About

Charting Existence is a support group for seekers of adventure. We encourage each other to recognize problems and solve them. We breed heroes. We help people find adventure and we help people see that in some ways life is already an adventure. We discuss travel, science, philosophy, and science fiction.

We are all explorers. Some of us explore land and sea. Some explore space. Some explore the nature of matter and energy through experiment. Some explore the human mind through self-reflection. We are all on an expedition for knowledge, a quest for truth, and a journey to understand. This is where we swap our stories of heroism and cowardice and genius and stupidity, whether true or fabricated. Even fictional stories tell much truth about the storyteller.

We use our creativity to create art. We use our creativity to recognize art, digging up the beauty in things normally passed over, and to celebrate the beauty in others. We will not ignore the bad, but will find the good hidden inside. We celebrate the wonder and intricate complexities of nature, giving glory to the creator of everything, whatever form he (she? It?) might take.

Here we discuss philosophy, religion, science, math, and literature. Everyone puts forth their wacko fringe theories only to have them torn down because no finite idea can ever fully capture truth. The incompleteness theorem, the Berry paradox, chaos theory, cyclic conformal cosmology, and eternal inflation all strongly imply there will always be something outside our understanding. For all we know, the universe is infinite.

In an infinite universe, the laws of probability tell us that any combination of matter allowable under the laws of physics will exist somewhere. This means that even fictional places such as Vulcan, Tatooine, Gallifrey, and Narnia actually exist. This means that there are infinitely many parallel Earths, some of them just slightly different, some of them slightly ahead or behind us in time.

In an infinite universe must be beings capable of building advanced simulations wherein different laws of physics reign, allowing anything that can be coherently described. By playing the simulation forward and backward, time travel is possible. Some of these simulations may be infinitely large and infinitely old. For all we know, we are in one now.

In an infinite universe are multiple infinities that will interact in potentially paradoxical and unpredictable ways, leading to situations mortal minds will not comprehend, such that even some internally contradictory ramblings might in some sense be “true.”

Instead of dreaming of some magical place that might await us after death, we live it now.

“That is the exploration that awaits you, not mapping stars and studying nebula, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.” – Q, Star Trek The Next Generation

Community Guidelines

Please respect the following community guidelines to maintain an enjoyable environment:

• Keep conversation respectful, without personal attacks. Read carefully to make sure you haven’t misunderstood someone or assumed them to have taken a position they have not explicitly stated.
• Don’t blow up other members’ feeds. If someone isn’t responding to you, let it be.
• No pornography. Some mild nudity in the context of art okay.
• Feel free to promote yourself and your novels, movie scripts, businesses, charities, and other projects. Just don’t post the same thing over and over. Give others a chance to shine.
• Relax, be yourself, and enjoy.