Nothing does not exist physically. The big bang was not a universe banging into existence from nothing. The nothing. In physics one means the vacuum. And as is known nowadays, the vacuum is not empty. The dark energy drove the virtual Planck cell apart. The universe came into real existence in an inflationary expansion of the 3D singularity on an eternal 4D substrate. The universe cannot be non-eternal. It has to be temporal infinite. The eternity might even be parsed in sub infinites. The universe we are in can cause a new big bang behind us, at the symmetric origin from where all new big bangs spring. This origin can be called the magical umbellicus of life, the dual fountain source of life. The Wondrous Dual Ejaculata in cosmic orgasm, with infinite foreplay.
What seems more far-fetched (1) something from literally nothing (2) an infinite past?
Since we are only familiar with being, non-existence is counter-intuitive. So, it's easier for us to imagine NOW extending into the Past and Future with no boundaries. But intuition tends to be prejudiced by personal experience.
The ancient Greeks were excellent mathematicians, but they had no concept of "Zero" (nothingness). Yet in more recent times, that non-intuitive notion has proven to be quite useful in abstract mathematics. Consequently, as hypothetical philosophical postulations, we are now more comfortable with such literal non-sense, even though it has no counterpart in physical Reality. That's why "Zero" and "Infinity" are meta-physical philosophical speculations, not physical scientific facts. And philosophical thinkers have been known to fetch some of their most exotic ideas from afar-far-away. :nerd:
Agent SmithJanuary 18, 2022 at 19:27#6448510 likes
Lovely question. :up:
Which is worse/better: Electric chair/Firing Squad?
I haven't really given these matters as much attention as I believe they deserve, but I will say this: the answer would depend on how bizarre the assumptions that are needed to prove these claims. Of course that raises the question, what do you mean by bizarre? Questions spawning questions - that's the heart of philosophy.
If I were to hazard a guess, infinity, nobody's really understood it very well. Paradoxes, paradoxes, and more paradoxes.
On the other hand, nothing, another concept that's a head-scratcher.
Quite the fix we find ourselves in. Nothing & Infinity or [math]0[/math] and [math]\infty[/math]. We're, in a sense, trapped between them, our minds struggling so much, too much?
Deleted UserJanuary 18, 2022 at 20:22#6448640 likes
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Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 18, 2022 at 21:18#6448830 likes
Contrary to the results of my poll so far, something from literally nothing intuitively seems more far-fetched to me. However, as @Gnomon pointed out, non-existence is counter-intuitive, and intuition tends to be prejudiced by personal experience. Other than our intuition, what's to say actual no-thingness didn't give rise to everything else? Bear in mind, something having an infinite past is absurd too.
This one's easy; something from nothing is more far-fetched, and it isn't especially close.
There isn't even anything particularly far-fetched about an infinite past at all; if anything, the proposition that the past isn't infinite strikes me as wildly implausible and far-fetched. That isn't to say a finite past is impossible, only that it would represent a radical and qualitative leap from anything we've experienced or previously known about how the world and causal order works and so the initial presumption is certainly against it.
In a sense, the singularity lies already infinitely far in the past. If we reverse our clock we would see the cosmic clock go slower and slower approaching the singularity as the mass density grows higher and higher, and when the end of inflation is reached, the universe was already big in size. If you count that inflation blew up the size about 10exp70 times, and multiply this by the Planck length, the universe was about 10exp35 meter in diameter. If you consider a lightyear to be about 10exp13 meter, you realize how big it was already then. About 10exp22 ly across! Thats not 100 billion (10exp11) ly, as the visible universe's diameter is now, but 10exp11 times as big!
Entropic time took off after inflation. But before that the perfect clock ruled supreme. When our universe has accelerated to infinity, conditions are set for a new bang at the singularity. A new entropic time appears from the total clock. Ad infinitum..
I am unable to vote on such a question - I doubt we have access to the relevant information. Personally, the idea of 'nothing' versus 'something' are human constructs to help us understand lived experience - useful on the plains of the savanna no doubt - not sure they fit when applied to cosmology.
Sure they are. Either the universe is past-eternal, or it is not (i.e. it came to be "from nothing"). If the one is true the other cannot be and visa versa.
And the only way "infinity and nothing are one and the same" is if you're re-defining one or both terms. Given their usual meanings in English, obviously they're very different concepts.
