it's amazing how people can be fascinated by the firefly dancing in the night. I agree. The movie has no value.

You started with a statement you cannot prove. You cannot prove there an infinite number of universes.

I am one of the rare people that probably thinks it works better as a philosophical endeavor than a movie. I am not a fan of the movie at all. Mainly because I felt its point was convoluted, difficult to find, and when you got there, not worth the journey. To quote another movie, "it's bunk".

Ok, deydrate but...you kinda missed the point. Not trying to be your adversary here. Trying to help you learn how to think.

Let's look at it a different way.

The conversation started as one about 'objective truth'. That's a fairly high standard of truth and very little can be proven under it. You are thinking of truth in a different way, for lack of a better description let's call it 'practical truth'. In this we will essentially accept the world around us exists, and the data we receive from our perceptions in generally real (excepting things like hallucinations, mind playing tricks, etc.). So, with this frame of reference, you can start to look at things and say stuff like this table is X inches high, this table is made of cherry wood. But you can't say things like this table is brown because color is much like hot and cold. Color is subject to the lighting conditions. You may think, wait a minute "I can see that the table is brown." And that is a true observation, but not a true statement of the table itself. If the table is in a room, you can simply turn off the light and the table is no longer brown. Your brain thinks, "wait a minute, if I shine a light on it, I can see it is brown again." But in order to achieve that color you have to shine the light. And if you shine a light of a different color, the table changes color. You may want to say, "no that is the color of the light making it seem as if the table is different color." Nope, you only think the table is brown because of the color temperature of light you normally shine on it. If you lived on planet with a red sun, everything would look different and that would be the 'natural' color of the table instead, and if you shined a 2700K white light on it, that would be the same to them as you shining a red light on the 'brown' table. The point being, all color is subjective to the lighting conditions available. So while you may want to say something as simple as an orange is orange, that's not accurate. It is called an orange and that would be a practical truth, but to say an orange is orange is all dependent upon the lighting. So, the truth you are looking for doesn't exist. You can bring things down to another level and take things like lighting out of the equation and maybe get to something you might want to call 'everyday truth' but that's a simplification of a grand number of events and conditions happening all around you at all times. To sum it up, using the idea of 'objective truth': If a man is standing in the middle of a road, you must ask what evidence is there that he is a man? What evidence is there that he exists? How can you show he or the road even exist? Using the idea of 'practical truth': What road is he standing on? Is he on Earth? Then calculations come into play regarding how fast the Earth is moving as well as the galaxy. Technically, even the universe but that's a bit harder number to calculate so it can be ignored. But the conclusion is that a man standing on a object without moving is in fact moving. And then using the idea of 'everyday truth' yes, you can have what you are starting to think of as truth, the man is standing in the road because you can see him standing in the road. But this is a philosophy subreddit, and concepts of physics and existentialism are part of much of the conversation. Yeah it's a headache, but that's philosophy.

Because even if you determine that the temperature of X is Y, you still can't prove that X exists beyond your mind.

If you accept that the object is there, regardless of the availability of proof, you can get as far as proving the object has a temperature. But you will never be able to determine if the object is hot or cold, because hot and cold are always subjective to what you're measuring it against.

Salt can melt a snail, does that make it hot? Ice cream will melt if you do nothing, the world you live in is hot to the ice cream. I'm not ignoring your example, I'm trying to help you think differently. Your current method won't lead where you want it to go.

How can you be sure he isn't currently alive? Are you aware of all the states of existence? Before you can determine that Caesar is dead you must first define it. And then you must acknowledge that it could all be a dream. The point being almost all reality and truth is unprovable by it's nature.

And yes, I'm suggesting you stick with Caesar because hot is a relative term in all contexts. In that sense, there is no hot, there is no cold, there is only relative to X.

And I'm not saying that we can't have objective truths, they are all around us. I am saying hot and cold are not among them. Temperature is among them, but temperature is not hot or cold, it just is.

If you want to follow this down a 10 year exploration, all you can prove as an objective truth at the moment is "I think therefore I am." Nothing beyond that.

Well...let's start with for Caesar to be dead, he must have first been alive. For him to have been alive, he must exist. Can you prove that he existed beyond your belief? Can you prove that death is the end? Can you prove that you are having this conversation right now?

The sun. To an ice cube, rain is hot. To a human, Death Valley is hot. But relative to the sun, Death Valley is a quaint nice place to live. Our sun is 5,778 Kelvin generally. However, there are stars that are 210,000 Kelvin. The sun doesn't seem so hot anymore. And theoretically, there is no max temperature in the universe so hot gets very relative very quickly.

I would postulate that 'can be' is the wrong language, and insert instead 'must be'.

To me its a closed and rather boring question of whether there are objective truths, yes there are. Instead the more fun question is can we ever know them.

Truth exists...mainly because it has to. That said, can we ever know what it is? Unlikely.

The above though is the heart of what is wrong with relativity, Shrodinger's Cat, and similar concepts that are based upon observational data alone.

Do killers think nothing is wrong or do they simply not care? Everything is black or white. Everything is right or wrong. Every question has an answer. Whether we can ever know these things...that is another question.

This is kinda a standard university topic. One I haven't been asked in decades. Put simply, there are many possible answers but a couple of the more prominent ones are:

1. Philosophy teaches you how to think, how to see the important questions in any problem solving exercise. Once you begin to think like a philosopher, many every day problems will become easier to solve. You may even find yourself helping others with problems they have languished over for a long time and privately wonder why they didn't come to the same conclusion long before. And this teaching you how to think is an excellent foundation for politics, medicine, law, any kind of research position and a great many other professions.

