General Chat / Is there a 'perfect crime'?

Well...why wouldn't it happen in the same way if there was nobody to hear it?

This is about how you think. You're not thinking philosophically. In theory, anything is possible. There are an infinite number of possiblities of outcomes to a given situation. This brings to mind the analogy of the tennis ball being thrown at the wall. If you throw a tennis ball at a wall an infinite number of times, what's to stop the atoms in the ball and the wall lining up one time in such a way as to allow the ball to pass through the wall?

^ Now that, my friend, is interesting.


Seriously, I'm preplexed. It could happen! In theory, of course.

The chance of that happening ^ is infinitely small though. I always pretend that i'm some super being that can move his atoms and thus pass through matter! What if you're nucleusses had negative energy and you'd have positrons circling them....

Oh, and Corky, that would be impossible. See, there would be no links to me, i'd not or hardly know the person, i would have arranged the gun through other people since you can't buy guns in the states, and i doubt they can actually do much with just a bullet. (besides distance of shot, maybe type of gun) Did you know all those CSI and other crime scene investigation series are hugely exagerated? They're full of bullshit. Though sometimes it works, like "hey, i got DNA samples to prove it!" "ok, i confess! i did it!".

^ Cops can conceivably trace the bullet, trace the guns, follow every lead, find where it was bought, and trace to you eventually.

Not that it'd be easy.



What DNA?  You get THEIR DNA on it, fine... but what about yours?  Unless you're dumb enough to cut yourself and leave blood, they're not gonna find your DNA.  You don't even need gloves... fingerprints aren't left on water.

What do you think your hand is? As well as oils, too? Just for a fun fact, did you know approx. 70% of dust is HUMAN SKIN CELLS (i.e. DNA)

There are some questions that come to my mind first.

1.) What is perfect?
2.) Can human beings create anything that is perfect?
3.) What is a crime?

The easiest way to answer this might be, get president of the US, but at all this is no philosophical answer.

Question one is quite easy to answer. Perfect means to get away with it.

The second questions seems to be impossible to answer, but i believe nobody can create something perfect. At all this seems to be the most scientific answer to this questions. Let's take an easy example. The wheel. Everybody says it is perfect, but still there is friction and we have to use energie to overcome this friction. Then somebody invented the ball bearing in order to reduce the friction. Still it isn't perfect and it won't be perfect for ever. We just get closer to being perfect. (Some of you might say we place the experiment in vacuum, but if you think of all disadvantages that come up with this this is no solution for the problem of friction.)
-> Human beings can create something perfect. (and there is nobody else able to create something perfect.)

What is a crime?
Also a very difficult quiestion to answer. You might say to commit a murder is a crime. Now look at other religions and such. The Eskimos for instance kill their parents (if you stick to our moral conceptions it's a murder) in order to save their own lives. [anybody knowing if they are still doing this, I'm just sure about the past]
Now would you call this a crime? I think we have to stick to the Eskimos traditions and believes and so we come to the conclusion it is no crime.

Same goes suicide bombers. Would you call it a crime if you believe you get in heaven for killings soldiers by commiting suicide?
Again we come to the point that the moral conceptions are important to say what is a crime and what is no crime.


The question asked in the thread should be "Is there a 100% save way to commit murder and get away with it."
From my point of view there is no perfect murder, but still you can get away with it.
What I mean is that there are always ways that nobody will be able to proof you are the murder, but who knows what happens in the future. Maybe scientists find a way to proof you are the murder. You never know what happens in the future and so there is no way to commit murder and come away with it for sure.

Still religions and other non-scientific believes might bring up a possibilty for a perfect crime. You just have to believe you get in heaven for it.

Somebody already comitted the perfect crime. He killed multiple people, and put their bodies, and all evidence of the crimes, in vats of acid. By the time they could trace the crimes back to him, he had already died naturally. I forgot his name, though.

Saw it on The History Channel.

Jack the Ripper was pretty perfect with his crimes, but that's only because there weren't any "real" cops in London at the time, and crime solving hadn't evolved into what we know it as today...

To get away with your crime would mean thats a perfect one. but do you know it then? just the person itself knows about the crime then, cause if he got away, the law says there was no crime at all. So if ever was a perfect crime nobody will know.

^ Cops can conceivably trace the bullet, trace the guns, follow every lead, find where it was bought, and trace to you eventually.

Not that it'd be easy.



What DNA?  You get THEIR DNA on it, fine... but what about yours?  Unless you're dumb enough to cut yourself and leave blood, they're not gonna find your DNA.  You don't even need gloves... fingerprints aren't left on water.

What do you think your hand is? As well as oils, too? Just for a fun fact, did you know approx. 70% of dust is HUMAN SKIN CELLS (i.e. DNA)

yet what are they going to do with that dna? dna tells you what base pair follows the next, not where the owner lives.

Of course, technically, you leaving everything for the cops to find wouldn't make it perfect. You would have gotten away with it, perfectly, though. So possibly it does suffice. And what's not perfect about it. You left finger prints, a weapon, a body, but when it's all irrelevant what's keeping the crime becoming perfect? Perfectly anonymous.

