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Comment by agentgt | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious how many people think about the Universe and how frequently. I think about it all the time and I'm not a physicist. Probably a solid 30 minutes a day usually before falling asleep. Almost religiously (ironic).

I have tried to talk about it with my family and friends but so many of them just don't seem to have the passion for it. Some times I feel even seriously guilty wasting so much energy thinking/reading about it. Sometimes even wondering if I'm even in right profession (even though I do love technology).

My current theory is that it just my personality type (INTP).

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> Some times I feel even seriously guilty wasting so much energy thinking/reading about it.

It's your energy, so if you find it worthwhile then that's all that matters.

I sometimes feel the same way regarding my passion for computer science, when there are so many immediate problems in the world (energy production, food/wealth/opportunity distribution, war, etc.).

The good news is that you're having such guilty thoughts at all; that makes you more conscientious than if you didn't! You're also devoting that energy to a meaningful topic, compared to cultural norms like sports, celebrities, fashion, etc.

If you feel like there's nothing to show for your efforts, maybe you could try writing down some of your thoughts. They wouldn't have to be "correct", as long as they're intellectually honest; that would provide a progression of ideas, offer insight into the learning process, etc. and maybe you can look back over them to either find inspiration in ideas you'd forgotten, or be able to look at your old questions and know that you've found answers to some of them.

How is someone thinking about the universe for half an hour before bed any more meaningful than someone thinking about the Denver Broncos?

Eh.. meaningful depends on the observer, but I doubt Einstein would have come up with relativity if he thought about the Denver Broncos instead of the universe.

It is interesting that you make this statement, because I have sometimes heard that Einstein was able to make so many profound contributions because he had a multitude of interests which was generally above average with respect to his peers. Unfortunately, I don't have a reference, but I think it was mentioned in his biography by Walter Isaacson.

And not just that, reading that book will give you the general sense of a man who was quite the eclectic, intentionally creating masterminds with people from a broad swath of occupations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

They're both subjects of thought therefore they are both equally meaningful to think about. false

I was asking why one is more meaningful than the other. Your response is basically "it's possible that one of them is more meaningful than the other" which doesn't help much.

It depends what you do with it, which is why I suggested turning it into something concrete like writing.

If thinking about something makes it 'click', that's useful to make a note of, as it may help someone else come to understand it. If something is still unfathomable after lots of thought, that's useful to make a note of, as someone else may be able to help, it may uncover a misunderstanding, or it might give someone else comfort to know they're not alone in their struggle.

Less trivially (and less likely, but worth pursuing) it may lead to original thoughts, new perspectives or analogies, inspiring others, revealing previously ignored aspects of the world, etc.

I don't know if amateur reflection on sports would actually have any impact, and even if it did (e.g. calling the Denver Broncos to tell them about some new strategy/etc. you've come up with), it wouldn't have much impact on the world. The names in Marty McFly's sports almanac might change, but even after just 1000 years those ripples would probably have faded to nothing.

One is about the ultimate potential of humans as a species.

The other sportses.

IMO, no comparison.

My point was that a programmer thinking about the Universe every night is no different that someone watching football every night. Neither will have any meaningful impact on the species. If his job was related to the Universe or physics or math or something, sure. But he writes CRUD apps for SV startups or maintains COBOL for a bank. 500 years from now we will be no better nor worse as a species for the hours he spent thinking about quasars.

I sometimes feel the same way regarding my passion for computer science, when there are so many immediate problems in the world (energy production, food/wealth/opportunity distribution, war, etc.).

Likewise. I sometimes feel bad that what I do doesn't have a more immediate impact on people's lives somehow, in terms of things like poverty, health-care, clean water/food, etc.

OTOH, the skills I have can be put to use in those areas, but the only outlet I really have to do that is to volunteer with non-profits of some sort, which is something I do a bit of (but probably not enough).

I get it too. It's incredibly soothing and comforting to contemplate the vastness of space, the amazing features of this reality we barely comprehend and in which we live for a flicker of an instant. Whenever I'm stressed, all I need to do is look up at the night sky, or read wikipedia articles about quasars, dark matter, stellar wind, the event horizon of supermassive black holes, how galaxies can pass through each other without any of the billions of stars ever coming close to hitting each other.

It comforts me in a "the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans" kind of way.

Oh, and another INTP here :)

I think about it all the time as well and I am thankful for these types of videos [1].

What I think about most, is how awesome it is to be alive right now. Where this video (and others like it) tell me about the universe and what discoveries have been found.

At the end of this video, I am always wondering that if the Universe is as big as they claim. There must be discoveries waiting to be found that we can't even comprehend!

Sometimes I find myself wishing we had probes that could be much faster than they are now. Instead of taking decades to go to the edges of our solar system, it takes months.

Maybe within 50 years, by the end of my lifetime. We'll start to see images from Alpha Centauri and beyond. That I am hoping for!

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoW8Tf7hTGA

I do it every day, although my background in maths/physics is not enough to do it "the scientific way". There is one topic I'm constantly thinking about: "Where is the data, e.g. the mass of a planet, stored in our universe?".

I guess this question arise because of my computer science background (algorithms + data = universe?) and because even simple formulas like the Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation deals with data (e.g. the mass of a planet). So, where is that number stored so the universe know how to apply its formulas (laws, algorithms)? I know these laws we have are just models of our reality that are getting more precise over time, but I can't help but think that at the end our universe has to do "some calculations" and has to deal with data (numbers). I know three devices that can store information: our brains, our DNA, and our computers. The color of our eyes are stored in our DNA, but the mass of a planet is not stored anywhere?