2. Philosophy is the foundation of all knowledge, in all topics. Science is nothing more than applied philosophy. Quite often philosophy is thought of as the asking of questions but not answering them. And for some, this is all they ever want philosophy to be. But it can be more if you want it to. Ex: You have two competing ideas that can be thought of as two roads diverging in a wood. You arrive at the fork in the road and stand there wondering which direction to go. Without being able to see the end of either road, it is difficult to say which is the correct path. So you can a) conduct observations and see what factors may lead you to choose one versus the other, b) gather information from those who may be traveling down the same road and see which is has been observed to be the more likely correct path, or c) you can simply choose to walk a path and by walking it find an answer for right or wrong. All three of these are the foundation of all scientific study in all fields.

Disagree. Good and evil are real, so are right and wrong. And all creatures know what they are insofar as they need to. Caring about whether an action, lack of action, or thought is right/wrong/good/evil is entirely different. A creature can and quite often does take action in its self interest knowing that it is wrong and simply does not care.

Logically, I say have a great day. #cheers

No. We stop trying to make the data fit the theory and instead start asking why the data doesn't fit the theory. And what always has to be an option is, change the theory.

That's the point. Even a thousand years from now or ten thousand, we likely won't have all the answers. And an answer is not right if it is even 1% wrong. That's why it's important to never try to prove the theory, but create a proper theory to fit the facts. We should never be saying 'time does this near the speed of light', we should be saying 'we believe time does this near the speed of light based upon the current available theory and information'. Going back to the original post topic, dark matter may not exist...eventually you have to start looking at the theory as the problem.

In simplest terms, String Theory is wrong and a fools errand. Folks will give up on it eventually. Einstein was just a guy, a normal guy, with a decent theory. But he had an inkling he was on to something. It was decades before he really had any significant evidence to support it. For all the credit we give Einstein, he was trying to solve the math associated with gravitation for a decade and he couldn't. Hilbert and Schwarzschild both solved pieces of it with little effort before Einstein published his own answers after years of trying, and one of those guys did it while fighting WWI. Anyone who tries to claim Einstein is anything less than a god immediately gets shouted down in physics. He did some great things, but its time to build some new theories (that are not string theory). Remember, even Phlogiston theory was accepted science until it wasn't. I feel the critical flaw in Einsteinian physics is the idea that time is relative. Yes, critical to Einstein's theories, but the distinction that should be made a some point is between the 'perception of time' and 'actual time'. Some would say, what is time beyond what we can observe? Ultimately, that question makes as much sense as what is the world beyond what I can see? Time is real and absolute. Provable? Observable? Hard to say.

It is called the Theory of Relativity for a reason. It's unproven and unprovable. The downvoting only serves to prove my point. Blind devotion to anything is bad. What sound more logical, that physics is a vast and complex thing, many pieces of which we don't know and can't know yet, or that one guy figured out most of it's inner workings only a few hundred years after we decided that the Earth was not the center of the universe? Challenging our theories is one of the most important things we can do. If you want to devote all your time and energy to attempting to make the facts fit Einstein's theories, go right ahead. There are lots of things in physics that don't add up and we have created special rules to deal with them. Until you have one theory that can unify all physics, on all levels, from subatomic, to celestial, you will have a flawed theory that is at least a little bit incorrect, no matter what name you give or how much it helps us understand the universe around us.

Scientists must learn to accept the possibility of the very simple conclusion, that Einstein was wrong. Logic states that we do not know all the physics that exist in the universe. And that very likely in order to understand the universe we will have to rewrite many of out existing theories to accommodate what turns out to be reality. We would very likely have made much more progress with physics by now if instead of trying to get the data to fit our scientific theory, instead working to create new theories to fit the observations. But any alternative theory of science that even hints that Einstein was wrong is cast out as laughably wrong in the modern academic world. Unfortunate.

This reminds me of a couple of things.

Person A and Person B are arguing. Person A is fervent in his/her beliefs. So is Person B and they are opposing. The difference, Person A has more knowledge on the topic. This will often result in the perception that Person A wins the argument due to Person B not being able to fully refute a given point. However, the fact is that while the odds increase that Person A may be right, Person B could still in fact be right and only lacks the ability to prove it. Further, even if Person A was the foremost expert on the topic in the world, and Person B is a four year old kid with virtually zero knowledge of the topic, there is no guarantee that Person A is correct and Person B is wrong. The point, knowledge is virtually impossible (if not in fact impossible) within the constraints of current existence, only evidence and probability can point to the more likely correct answer. Ultimately, arguing and debate may prove to be of little assistance to show the actual answer and 'rightness' in a given situation.

The above applies to all things, even established science that we think of as having well established laws. As long as there is a scenario in science where the information available does not conform to the scientific law/theory governing the situation, there is the possibility that the law/theory is wholly wrong even if the math works for most scenarios. Ex: if you go into a physics forum and try to argue against relativity or that time and space are in fact separate things and that gravity only impacts the perception of time and not 'actual time' you will be met with heavy resistance. Some of it backed by argument and data. But ultimately, those arguments and data may mean nothing. Only further exploration of the topic will reveal how likely we are to be approaching the correct answer.