Thread: My Theory That There's NO such thing as being completely opposite.

Warning: This may not be the right forum for this, but it seemed scientific enough for me.

Today, I was thinking about opposites. You know, like black and white, night and day, etc. To me, they seemed different enough to be opposite; and for some people thats enough. But I went deeper into this thought because, for me, this wasn't enough. Night and day MAY seem completely opposite to some people, but to some extent, night and day ARE the same. For example, Night and day are similar in that they both are cycles of the sun and the moon. As for black and white, they are both states of which light is present or not. What i'm trying to get to here is that if you boil it down, THERE IS NOT ONE THING OPPOSITE TO ANOTHER THING.

Another example is this:

Say there is a cactus and a water bottle. Don't ask why; I don't know why I picked those two objects. Try to find some similarities between the two. Yes? No? Their physical structure while looked at with the unaided eye might be completely different. But, boil it down. You may think i'm crazy for this and you may think DUH . But if you boil it down, (I indeed understand that this was the third time i used that) they both have letters in their name and they both are composed of atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, plancks, etc.


So now you've heard my spiel. What this whole thing was for was to explain to you my theory. Nothing has an opposite. The list is infinate. Questions?

What is the point?

North Pole/South Pole

Up/down

Intelligent/stupid

In/out

Plus/minus

Inside/outside

The idea of opposites is just one feature of our language which helps us to classify and organize the information in our world. I think it is rather useful.

It's not like me to agree with people posting wacky stuff like this. But in this case ...

I think what djb456 is saying is that for two things to be considered opposites, they must be members of the same set. So north and south are both poles/directions, electrons and positrons are both leptons, etc.

So I think the argument that there are no such thing as opposites is going too far, but it is vaguely interesting that we can't say a banana is the opposite of evil. (And I am not just saying that because bananas are evil.)

The opposite of a bananna is a pink unicorn.

Originally Posted by djb456

Warning: This may not be the right forum for this, but it seemed scientific enough for me.

Today, I was thinking about opposites. You know, like black and white, night and day, etc. To me, they seemed different enough to be opposite; and for some people thats enough. But I went deeper into this thought because, for me, this wasn't enough. Night and day MAY seem completely opposite to some people, but to some extent, night and day ARE the same. For example, Night and day are similar in that they both are cycles of the sun and the moon. As for black and white, they are both states of which light is present or not. What i'm trying to get to here is that if you boil it down, THERE IS NOT ONE THING OPPOSITE TO ANOTHER THING.

Another example is this:

Say there is a cactus and a water bottle. Don't ask why; I don't know why I picked those two objects. Try to find some similarities between the two. Yes? No? Their physical structure while looked at with the unaided eye might be completely different. But, boil it down. You may think i'm crazy for this and you may think DUH . But if you boil it down, (I indeed understand that this was the third time i used that) they both have letters in their name and they both are composed of atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, plancks, etc.


So now you've heard my spiel. What this whole thing was for was to explain to you my theory. Nothing has an opposite. The list is infinate. Questions?

Maybe you could at it this way, when people are suggesting that black is the opposite of white or up is the opposite of down they are using the term 'opposite' in the context that it is simplified to mean exactly what they intended i.e. black is the converse of white and up the same to down. It's just using the term to mean what they want and it works because everybody else understands what they mean.

The point is this, 'inappropriate' use of language is fine as long as everybody still understands your meaning.

That said I take your point about the literal meaning of 'opposite'.

I know this is completely obvious what i'm about the say but EVEN those have some similar traits. Pink Unicorns are composed of atoms. Bananas are composed of atoms. Pink Unicorns reflect light, Bananas reflect light. What i'm trying to get to here is that everything seems to have something in common.

lol

Originally Posted by djb456

Pink Unicorns are composed of atoms.

Are they? Do we have any evidence of that?

Pink Unicorns reflect light

The invisible ones don't.

I wonder how one would state Newtons third law without using the word "opposite"?

Third law: The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, ???? and collinear.