Conceptual notions? They seem pretty non-conceptual to me. Space is where I move in, time is the number of periods the perfect clock ticks. The perfect clock is non-existent though and the strange thing is that on the singularity the universe constituted a perfect clock.
Reply to Raymond I mean they are likely to be constructs we have developed that seem to reflect human experience and we use them conceptually in daily life to help us manage our environment. Can we say that they transcend human reality? I don't know. How would we show this? When we get to a question like was there ever 'nothing' we are kind of stumped because the idea of nothing is elusive and possibly incoherent. But I'm not a physicist... just my best shot at it.
Still. Even when both are an experience you can use them to go back in time and imagine how it was back then. How it would have looked if you were part of it. Pushing experience to the limit of the small and short. This can lead to a contemplation of how the situation must have looked, taking into account modern knowledge, its limitations, abstractions, and image of the micro cosmos.
Nothing can't be described, as it's nothing. Even empty space is something. But empty space can't exists without something in it. Nothing is the absence of anything.
Other than our intuition, what's to say actual no-thingness didn't give rise to everything else? Bear in mind, something having an infinite past is absurd too.
Such distractions about abstractions can go-on into the infinity before infinity -- if we don't put up an arbitrary barrier to eternal extrapolation. One way to do that is to narrowly define the subject of discussion. So, what is this "no-thing-ness" we are imagining for the sake of argument? Typically, the term refers to the concept of a vacuum or absence of physical objects. But we humans tend to think of imaginary non-physical concepts as-if they are things. Does Absence count?
Should we include ethereal Feelings and Qualia in the category of things-in-absentia? The "Future" does not exist in any physical sense, but we speak & act as-if it's a real thing. Plato insisted that his abstract Forms "gave rise" to concrete Reality, even though they were merely abstract designs for potential things. As mentioned above, the notion of "Zero" seemed absurd to the Greek philosophers. Yet today, we use those "far-fetched" symbols of nothingness (00000) as-if they are countable objects.
So, perhaps we need to distinguish between actual physical "things" and imaginary metaphorical "things", in order to abbreviate this thread. Does "Absence" exist in any meaningful sense? If not, this may be merely an excursion into mundane somethingness. If so, we may be talking about "Constitutive Absence". :smile:
Absence : It’s more like Gravity and Strange Attractors of Physics that “pull” stuff toward them. It is in effect a Teleological Attractor. How that “spooky action at a distance” works may be best explained by Terrence Deacon’s definition of “Absence”.
Re : Terrence Deacon : Incomplete Nature, How Mind Emerged From Matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomplete_Nature
Absential : The paradoxical intrinsic property of existing with respect to something missing, separate, and possibly nonexistent. Although this property is irrelevant when it comes to inanimate things, it is a defining property of life and mind; elsewhere (Deacon 2005) described as a constitutive absence Constitutive absence : A particular and precise missing something that is a critical defining attribute of 'ententional' phenomena, such as functions, thoughts, adaptations, purposes, and subjective experiences.
http://absence.github.io/3-explanations/absential/absential.html
Srap TasmanerJanuary 19, 2022 at 03:50#6449910 likes
I mean they are likely to be constructs we have developed that seem to reflect human experience and we use them conceptually in daily life to help us manage our environment.
I really don’t get this argument. What could “our environment” possibly mean, if you don’t use space and time in defining it?
What seems more far-fetched (1) something from literally nothing (2) an infinite past?
What seems more far-fetched (1) something from literally nothing (2) an infinite past?
More far-fetched than either of the above is the conviction that by answering the above question, we will find the meaning of life and end suffering.
HeracloitusJanuary 19, 2022 at 09:06#6450450 likes
And the only way "infinity and nothing are one and the same" is if you're re-defining one or both terms. Given their usual meanings in English, obviously they're very different concepts
Yes well experience beats dictionary definition and through sustained practice of meditation one can begin to experience how these concepts dissolve into unity (as all concepts do).
Nothing? literally nothing? You really do not know what you're talking about. Or at least if you did, you would understand that the request to define your term was serious. Why don't you give it a try? What do you mean, or what do you understand, by the "nothing" you're referring to?
I'll have you know, I do know what I'm talking about on the subject of nothing :joke:
I wasn't sure if you was serious. When responding, I did add the hyphen in no-thingness to give an indication of what I mean.