This is about how you think. You're not thinking philosophically. In theory, anything is possible. There are an infinite number of possiblities of outcomes to a given situation. This brings to mind the analogy of the tennis ball being thrown at the wall. If you throw a tennis ball at a wall an infinite number of times, what's to stop the atoms in the ball and the wall lining up one time in such a way as to allow the ball to pass through the wall?

If you haven't read the Tesseract, read it.

Because if a light year thick block of lead was trying to blow its brains out with a neutrino gun, chances are it would fail. So one would surely have thought that when you throw a tennis ball at a wall the atoms would conspire to let it through?

I think charges of sub atomic particles comes into it at some point as well though. Having said that, I'm no physicist.

As for all this coincidence stuff, I could ramble on forever. Or I could just say, watch Magnolia.

Well...why wouldn't it happen in the same way if there was nobody to hear it?

Why would it? Prove it does. You can't.
I say fluffy pink platypusses created the universe. You can laugh at me all you want, but can you prove I am wrong? No.


BTW, trees do move... in a manner of speaking. They naturally grow and shape themselves to best utilize the current environment. Day lillies open their petals in sunlight, and close when the light dims, for example. In this respect, plants move of their own accord (aside from natural conditions that cause them to move, such as wind and earthquakes). They may come to occupy a point in space previously unoccupied. The concept that they talk and grill burgers is entirely possible in my opinion... merely because it cannot be proved undoubtedly false. Nor can any theory, really. One would need to possess omnipresent powers in order to know "truth". As for you and me, reality is subjective, unfortunatly.

In the same way, each of our personal notions of "perfection" is solely subjective. A universally accepted idea of the perfect crime therefore, would be unattainable.

You guys are far to scientific for philosophy.

I took a class on Time Travel this summer... combining Physics and Philosophy.

With my knowledge from that class, time travel to the future is possible, but not to the past. And yes, that means once you're in the future, you cannot return.

Trees can't move, they're not built to move

Actually, there's one type of tree that does move, however, I do not know the name of it at the moment.

If you're going to be pedantic about it, then trees do move anyway...so listen up kids and meet Mrs Gren.

With my knowledge from that class, time travel to the future is possible, but not to the past. And yes, that means once you're in the future, you cannot return.

'Cos the time is no circle but a straight line?

'Cos the time is no circle but a straight line?

nice thoery, but i doubt your teacher is right

the main problem i have with traveling to the future is that this would mean everything happening on this planet is planed. history is already written.
traveling to the past wouldn't have this problem but still there are some other problems.
if you travel to the past you could change the history (first of all this doesn't go together with traveling to the future, cause based on that histrory is already written.) so this might proof only one of them can be right.
the biggest problem i see is what happens with this changed past. does it have effeect on out world. on the "now-time".
or are you on a 2nd earth when traveling to the past.

all if this sounds way strange to me, which is the reason i don't believe in traveling through time. still i can't proof it and even stephen hawking isn't sure about if it is possible.
he compared the time in on of his books to a railroad track. still it isn't said if there are shortcuts or even ways back.


actually timetraveling would proof another theory.
after the big bang the universe is growing but the speed of growing is slightly decreasing. maybe one day the universe even get's smaller. (negative growing). when we get to a very high concentration of matter there is a new big bang.

this would make timetraveling possible in the way that you always go to the future. to a new world after a new big bang. still this would mean one world for everbody if human beings can travel through times. also i wonder if on this new world after big bang now +1 history would go the same way or not. if we have a 2nd life and so on.
i could talk about this all day long

the main problem i have with traveling to the future is that this would mean everything happening on this planet is planed. history is already written.

excact!
But if there are more than one bigbang like you said, its my circle theory again... cos if you go to far in the past, throlugh the bigbang, there would be the future again, and than maybe, if you go further, the present.
If you go to the present in this way, it would mean, youre there twice.
Or that you come there and your second body is travelt to the past, a few seconds ago...
this is wicked stuff!
But i wanted this thread to come out like this...

Traveling to the future doesn't mean that whatever happens during your time travel was set at all. It could mean that everything still happens the same way it would (damnit, i'm contradicting myself here)...

I guess it means that whenever two people travel to the future, it might mean that they'd be traveling to different futures. If it wasn't set, but why can't the future, somewhat, be set?

Damn, we move up and down, left and right, forward and back! why can't we time travel?!

Damn, we move up and down, left and right, forward and back! why can't we time travel?!

actually we can. you might say "wtf?" now, but yes we can travel in time.
if you have twins and one of them is standing on the earth and the other is flying arround the earth (direction east) he will be younger then his/her brother/sister. when he comes back.
don't ask me why. this is one thing i really want to understand. maybe in two weeks there is time to read something about this.
still with the speed we can fly you would live 1 or 2 seconds longer then your brother/sister. so forget about planing t buy a plane

I had that explained to me, and i thought i understood. somewhat. It has something to do with a train and turning the light on .