• OpenStars@piefed.social
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    1 month ago

    Ironically, what if that’s how our actual reality is even? It’s at least plausible, not that - as you said - it would make any difference if true.

    Moreover, there are postulated by string theory to be 11 dimensions (I mean… who knows whether that is true, but we are speaking hypotheticals here regardless of instantiation of any one actual implementation), yet we only occupy 3 spatial and 1 time. The other spatial, and perhaps more interesting the other potential time, dimensions all offer numerous possibilities.

    The ancient book Flatland does a pretty great job exploring that concept imho.

      • OpenStars@piefed.social
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        1 month ago

        And its successor SphereLand is, if not quite in the same league in terms of being ground-breaking (especially for its time), also neat.

        The Matrix was cool bc it popularized such thinking, bringing it out to where it was comfortable to talk about it in more mainstream company. But it most definitely was not the first to expouse that idea that truth is partly what we make of it, as well as not that too.

        img

      • OpenStars@piefed.social
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        1 month ago

        The author died >100 years ago, so the entire text is public domain if anyone wants to read it. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Flatland

        I don’t like reading books on a screen but… it is hard to pass up free - then again, libraries also exist and THIS BOOK IS WORTHWHILE.

        I could barely put it down the entire time I read it, it just consumed me.

        Just a note, it is actually so offensive to a woman’s role in society that many (most? I have no idea) scholars think that it was so over-the-top that it must have been meant as a critique of the then-status-quo.

        This book has fucking VISION, even centuries into the future.

        img

        Hopefully it won’t remain so for millennia as well - bc of the thoughts finally becoming commonplace in society; but even then it would remain as a historical milestone towards that fantastic end.:-)

        • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Your passion makes an excellent case on its own. You convinced me to give it a shot, I’ll look for it at the library. I hope they have it.

        • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          Just a note, it is actually so offensive to a woman’s role in society that many (most? I have no idea) scholars think that it was so over-the-top that it must have been meant as a critique of the then-status-quo.

          The author outright stated that it was meant as a critique in the 2nd edition, so there’s no need to guess :)

          • OpenStars@piefed.social
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            1 month ago

            Was that the actual author, or a statement added on their behalf? I thought I recalled reading it as the latter, where it seemed they were just guessing.

            Either way it could be a kind of trigger warning for someone who even knowing that wouldn’t want to read the text.

              • OpenStars@piefed.social
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                1 month ago

                Hehe. Thanks for sharing that.

                In fairness, there are a LOT of kinds of people in the world - e.g. I would have thought that someone advocating to block access to medically necessary abortions would surely have been satire but… nope.

                As with any form of message passing, the meaning depends on both the sender and the recipient - I would argue far more so the former, but some extremely selfish people would just as vehemently argue that the latter is all that matters to them.🤷