are the dimensions we experience actualy dimensions?

hello people, if this is in the wrong forum i do appologize .

lately i have been thinking alot about concsiousnes and the world we percieve, i am not any sort of scientist and i may have blew my own mind by over thinking.

Todays thoughts have been about the dimensions we experience and the other so called dimensions that may or may not exist.

Are the dimensions we experience actualy dimensions ? or are they just what we percieve? take a 3 dimensional shape for instance. are those axis actualy dimensions, or simply measurments ?

my theory, The human race grown to give everything an explination and reason when maybe, their is no reason, their just shapes. And we have been way off with dimensions , after all, has any scientist ever prooved they could enter another dimention or is it just theoretical, and if so, wouldnt that mean that the theorys are based on theorys that may not necessarly be correct, and dimentions are something completly different.

i think this way about time as well, its a man made measurement that is used to measure things we did not create, just like how we measure a shapes bumps with dimensions (which im not saying are wrong , ironicly).

in my head, dimensions are more like another world, not a measurement..

[edit on 27-8-2008 by boaby_phet]

Originally posted by boaby_phet
lately i have been thinking alot about concsiousnes and the world we percieve, i am not any sort of scientist and i may have blew my own mind by over thinking.

It happens.

Are the dimensions we experience actualy dimensions ? or are they just what we percieve? take a 3 dimensional shape for instance. are those axis actualy dimensions, or simply measurments ?

There's no difference. We can only measure the world around us in the dimensions we perceive, namely height width and depth.

my theory, The human race grown to give everything an explination and reason when maybe, their is no reason, their just shapes. And we have been way off with dimensions , after all, has any scientist ever prooved they could enter another dimention or is it just theoretical, and if so, wouldnt that mean that the theorys are based on theorys that may not necessarly be correct, and dimentions are something completly different.

Ah, but your theory doesn't have math backing it up. Other dimensional theory does. Even if we can't prove the existence of other dimensions, we can describe aspects of those dimensions based off of the knowledge we do have of the 3 dimensions we can perceive.

in my head, dimensions are more like another world, not a measurement..

That's why you're not the guy writing the definitions in the dictionary. If you want to give new meanings to words based off what's in your head, feel free, just don't expect anyone else to agree with you.

their is no mathematical backup to "my theory" as its not a mathematical question.

The maths is the part that im getting at, as the maths is all based on our own human concepts, and not what the concepts may actualy be .. if you get me .

I could probably have worded it better, but thats not my speciality. I prefer to concentrating on thinking, thats hard enough sometimes .

Originally posted by boaby_phet
their is no mathematical backup to "my theory" as its not a mathematical question.

The maths is the part that im getting at, as the maths is all based on our own human concepts, and not what the concepts may actualy be .. if you get me .

Ah, but dimensions ARE math. They ARE measurement. And they exist just fine as pure numbers without any physical correlation.

You know how to play tic-tac-toe, right? The game is played on a 3x3 grid and the player who gets three in a row wins.

Let's take that board and describe it as coordinates... 0-2 on the x axis, and 0-2 on the y axis.

So a win, 3 in a row, along a row might be (0,0) (1,0) (2,0) or (0,1) (1,1) (2,1) or (0,2) (1,2) (2,2), right? We're incrementing the X value while keeping the Y value constant. These are the three horizontal ways to win at tic-tac-toe.

The three vertical wins would be (0,0) (0,1) (0,2) or (1,0) (1,1) (1,2) or (2,0) (2,1) (2,2). Here keeping the X value fixed while incrementing the Y value.

And the two diagonal wins are (0,0) (1,1) (2,2) or (0,2) (1,1) (2,0) either incrementing both X and Y or incrementing one while decrementing the other.

OK. Fine. Good. Obvious, right?

Can you do that with three dimensional tic-tac-toe? Let's use a 4x4x4 cube, otherwise, same rules apply.

So a one win might be (0,0,0) (1,0,0) (2,0,0) (3,0,0) another win might be (0,0,0) (0,1,0) (0,2,0) (0,3,0) or a third way would be (0,0,0) (0,0,1) (0,0,2) (0,0,3), and that's not even considering a diagonal like (0,0,0) (1,1,1) (2,2,2) (3,3,3) (or any of the diagonals along a face)

We've easily extrapolated the rules of 3-D tic-tac-toe based off our knowledge of the 2-D game. The rules for "what's in a row?" still apply, though in more directions. Diagonals can get a bit more confusing, but we can deduce what they should be. And since we live in a 3-D reality, we can easily picture a cube and how these things relate.

Now... take that and push it into 4 dimensions. You don't need to be able to picture a hypercube to figure out that a 5x5x5x5 game board will have winning moves on any one dimension that's variable while the rest remain constant, or any diagonal that's moving in 2, 3 or all 4 variables.

Does a 4th dimension exist? Who knows? But I can mathematically describe some of its attributes and play a game of 4-D tic-tac-toe with you simply by expanding the rules of what we DO know in one more dimension.

ahhhh .. i need to think of a better way to say it.

basicly, who is to say its all up to maths, now, im a firm believer that most things come down to equasions, but they are equasions based on our perception and reasoning of something, and may not be correct at all.

i know exactly what you mean with the tic tac toe comparrison, but thats what has been on my mind, who is to say that the dimensions are what we think they are, our main 3 dimentions for example, they are more a form of shape than an actual dimension, which is the think, scientists theorise that dimensions all come down to maths, when really it could be so far beyond maths we will never comprehend.

i do believe their is more to reality to what we experience, i just dont think maths is the exact answer to it. (although once they do suss it out , they will then know the exact mathematics , ironicly)

reply to post by boaby_phet


Before you get too far, I highly recommend reading Flatland if you haven't already. (Someone else, some years later, wrote Sphereland as an unofficial sequel that delved into higher dimensions as well.)

sir you are jumping on the bandwagon that a dimension is another world. all a dimension is is an extension of our own world. we cannot precieve them with our 3D eyes and mind; if we had 4D eyes you could see them. and you say that they are nonmathmatical just an image, numbers are the governing rules of the universe we just give it the name math.

numbers dont lie