Marcel Popescu

I've long believed that time travel is impossible. One of the many reasons I have for it is: it violates the conservation of mass/energy (something disappears from the universe at moment A and something appears in the universe at moment B). Recently, I've had to reconsider this problem. I started with an observation: the conservation of mass/energy is not violated when something moves. Formalizing this statement, an object changing its X, Y and/or Z coordinates does not violate the conservation of mass/energy. Now, if I consider that the universe is actually a 4-coordinate system, it can be inferred by analogy that an object changing its X, Y, Z and/or T coordinates is not violating conservation either. (The fact that we don't currently know any such objects is irrelevant; there was a time when we didn't have airplanes or cars.) Of course, this isn't proof , but I wasn't proving a theorem in the first case; all I had was a thought experiment, an apparent c...

Two hypotheticals: 1. You (common, everyday man) observe something occurring in nature. Every time it happens, you figure out that a specific something causes it. You emit the hypothesis that "A causes B" and devise a number of experiments to disprove it. You fail, and as far as you know everyone else also fails to disprove your theory. You tentatively accept the theory. 2. You observe something occurring in nature. It violates accepted dogma. You note that there is no known case where the alleged cause is known to actually produce the observed effect and, in fact, there is no actual proof that the cause even exists. You are told that you lack the inner grace that allows the high priests to verify that the cause does indeed exist; that there are secret rituals you're not privy to that they have used to confirm the truth of the dogma, and you're better off just accepting it as fact. The first paragraph describes, for example, the idea that complex information is overwh...

When arguing about something, the verb "is" should be avoided as much as possible because of its ambiguity. "A is B" can represent: Identity: life is life. Membership to a class: a car is an object. An attribute: this apple is green. A relationship: 5 is greater than 3. A modification of a verb: John is walking. ... probably other meanings I'm forgetting now. Of course, in colloquial language "is" cannot be avoided and is not normally a problem.