No I don't. It seems to me that something having an infinite past is the least absurd option.
Nonetheless, you must agree that something just existing, with no reason or purpose, forever into the past, is very absurd. And then there are all the paradoxes of an actual infinity.
Reply to emancipate Ah, yes, meditation has secretly revealed to you that words that denote very different concepts are actually the same, because magic. :lol:
Very good. Not a very serious response, but definitely an amusing one.
Nonetheless, you must agree that something just existing, with no reason or purpose, forever into the past, is very absurd. And then there are all the paradoxes of an actual infinity.
I kinda like the notion. If there is no beginning, and every new bang forms the start, from a new time zero (well, not exactly zero, but a state fluctuating around it), of a new universe, then "it" will never end! But where then did an infinity come from? I think only the gods know that. But where did they come from then? They just are. I think it's more plausible though that the universe is created by gods (even in its infinity) than that it's an infinite spatial structure on which universes come into being one after another.
HeracloitusJanuary 19, 2022 at 14:42#6451700 likes
Nothing is the absence of delineating qualities. Infinity is the absence of limiting qualities. Even on a semantic level they are not 'very different concepts'.
It's no secret and I am hardly the first person to claim something like this. The mind is stuck in the relativistic realm of concepts. That's why it cannot make sense of certain dualisms. Meditation is a different way to experience, unmediated by mind. Mock away though, I can tell you have never looked seriously into this.
Nothing is the absence of delineating qualities. Infinity is the absence of limiting qualities. Even on a semantic level they are not 'very different concepts'.
These are, as I suspected, highly idiosyncratic definitions, and even on your personal non-standard definitions they are different. But in this context, the question is regarding the past duration of the universe, and so your personal stipulations aren't really relevant and the two possible answers are mutually exclusive (either the past temporal duration of the universe was finite, or it was not).
By re-defining the relevant terms, you basically just punted on the question entirely (and instead just posted some squishy pseudo-mystical woo), which makes one wonder why you bothered to post to the thread if you didn't intend to weigh in on the question.
I translate "literal nothing" into nothing-ness and (spatiotemporal) "infinity" into unbounded; thus, IME, the first option "seems more far-fatched" (even impossible).
Reply to emancipate No, only woo is woo, nor was there anything difficult to understand about your comment.
That's also extremely dishonest to use the quote function to attribute to someone something they never said- reported, btw. If you want to strawman people in this way, at least use quotations rather than the quote function when its something the person didn't ever actually say.
PhilosophimJanuary 19, 2022 at 22:14#6453380 likes
Perhaps instead of saying something comes from nothing, how about instead you say, "Something that has no prior explanation for its formed existence." Nothing can't do anything. But perhaps there is something that exists that does not have a prior cause.
That's also extremely dishonest to use the quote function
I was in fact looking where you wrote this. Couldn't find it though.I had the same experience. Slightly different though. A "not" was left out, so it appeared I wrote something I actually denied.
Time dilation during the early stages of the Big Bang makes the notion of an infinite past debatable. It would seem that an "infinite past" would be bounded nevertheless.
I was in fact looking where you wrote this. Couldn't find it though.I had the same experience.
Yep, exactly! That's why its a problem, and why its dishonest. Many people might not even realize you can manually input a quote into the quote function at all, and so would assume that the person must have said it.
So if people want to paraphrase someone else, by all means... but use quotations, or say "in other words, such-and-such"- only use the quote function to accurately quote things people actually said.
god must be atheistJanuary 19, 2022 at 23:16#6453650 likes
Time dilation during the early stages of the Big Bang makes the notion of an infinite past debatable. It would seem that an "infinite past" would be bounded nevertheless.
People talk about "the universe" and "the known universe" and they mix up the two concepts.
I am extremely unfamiliar with the math and physics of the big bang. However, I am certain that time dilation (whatever it is) did not involve Absolute Time. I am sure this is not the right name for it; but as in the effects of time differentia between super-fast moving objects and relatively stationary objects, the time-dilation was also a relative issue.
I can't prove any of this in any way. My only reason for being skeptical on the declaration that there was no time before time dilation is lingual, and human-intuitive. You say "before" time dilation, "before" big bangggg. That implies a TIME before; there is no other "befores" but time.
Hence, I reject that time started at the moment of the big banggggg started.
That's point one.
