astrophysics and theology are on par with one another?

MOMENTS OF DISCOVERY
http://www.aip.org/history/mod/
http://www.aip.org/history/mod/pulsar/pulsar1/01.html

http://www.aip.org/history/mod/superconductivity/01.html

SCIENCE AND MAGIC
The general picture scientists had was that the resistance arises because moving electrons — which are what produce the electric current — from time to time bump into the atoms of the metal and are deflected. Thus, though they may be given an initial motion through the crystal, that motion does not persist. It's like trying to throw a baseball through a grove of trees. It bounces off the trees and comes to rest. The vanishing of electrical resistance seems analogous to requiring that the grove of trees vanish — and explaining superconductivity is like explaining why the grove appears to vanish.

LOW TEMPERATURES AND NEW STATES OF MATTER
Remember, it's not fair for physicists to take magic as a reason! The fact is that below a certain temperature many metals enter into a new state of matter: the superconducting state. Just suppose you knew water only as a liquid &mdash how curious you'd be when you discovered its transition into a new state of matter: ice.

Ahhhh... "Why not?" I know it sounds stupid but, do we have a better answer?

My question is, when do you think man kind will reach its highest cognitive ability? What will happen to society if this ever happens?

Excellent! But is it meant to be rhetorical?

There is an answer to "Why?" because there was the question first. The answer is not "Why not?" (as this is merely another question), but the answer is somewhere there. This implies that there is an answer. And if there is an answer, then it is logical to think that it can be attained. And if it can be attained, it should. Maybe asking "why" is already half the answer?

I think this is the essence of the Consciousness Singularity(CS) hypothesis. Some believe we're already converging on this, others think it'll happen in 2012, more still think it wont happen at all.

There are no limits to consciousness, only perceived limits.

This also implies there is no end to evolution doesn't it?

If natural selection holds true, there is no end to evolution.

That's an amazing realization.

This halt in cognitive advancement is happening at the present moment in developed nations. Man has created an environment where there are no environmental selective pressures to advance in cognitive ability. Those who lack cognitive competence most likely have a higher evolutionary fitness. By this I mean, these sort of people most likely produce just as many if not more offspring than the more cognitively advanced people. Survival and reproduction is no longer affected by lack of cognitive competence. This is not to say that our technology and understanding will not grow. By recording information man can store public knowledge and avoid starting from scratch with each birth. Thus, each generation may add to this public knowledge. While the product of mans mind will never fail to evolve, the physiological aspects of this mind which creates products will not advance in future generations under the present circumstances of developed nations. The cognitively gifted compensate for those who are less so in these locations. The less cognitively advanced people will always be taken care of in some manner (i.e. welfare, jails, rehabilitation programs, special education programs and facilities). Take note that is entire application is in regards to man as a population. There may always be individual exceptions that stand out in the gene pool. One must remember that the smallest unit of evolution is a population, not an individual. An individual only meets or fails natural selection.

This happened in the period from 1650 CE to 1750 in Europe. It was called "The Enlightenment." We've been going downhill ever since.

Once again Rick you left me speechless. Kudos.

I don't know if I would call Slavery and the Inquisition "The Enlightenment".

Not everyone participates in enlightenment. Don't forget witch burning and the absence of women's rights. However, superstition seems to be resurgent, currently, doesn't it?

Some superstitions that my girlfriend has picked up from her mother:

Don't cross on the stairs - good advice if your a bit of a clutz.

Magpies: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy etc... - blantantly an excuse for a poem, no logical basis whatsoever.

My favourite superstitious nonsense: If you see an ambulance, you have to hold your collar til you see a dog!

That last one had me rolling around in fits of laughter. I asked my gf's mother what logical reason was behind it, and she just laughed when I said its like a form of OCD. Whatever they must do in coutries with barely any dogs is beyond me...

enlightenment wasn't an era but of an era, and the very few that defined it by their pursuits where only enlightened in a very narrow sense.. relative to their time... and unenlightened in a broad sense. yet, it remains in principle, as humble exploration and discovery, something to protect and promote.

oh no! i've just walked under a ladder!

Enlightenment is of all eras and is not relative to outside conditions that prevail in and amongst the herd.
The enlightened are not of the world tho they live in the world. The contrast that exists in the world is the distraction that the enlightened do not find themselves obsessed with as do the mortals caught in evolutionary stages of self observation.
The enlightened do not identify themselves by surface appearances nor internal programs of belief and experience. The waking state mind says to itself I am the sum total of my knowledge and experience where as the enlightened accept the accumulation of knowledge and experience within the context of its awareness of its ongoing immortal self that experiences but does not identify with experience to make a claim to identity.

Who is the person before he becomes the carpenter or the welder or the politician or the spiritual seeker?
Is he or she nothing before the label is applied according to the collection of corresponding thoughts and assumed identity?

enlightenment wasn't an era.. but of an era.. if simply an era, it would encompass at least most of it's minds...as the predominant culture of thinking. that is not to say that enlightenment in the general sense is of only of one era.. but it was labelled such then because.. relative to the thought-police intimidation of the time.. it was nonetheless flourishing to a significant extent for the first time. such people didn't just swallow a book written by people of a very superstitious and excitable time, full of bigotry and delusions of male-dominated and familial superiority.

'enlightenment' so-called was of thinking and practices free enough from the cultural establishment to dare to enquire and learn. at the same time, one ought not blame those bible-fanatics for being ignorant.. of the value of culture-free reflection.

the conceptual-framework before then was, for the far greater part, good v evil... hardly a big-picture schema.. and (thank circumstance) it continues to perish.

oops.. that wasn't a question. joesus, what is your's?

I didn't have a question I was making a statement in reference to:

This being the case enlightenment would not in a personal sense be a condition or an era but a choice.
And an awakening to the recognition of the Self prior to conditioning and beliefs.