As I've said, my limited maths/physics background doesn't let me think about the universe the right way. I'm just a dilettante. And sorry for my English.

Seems to me that the data is stored in the positions of the particles that make up the planet.

How would we know if we were in a real universe or a perfectly accurate simulation of one? If we were in a simulation, how would we know whether it modeled the same rules as the host universe, or an imagined fantasy universe?

If we are living in a nonfictional simulation, mass data are stored in a colossal server farm. If we are living in a fictional simulation, the mass data are stored in a thing we cannot possibly comprehend. If we are living in a real universe, mass data are not "stored" anywhere, in the same sense that consulting a map at 1:1 scale is indistinguishable from actually visiting the landscape it represents. Storing that data elsewhere is neither useful nor necessary.

I ask, what is the qualitative difference?

I would say you have to start by defining "real". Surely a simulation is real in the sense that it takes up physical resources, has to be internally consistent and other such criteria. Importantly, abstractions within it can have experiences that are just as meaningful as those outside.

Maybe it's about being a "top-level" universe, which is self-defining and without physical constraints? It seems ours is unlikely that if inflation theory pans out, instead being just a self-contained world in the multiverse, not so different than any other simulation.

Personally, but without much evidence, I suspect there are no top-level universes; perhaps they do cycle around though, so very large scales eventually become the very small.

For us? None.

We store reduced-precision, reduced-accuracy copies of the mass data wherever we keep the logs for our measurement devices. We can't get at the "real" numbers, anyway, so we just go by what our instruments say.

We can, however, "write" to the real data store for mass--by doing things like picking up rocks and throwing them. If we are living in a simulation, and it is imperfect, we could potentially exploit an imperfection by manipulating the simulation in just the right way.

I do quite often. Sometimes when I think about the entirety of the universe (at least the one we are aware of) I start to wonder what I'm doing here at my job, or what are any of us doing existing at all? I can't help but think what's "outside" the universe (a very human and naïve way of thinking), what's the meaning of it all? I conclude there isn't any meaning, then I recalibrate my mindset and return to caring about all the meaningless things in my brief life.

I did, a lot, when I was younger. My original plan out of high-school was to major in physics, stay in academia, get a phd, do research, etc. That got derailed when I took a computer programming class, and for most of the past couple dozen years I haven't spent as much time thinking about physics and cosmology.

Just recently though, I've kinda had my passion for that stuff renewed (can't say why, though). I've been reading a lot of books on physics and cosmology again and spending a lot of time thinking about things like "what is 'space'" and the like.

The biggest regret I have is that since I did not major in physics after all (and dropped out of school before graduating in c.s. anyway), I never got the level of certain things (especially maths) I would need to really understand physics at the deeper levels. I can read and largely understand books written for lay-people, like your average Brian Greene or Michio Kaku book, but I can't really go to arxiv.org and read the papers in the physics section.

It's frustrating, but at the same time, the field I chose has been good to me and it affords me enough money and free time to sit around reading physics books now and trying to learn/re-learn stuff I always wanted to learn.

Personally, I have always had a love for physics (especially physics I can't really understand). If I hadn't gone into software, physics would have been it for me.

Perhaps I will study physics after I retire or if I ever get tired of software.

I don't ever really feel guilty about thinking about physics though. If someone can't feel free to at least think about what they want, then what freedom do you really have at all?

Yes I have phases where I spend a lot of time thinking about things like this. But there's only so much you can think about on your own, so it's important to keep reading and talking about it with others. Right now I'm enjoying "The Vital Question". I also enjoy writing

I've also heard that Myers-Briggs personality types are not very useful or reliable, but for what it's worth, my personality type is INFP.

1. Now you know you're not alone :)

2. For me, it's more like lingering in the back of my mind, always thinking / imagining in terms of space-time continuum & the math related to it

3. I'm always trying to go to the next step, by learning the math (or the concept anyway), and quantstart[0] seems to be helping

[0] https://www.quantstart.com/articles/How-to-Learn-Advanced-Ma...

Don't worry, there are lots of us. Currently I chat with people on some twitch channels that are dedicated to space games. We watch launches together and comment and talk about space.

Do you think about the universe or your place in the universe and why you are here ?

If it's the latter, I read somewhere a long time ago that these thoughts are caused due to a temporary chemical imbalance (serotonin I think) in the brain. Can't find the source right now, but something worth adding to the conversation.

Any mental state has a physical / chemical correlate. I find the idea these are imbalances unhelpful.

And, we're not even certain which way round the causality flows. A bit of both, surely.

Most people think about it, it's just that most people process these ideas through the filter of religion.

I spent this past weekend reading about Heat Death Of The Universe and Black Dwarf stars.

I have a bizarre love for the heat death theory, partially because it goes so well with Lovecraft's "And with strange aeons even death may die" in my mind.

I too like it as well but because of a different author and story: "The Last Question" by Asimov [1]. It is a short but a must read (and it is free to read as well). It is one of the most beautiful and optimistic scifi stories. Asimov was and still is so ahead of his time.

[1]: http://multivax.com/last_question.html

I think about it constantly, but I've had an interest in astronomy and cosmology since I was a small child and I'm currently studying astrophysics at university.

Black matter and finiteness come back on a regular basis in my mind.

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