Point two is that the big banggg as far as we know, is responsible only for the matter we observe. There may or may not be other matter in the universe beyond our observational capacity. If there is matter beyond the matter we can account for, it may be of different origins from the big bangggg. So if they existed before the big banggg then they are proof that time did not start with the big bangggg.
However, I am certain that time dilation (whatever it is) did not involve Absolute Time.
Not sure there is any such thing. As we watch a spaceship fly by at half the speed of light times the linear 0< t<1, both the spaceship crew and you and I experience time as linear, however the passage of time on the spaceship as recorded here on Earth is curvilinear.
There may or may not be other matter in the universe beyond our observational capacity
"If you count that inflation blew up the size about 10exp70 times, and multiply this by the Planck length, the universe was about 10exp35 meter in diameter. If you consider a lightyear to be about 10exp13 meter, you realize how big it was already then. About 10exp22 ly across! Thats not 100 billion (10exp11) ly, as the visible universe's diameter is now, but 10exp11 times as big!"
There was no time zero. When you reverse the clock, there comes a point, at about 10exp-36 second, inflation reverses and the whole shebang collapses to a Planck sized 6D closed sphere. The perfect clock where time ran forward nor backward. Waiting for the chance to explode on the Holy 7D Substrate, stretching to infinity. A Dual Ejaculate on the Infinite Substrate. Cosmic wanking of the gods. Once the present Ejaculate reaches for infinity, two new ejaculates will be shot to both sides of the magic fountain source. Hallelujah brothers and sisters!
the passage of time on the spaceship as recorded here on Earth is curvilinear.
Very interesting. It is completely incomprehensible to me. I don't doubt your word, I am just putting it into perspective for you how informative this is for me.
Yeah, I don't know why. But, given enough time (though not necessarily forever), I can imagine how something can come from nothing.
I can't imagine something lasting or being forever and ever. I suppose being born into this life, is a kind of "something from nothing", in terms of our experience of it. Of course, we can say that that's not true there were chemicals and atoms and biology prior to us. But we don't experience this prior birth (nor, presumably, after death).
Yet, forever doesn't fit in somehow. Before I was born, I have no temporal intuition at all.
However, I am certain that time dilation (whatever it is)
It's just that moving clocks seem to move slower. If you accelerate them they actually move slower. On/in different points vertically above the Earth you have to accelerate in different amounts to stay where you are. This means that at these different points the clock runs at a different rate. On the surface the slowest.
Agent SmithJanuary 20, 2022 at 03:56#6454680 likes
It's just that moving clocks seem to move slower. If you accelerate them they actually move slower.
The clock hypothesis is the assumption that the rate at which a clock is affected by time dilation does not depend on its acceleration but only on its instantaneous velocity
Contrarily to velocity time dilation, in which both observers measure the other as aging slower (a reciprocal effect), gravitational time dilation is not reciprocal. This means that with gravitational time dilation both observers agree that the clock nearer the center of the gravitational field is slower in rate, and they agree on the ratio of the difference
The clock hypothesis is the assumption that the rate at which a clock is affected by time dilation does not depend on its acceleration but only on its instantaneous velocity
Wiki talks in riddles (the rate at which a clock is affected by time dilation...?). The speed of the clock is velocity dependent. If the velocity varies, wrt to a clock observer inertial rest frame from , the clock's speed varies and when the clocks meet again the accelerated one runs behind.
god must be atheistJanuary 20, 2022 at 11:15#6455650 likes
It's just that moving clocks seem to move slower. If you accelerate them they actually move slower. On/in different points vertically above the Earth you have to accelerate in different amounts to stay where you are. This means that at these different points the clock runs at a different rate. On the surface the slowest.
Thanks. No amount of explanation will stick. Because I don't see the underlying law that creates this effect.
All I am saying is that since there are different clocks present showing different times, the time-dilation may be a different clock from the what I called absolute time (or absolute clock).
According to the clock of TIME DILATION there was no time before the big banggg. According to the Absolute Clock there was time before the big banggg.
I don't see why this would be impossible, and I don't think you can tell me either. At least not in terms that I understand.
god must be atheistJanuary 20, 2022 at 11:22#6455660 likes
People are actually voting that an infinite past is more "far-fetched" than something coming from nothing?
Jesus...
The person you mentioned is responsible for this philosophical mishap.
