OT: What is the Universe Expanding into?

[PvK]

Originally posted by Puke:
...
on a more serious and related note, the theory of dark matter is working on being disproven. entire models of the universe and what we know about it, may be based on faulty information and bad assumptions.

That's my feeling. There are many other possible interpretations of the available data.

...
I tend to plead agnosticism when it comes to questions like this, but honestly i enjoy believing that the universe is a product of its own imagination, and exists because it wills its self to. sort of like reality being a concentual halunination, but not quite.

Yes, it's an interesting idea, and makes sense in a way. It's similar to what Attrocities wrote:

Mybe the universe only exsist as long as we think it does. That when the Last human dies, so dies this universe. So by reproducing, we keep the universe, and the genes that make up our race, passed down from one generation to the next for nearly a million years, stay alive.

Which is similar to something everyone here should know from their gaming experience: It's possible to create a universe with imagination, which does exist in the same way that literature, and similar to the way memories, and even cosmologies, exist. It isn't physical within what we call our physical universe, but it exists as an idea. For people with brain damage or illness, for example, they experience very different worlds from the world others share. Different historical cosmologies are also akin to game worlds and all of the above, on a fundamental level, including whatever the latest cosmology is.

PvK

[narf poit chez BOOM]

the universe is a mass psychosis? feel free to repeat that experiment - and disbeleive the brick wall all you want.

[Kamog]

Well, I suppose the universe could be all an illusion, but I couldn't think of any reason why people might believe that. What is the rationale for thinking that everything is an illusion?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

*deleted because of sarcasm*

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Kamog:
Well, I suppose the universe could be all an illusion, but I couldn't think of any reason why people might believe that. What is the rationale for thinking that everything is an illusion?

The point is that you would not really be able to tell if it was an illusion, so either viewpoint becomes just as arbitrary. Philosophical debate ensues. Much fun.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

much comments from the peanut gallery.

*munch, munch*

[Kamog]

So, if everything is an illusion, there is no experiment that you could do to prove it one way or another, because all the results of your experiments would also be an illusion.

As for the universe being a single thought with many Subscribers... it's also possible that there is only ONE Subscriber. I mean, you don't know if anybody else besides you is real. I know that my own thoughts exist but maybe I'm dreaming everything and everybody around me. Sure hope that's not the case - that would be a rather lonely situation to be in.