- 2 months
Sounds like a thing we talked about in a philosophy class I took.
You have a room, with nothing but a blank piece of paper in it. There is one thing in the room.
You fold the paper. There is now a crease in the paper. It is still in the room.
How many things are in the room?
A “crease” (like the corner of a table) is a distinct thing, yet it is part of the paper. There is no increase in mass in the room. Yet the crease remains.
- 2 months
The truth is there are already many things in the room. Walls, air, paper. Gravitational influence. The arrangement is rife with mass. Between the Planck lengths are quantum fluctuations. A crease introduces a new arrangement of some of this, and the energy required to do so increases entropy. In other words, this philosophy exercise seems completely useless other than putting ignorance on full display.
- 2 months
Nah, it’s supposed to get you to think about what a thing is. You’ve listed random other examples of things but haven’t really gotten closer to differentiating what makes a thing vs it not being a thing.