But I don't see the votes and the majority of opinion as a proof of truth. I see it as a measure of philosophical and knowledge impoverishment of society, due to the oppressive presence of religionism. Most users here are from America; if an international presence was represented by ratio of population, this figure would be much higher (due to Islam); but if Europe was only considered, or China, then the overwhelming majority would answer the opposite way, that is, that something getting out of nothing is far fetched.
All I am saying is that since there are different clocks present showing different times, the time-dilation may be a different clock from the what I called absolute time (or absolute clock).
I don't see why this would be impossible, and I don't think you can tell me either. At least not in terms that I understand.
What do you mean by an absolute clock? The clock running outside the universe? Inside the universe there is no absolute clock. All clocks run at their own pace and no clock shows an absolute time. The clock though is an imaginary. There is no physical process that has the characteristics an imaginary clock has. Only the process before the bang constituted a perfect clock. But there were no things yet to put this clock aside of. Except in the mind. Nowadays there are a lot of these things happening but there is no perfect clock to be found. Except in the mind. In both cases, something is missing.
god must be atheistJanuary 20, 2022 at 12:15#6455730 likes
What do you mean by an absolute clock? The clock running outside the universe? Inside the universe there is no absolute clock.
Okay. Then let's put it this way: the time dilation and the clock that measures it after the big banggg pertains to the matter of the big banggg. Other matter may exist, and other clocks. However many clocks exist, they don't all necessarily start at the same zero time. Some before, some after the zero time of our known universe. So in effect there may be time T2 on some other clock that is larger than time T1 on our clock, in the same units.
Maybe we should reword the phrase how we envision that there was time before the Big banggg and that our time is not absolute. And then rephrase the fact in a way that makes sense to astrophysicists, quantum mechanics and street sweepers alike, that space and matter in it (in our beliefs) have existed forever.
If you (general you) insist that there was no time before the big banggg, then necessarily no matter existed then either, and therefore all of a sudden option 2 becomes very much more plausible than option 1.
god must be atheistJanuary 20, 2022 at 12:19#6455740 likes
The underlying law is simple. The speed of light has to be the same for everyone (or in any case, finite).
Haha. There are a few steps in deducing facts from this law in-between the underlying law and understanding time dilation. And I am unfamiliar with those steps and no amount of explanation can make me make the logical connections between the underlying law and time dilation. That is what I meant by not understanding the underlying law. My mistake, I used the wrong concept to describe what it is that I don't understand.
Maybe we should reword the phrase how we envision that there was time before the Big banggg and that our time is not absolute. And then rephrase the fact in a way that makes sense to astrophysicists, quantum mechanics and street sweepers alike, that space and matter in it (in our beliefs) have existed forever
For the street sweeper. The big inflation swept the universe into real existence. The era, also known as the big sweep, took a tiny part of an average sweep of the street sweeper. All sweeper in the universe sweep at relative sweeping rates. Only when they meet, they see that some sweepers have swept more garbage into the bin than other sweepers. They all feel they sweep at the same pace and, assuming they all sweep alike, only when they meet each other will see that the bins of fellow sweepers are filled more, the same, or less than their own bin.
There is no absolute sweeper who determines the absolute sweeping rate. Before the real sweeping took of there was only a virtual periodic sweeping, constituting a real clock. It contained the potential of the real sweeping and swept along rapidly sweeping to and fro with a period that takes an even tinier amount of the time it took for the great sweep to sweep the real sweeping matter into existence. The perfect sweeping to and fro, with no direction in time yet, lasted the amount of time it takes for the real sweeping to become impossible, i.e, when all sweeping matter has turned into potential sweep energy which lacks the matter to actually sweep with. The end of the possible sweeping era causes the virtual potential sweeping to become real: a new great sweep.
Hopefully the sweepers of this era become the heroes of the next.
There are a few steps in deducing facts from this law in-between the underlying law and understanding time dilation
It's simple. For the speed of light to stay the same for all, space contracts and time dilates. The gamma factor is introduced. In a lightclock this is easily visualized.
Bear in mind, something having an infinite past is absurd too.
Why do you find that absurd, pray tell? What I (and most poll respondents) find counter intuitive is rather the idea of a possible begining and a possible end of time. The idea of an infinite past and future is perfectly fine.
