Do physical objects truly exist or are they just illusions?

[JerryClower]

Of course matter exists. What do you think you are made of?

 

[petm1]

Matter is what we can all talk about but mass on the other hand is matter in the past. Why does mass, or in my mind dilating momentum, resist change? How about the thought "anything that you do because of what you see is already trying to change the past" fit in? Maybe position is a measure of the present but to change it you must start in the past.

 

[JerryClower]

Matter is what we can all talk about but mass on the other hand is matter in the past.

Ok, I'm going to sound like an idiot. But will you please elaborate/explain more of what you are talking about? Sounds interesting.

 

[petm1]

Matter is what we see and think about and talk about, but when it comes time to do something with matter you have to deal with its mass. Mass or matter's resistance to movement seems to me is because we see the present but we always act after seeing or in the past. Matter is our continuum and the resistance to change is because we always move just a little bit in the past behind what we see as the present. Think of one second as my present, what I see is the beginning what I do is its ending, matter is my future and mass is my past.

 

[Doug Huffman]

Does matter exist? Non cogitamus, ergo nihil sumus.

I'm within a hundred pages or so of finishing John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler's The Anthropic Cosmological Principle that is ~700 pages with lots of math, physics and data. It should be fundamental reading for any in this thread and especially those that might dismiss it as speculative and the Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle.