As old and large as the Universe is, I highly doubt that Earth is the only planet with "intelligent life" on it. I'd like to hear the reason why any scientist or anyone else would think Earth is the only rock out of millions in the Universe that has intelligent evolving life.
Going to see Professor Brian Cox tonight...
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Throw in a few Black Holes.Oh, brother, for sure!
When scientists depart from the scientific method and immerse themselves in Eastern Mystic philosophies, these are the kinds of ambiguous and ridiculous statements one can expect.
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This does not describe Donald Hoffman.
MolaKule
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Reality is an Illusion is contradictory both in its conceptual and defining terms.
Reality: the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them; the state or quality of having existence or substance.
Illusion: a thing that is or is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses; a deceptive appearance or impression; a false idea or belief.
So are you and Hoffman telling us that the objects we perceive by our senses of vision and touch are wrongly perceived as being real objects?
Pick up a bowling ball (having existence or substance) and drop it on your foot and tell me the pain you are feeling is illusory.
So what do you think are Hoffman's main premises?
I watched his video and unless I missed it, he said nothing about the human mind's ability for recursion, which is important to his discussion.
Recursion is the main ingredient distinguishing humans and their language from all other forms of animals and their communication. It is in thought, rather than in language, that recursion originates. Recursion is “Thinking within Thinking,” “Self-Similar Embedding of Thoughts,” “Concepts within Concepts.” Animal competencies are mainly geared to a single goal, whereas Human competencies are domain-general and serve numerous goals.
It is only the recursive human mind that is capable of pondering our own nature and status on this planet.
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Professor Cox spoke of our importance in the universe, as organisims who can think, reason and accumulate knowledge captured in books etc.
I believe Oppenheimer and Feynman wrote of our importance with regards to human extinction. Not sure; something like that.
The chances of us being a fabrication in some's game is pretty low...
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Pick up a bowling ball (having existence or substance) and drop it on your foot and tell me the pain you are feeling is illusory.
When one questions the nature of perceived reality, it usually has to do with the intrinsic identity of the sphere of formerly-exploded-stardust in a temporary form labeled with something as feeble as language as a "bowling ball". The same goes for the neurological fireworks parsed by consciousness as "pain" when it's dropped on stardust called a "foot". It's more about "the meanings we ascribe things - all of which are temporary forms in a very finite pool of energy - and then conflate those perceptions with reality" than denying there is mass and flesh and nerves.
Ironically, there is an old Buddhist koan about a student going a little far in questioning the nature of things before his teacher says pretty much what you just said.
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Well, I can tell you how you subconsciously get addicted to losing.. if you get used to doing things, that don't work out. Your money is gone, you have nothing, but then, you look around, and you say.. I'm still here! I'm still alive! Wow, I did all this, and I am still standing! You get addicted to validating your own existence.
As to the universe, and life.. Time exists differently for us, as in, it is finite, "here," and there are some concepts we cannot understand. The ancient civilizations were not idiots that did not understand what they were seeing. The Dark Ages followed by Renaissance were probably artificially long.. there is much to say about life, the universe, except that we should not feel so guilty to think that all the world.. was made for us.
As to the universe, and life.. Time exists differently for us, as in, it is finite, "here," and there are some concepts we cannot understand. The ancient civilizations were not idiots that did not understand what they were seeing. The Dark Ages followed by Renaissance were probably artificially long.. there is much to say about life, the universe, except that we should not feel so guilty to think that all the world.. was made for us.
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Oh, brother, for sure!
When scientists depart from the scientific method and immerse themselves in Eastern Mystic philosophies, these are the kinds of ambiguous and ridiculous statements one can expect.
I think they are talking about evidence of life as we know it; carbon based life forms. What you are saying would seem to make sense, given the size and age of the Cosmos.
What I think is fine, but without evidence it is no more than what seems to make sense to me.
Just because I think something is true does not make it so. But we sure are looking for evidence of other life forms!
They will most likely find us (might already have) before we find them.
Mankind isn't very far from the point the monkeys touched the black monolith. 
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They will most likely find us (might already have) before we find them.
If you're speaking strictly science, it isn't a stretch to see us all arriving at the theories we postulate (hypothesis.)
I'm of a different mindset I can't discuss here.
You should ask him. I was just pointing out that he is a scientist, and not a mystic. He is worth listening to, even if you don't agree with him.
Another interesting person worth listening to regarding the true nature of reality is Dr. Bernardo Kastrup.
In this video professional skeptic Michael Shermer interviews him
MolaKule
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I ask you the questions below since you seem to be a follower of these new metaphysical idealists, modern mystics who seem to deny actual reality. Since you seem to be highly absorbed in this philosophy, you should be able to answer those questions as to what you believe they are saying and to what you believe. Please don't commit the fallacy of 'Elephant Hurling' or "asking them" in order to sidestep these questions.
Question: So are you and Hoffman telling us that the objects we perceive by our senses of vision and touch are being wrongly perceived as real objects, objects that actually exist and have substance?
Pick up a bowling ball (having existence or substance) and drop it on your foot and tell me the pain you are feeling is illusory.
So what do you think are Hoffman's or Kastrup's main premises?
Are they following any of the tenets of the scientific method? Are there any "testable" hypotheses presented here? What observations support their hypotheses? What predictions have they made that later evidence showed as supporting their case?
I see none of that in any of those interviews, so it isn't science.
I thought the OP's posting was to explore the cosmological theories presented by Brian Cox, but you have sidetracked this discussion into a philosophical conjecture derived from Eastern Mysticism.
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How can these guys actually know what reality is when they are so detached from reality?
feel free to delete all my posts in this thread.
Is that a semiconductor question? I say that as an electrical engineer. Group IV are semiconductor elements like silicon, carbon, or germanium that can form a perfect diamond-lattice structure, although I'm not sure it's possible to make a diamond semiconductor. OK - a little Googling and yeah it is.
Not sure about the topic itself, but I remember attending a couple of lectures by Stephen Hawking, and I frankly didn't understand much of what was going on. I was senior in high school though. However, it was still an interesting event, if it was pretty much all canned except for the Q&A at the end.
Well I think you need to do a little more math. There's about 100-400 billion stars per galaxy. And there's an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Due to cosmic inflation, it's possible that the unobservable universe is actually 250-1000 times bigger than the observable universe, measurements are still ongoing. So maybe there's other intelligent life out there, but maybe the speed limit really is the speed of light and those life forms just can't get here. A few other things to keep in mind that I wish the Drake equation had a few other factors like how most stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs and they tend to flare and the radiation wipes out all life. Then how long life has before a meteor wipes out all life or other cosmic disasters. And how maybe you need the heavier metals created by neutron star collisions to have nuclear power or maybe they're just needed as we're made up of trace materials of heavier metals. We might actually be early in the cycle, we're at least a 3rd generation sun. And then there's also the time frame, if the speed limit is the speed of light and you can only do 1-20% the speed of light, it takes a long time for a probe to get anywhere and we don't have a good history of long civilizations beyond the Roman empire which was about a thousand years. Maybe any other civilization just burns themselves out after a few thousand years so there's no sign of anything else out there.
Lots of "maybes" ... ask these guys --->
I highly doubt the pinnacle of technology in the Universe belongs to humans on Earth.
It can be a semiconductor question. Thank you for sharing.
I was thinking of an existential question about Castrol and XOM and all others.
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