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 20, 2022 at 15:53#6456250 likes
Why do you find that absurd, pray tell? What I (and most poll respondents) find counter intuitive is rather the idea of a possible begining and a possible end of time. The idea of an infinite past and future is perfectly fine.
(1) The thing(s) making up the infinite past would have no reason or explanation for their existence (2) An infinite past is paradoxical. E.g. Planets that orbit the sun at different speeds would at every moment have made the same amount of orbits. Despite us actually observing the faster one adding more orbits than the other. (Same principle for whatever came before the sun and planets).
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 20, 2022 at 16:07#6456280 likes
The thing(s) making up the infinite past would have no reason or explanation for their existence (2) An infinite past is paradoxical. E.g. Planets that orbit the sun at different speeds would at every moment have made the same amount of orbits. Despite us actually observing the faster one adding more orbits than the other. (Same principle for whatever came before the sun and planets).
What if infinity in time is built up from infinite ùniverses following up each other in series, each with a beginning of time?
(1) The thing(s) making up the infinite past would have no reason or explanation for their existence (2) An infinite past is paradoxical.
1) You are assuming that some thing(s) "made up the past", an assumption which a) I don't understand as phrased -- what do you mean? -- and b) that may be unwarranted.
2) An infinite past is not anymore paradoxical than an infinite anything (space, set, whatever). Think of it mathematically. What is most paradoxical: a never-ending series of natural numbers from zero to, well, infinity, or a finite series of natural numbers stopping at some maximum value or another?
WTF happens if you take that maximum and add 1 to it?
Similarly, what happens one second after the end of time?
The human mind is not so much seeking the infinite as dreading it, I think. There is a vertigo of the infinite in us. But on the other hand, our mind -- mine in any case -- can not possibly square with the idea of a hard end to time and space. Our natural sense of time and space is open-ended.
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 20, 2022 at 18:22#6456620 likes
What if infinity in time is built up from infinite ùniverses following up each other in series, each with a beginning of time?
This infinite series of universes would still have no reason or explanation for its existence.
As this is an infinite series of events, it still runs into the paradoxes. I don't think it matters whether or not thing(s) are "timeless", a series of events must still have a beginning to avoid the paradoxes.
god must be atheistJanuary 20, 2022 at 19:04#6456740 likes
Regarding the infinite past, I heard a good riddle: if a clock has existed forever, what time would it show this moment?
This is a good one.
It would need to show some time, undoubtedly. But how do we know how it was set, if it was never set? Remember, it had no beginning, no manufacturing date. It has existed for ever. It shows some time, as it is a regular clock. What is the time it shows?
It would need to show some time, undoubtedly. But how do we know how it was set, if it was never set? Remember, it had no beginning, no manufacturing date. It has existed for ever. It shows some time, as it is a regular clock. What is the time it shows?
It would show the time that astronomers make us believe. About 13.8 billion years and counting.
The clock in this universe and that of preceding ones and subsequent ones are all starting from zero (well, actually 10exp-43 seconds away from it).
god must be atheistJanuary 20, 2022 at 19:19#6456800 likes
Reply to Raymond You don't get the concept. But that's okay. Your answer is 13.8 billion years and counting. Noted. Fine. No arguments.
god must be atheistJanuary 20, 2022 at 19:20#6456810 likes
Maybe I should have spelled out that it's a clock with a regular clock-face, that is, twelve hours, no more, no less. It has an hour, a minute and possibly a second hand. And it has existed forever.
It’s necessarily impossible to say what time it would show, precisely because it’s an infinite clock. If you saw it and it read 12 o’clock then the explanation for that would be that it said 11 o’clock an hour ago and 10 o’clock the hour before that, and there would be nothing more to it.
This infinite series of universes would still have no reason or explanation for its existence.
Graham Oppy (philosopher of religion) makes the point that whatever world view you hold you always wind up with something brute at the foundation of it all. The 3 explanations you have are a necessary God, a necessary universe, or a universe that is a brute contingency. I don’t think any of those options are absurd; they just make it clear that whatever explanations you choose they terminate somewhere.
Maybe I should have spelled out that it's a clock with a regular clock-face, that is, twelve hours, no more, no less. It has an hour, a minute and possibly a second hand. And it has existed forever
It can't have existed forever. Every time a new universe bangs into existence the clock in the previous one indicates it's very late. Say it makes one full turn in every universe. The a new clock, causally disconnected, springs into existence, in the universe behind the old one. This clock can make one full turn just like the one it follows up. The clock only exist for real in the small era before each inflation (each bang). Time was perfect then, a perfect periodic motion, without the direction of entropic time.
