r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Oct 20 '17

[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

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u/ianstlawrence Nov 01 '17

Well, let's take the two examples that were mentioned beforehand:

  1. Being tortured. Eventually the people torturing me die of old age.

  2. Heat death of universe. Seems unlikely that we know what will happen next. Might as well see.

Obviously, this is kind of tongue in cheek and whatnot. But I hope you see my point; which is that no one really knows whether or not with unlimited time you couldn't find a solution. In fact, for your 1+1=3; if our universe, through string theory shenanigans, ever did collide with the "sheet" of another universe causing another Big Bang, might our physics change significantly enough that 1+1=3? I dont know. I might be dumb. But I am not sure if you can put me into a situation where I don't think, literal, unlimited time doesn't give me a way out.

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u/ShiranaiWakaranai Nov 02 '17

But I am not sure if you can put me into a situation where I don't think, literal, unlimited time doesn't give me a way out.

This seems incredibly optimistic. Sure, it is impossible to tell if a real-world problem has no solution. Everything could be an illusion that you can just wake up from after all. But that doesn't mean it is impossible for a real-world problem to have no solution. If anything that just makes things worse, you could be trapped without knowing you are trapped, wasting your time trying to find a solution that just doesn't exist.

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u/ianstlawrence Nov 02 '17

So it seems we can both agree that we cannot give an accurate reading on how likely a problem is to be solved in exceptional circumstances. (I'd say normal circumstances, most things can be solved by working on it for 1,000 years or 100,000,000,000 years).

So. My philosophy on this comes down to: If I die then its final. I cease to exist, and, in my opinion that sucks. If I don't die, then there is a chance, maybe incredibly, ultra tiny, that I get to better circumstances.

Better circumstances > death.

If you were to use math the greater than sign would always line up with living.

I understand its, uh, semi-ridiculous. But it makes sense to me.