Concerning just the foundation of being I agree with Oppy that God isn’t any more illuminating as an explanation than asserting that there’s some necessary aspect of the universe.
Concerning just the foundation of being I agree with Oppy that God isn’t any more illuminating as an explanation than asserting that there’s some necessary aspect of the universe
I don't agree. I think I have a model for a cyclic model. No beginning no ending. Now what? How can it exist, even if infinite in time and (4D) space? Where does it come from? Aren't gods the only answer possible?
What seems more far-fetched (1) something from literally nothing (2) an infinite past?
"Seems" is a weasel word for perception. Which is dependent on several factors that are ultimately irrelevant to higher understanding. A homeless man high on PCP who runs into freeway traffic thought that avenue "seemed good" at the time.
You feel the need to quantify "nothing" as in no thing with "literally" perhaps for our benefit sure, as if we are unable to grasp the concept. Perhaps you are projecting your inabilities and shortcomings on us? Granted, it is a mind bending concept for most so moving on.
Obviously the "something" was not actually from nothing but rather your idea of nothing. Common human trait, cognitive bias, aka being told you're wrong or in short "no". Makes you question your life choices and simultaneously your sacrifices made. This is a biological survival mechanism, nothing more.
An "infinite past" is again prodding at the idea that your own judgements and beliefs may be incorrect. You will be biologically disinclined to consider this possibility.
In short, it varies depending on person to person. Basic psychology.
The explanations are different. A new physical mechanism behind the known ones cannot be reduced further at some point. The gods don't become them gap ones but, well, actual gods. Not to protect my theory from further parsing, but at some point you just don't wanna go deeper because hard rock has been hit.
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 20, 2022 at 20:32#6457040 likes
1) You are assuming that some thing(s) "made up the past", an assumption which a) I don't understand as phrased -- what do you mean? -- and b) that may be unwarranted.
2) An infinite past is not anymore paradoxical than an infinite anything (space, set, whatever). Think of it mathematically. What is most paradoxical: a never-ending series of natural numbers from zero to, well, infinity, or a finite series of natural numbers stopping at some maximum value or another?
WTF happens if you take that maximum and add 1 to it?
Similarly, what happens one second after the end of time?
The human mind is not so much seeking the infinite as dreading it, I think. There is a vertigo of the infinite in us. But on the other hand, our mind -- mine in any case -- can not possibly square with the idea of a hard end to time and space. Our natural sense of time and space is open-ended.
If there is not literal nothingness, there is some thing(s). As @PoeticUniverse has said in other threads, the thing(s) making up the infinite past would most likely have been in motion for infinity, in order for anything to have developed - otherwise we have development from infinite stillness, which is not much better than something from literally nothing.
Yes, I don't know of a solution for actual infinities. A never ending future is reasonable though - it keeps going, never actually reaching infinity.
at some point you just don't wanna go deeper because hard rock has been hit.
This is basically what I’m getting at, except that at some point you just can’t go any further, and if you did you’d be going forever. For what it’s worth I’m not an atheist either.
Yeah, that’s what happens when something is referred to as necessary. It can’t not exist and the explanation stops there; if you give any further explanation then the thing is no longer necessary, but contingent upon the explanation being given. “It’s necessary” or “it’s a brute contingency” is the rock bottom.
I have the impression you call the hard rock a contingency. Doesn't this imply a gap, somehow? Why calling the rock a contingency then? Or do I get you wrong?
I called the hard rock either necessity (something that can’t not exist) or a brute contingency (something that might not have existed but it does and there’s no further explanation). They might not seem like satisfying explanations, but in neither case is there a gap.
They might not seem like satisfying explanations, but in neither case is there a gap.
I see. But why, if no gap, are they not satisfying explanations then? If you think you know how it works, isn't that satisfying? Apart from the fact that you can't explain where that of what you think to know the workings of came from?
It isn’t the workings of the universe I’m talking about, but the possible reasons why it exists (which encompass the two possibilities mentioned in the OP).
Do the two alternatives encompass possible reasons? Maybe the something from the nothing does. But can't you apply something from the nothing to an infinite universe also. Nothing, and then "logos, bang!"an infinite universe. "Then" not taken literally.
What's the necessity for infinite existence? And what's the brute contingency in the case of coming from nothing? A coming from nothing in the finite case is in need of further physical explanation. An infinite universe delivers such cause. How can a finite universe come into existence without a preceding time?
Can't gods create a spatiotemporally infinite universe from nothing?
Then the ultimate reason must be the gods. An infinite universe necessitates previous universes. A finite universe is a brute artifact. Only gods can create an infinite universe. A necessity.
"Seems" is a weasel word for perception. Which is dependent on several factors that are ultimately irrelevant to higher understanding. A homeless man high on PCP who runs into freeway traffic thought that avenue "seemed good" at the time.
I chose the word "seems" as I wanted the poll to be inviting to everyone, not just those with a reasoned answer (if such a thing exists for this question). It is interesting to see what people perceive to be the most absurd, and as you can see from the results, opinion is split.
You feel the need to quantify "nothing" as in no thing with "literally" perhaps for our benefit sure, as if we are unable to grasp the concept. Perhaps you are projecting your inabilities and shortcomings on us? Granted, it is a mind bending concept for most so moving on.
Some people's (most notably Lawrence Krauss's), use of "nothing" excludes quantum fields. I said "literally nothing" and "no-thing", to help express that I am including every-thing, including quantum fields, in my use of the word.
Maybe an interest question too: does an infinite universe exclude creation out of nothing? In other words, can an infinite universe be created by God?
I don't see a problem with God creating a universe infinite in size. However, if the universe has existed infinitely long, it had no beginning, and so could not have been created.
Josh AlfredJanuary 21, 2022 at 02:22#6458370 likes
Reply to Down The Rabbit Hole Dear rabbit, I have personally written a blog or two and collected and published data on the topic (non-being) of nothing. You may also find L.M. Krauss "A Universe from Nothing" an intriguing read.
I have not learned much from reading three pages of comments on here. I will tell you my vote is that time is perpetual and infinite in both directions.
Our newest Telescope, Webb's, will reveal more about the nature of time and the beginning of our universe (cosmology). .
Our newest Telescope, Webb's, will reveal more about the nature of time and the beginning of our universe (cosmology).
What will it reveal about the nature of time? Ain't that clear?
Josh AlfredJanuary 21, 2022 at 02:41#6458460 likes
I tried reading the book, but it was mostly fluff, and the rest was non-sense. I did this years and years ago, when it first was on my library shelfs. I know I didn't get much from it. I bide by the logicians of history, and other scientists when thinking about the nature of time.
I also have some of my own ideas, as classifying time into domains. Such that there is 1) Cosmic time, the Big Cycle 2) Rotation and Revolution Cycles, 3) Relative time 4) Atomic time and 5) Time as a variable that can be reached by mathematical expression and equation.
Did you learn something with your time reading this? Certainly more than you will gain from Krauss's "flat universe" and "zero-point beginnings" concepts.
If I could I would write a polemic against Krauss, spare with him, if you will. But I don't think that's very likely. I am sure you can access positive and negative reviews online, no need to debase the fool further, here.
Josh AlfredJanuary 21, 2022 at 03:17#6458630 likes
Reply to Raymond Simply, there I mean one of the most fundamental equations in physics that google has here (let me get that) "To solve for time use the formula for time, t = d/s which means time equals distance divided by speed."
Else-while, there is something called time dilation (TD) it works with Einstein's relativistic mechanics. In such a state, my time is a variable of my reference frame compared to the reference frame of some one else. There is a widely known example of this. Its a great thought experiment to run, if you don't want to get into just the hard math, and simply stay with the visual aspects of TD.
With TD in mind, time is "very, very, very, varied." :)
Regarding the infinite past, I heard a good riddle: if a clock has existed forever, what time would it show this moment?
This is a good one.
It would need to show some time, undoubtedly. But how do we know how it was set, if it was never set? Remember, it had no beginning, no manufacturing date. It has existed for ever. It shows some time, as it is a regular clock. What is the time it shows?
Yeeee-haaaw!
Yes, ostensibly a clock that has always been ticking cannot exist. How about the infinite number of red books and infinite number of black books, that when added together total the same amount of books as just the red books. And the planets orbiting the sun at different speeds, but making the same amount of orbits, even if you suddenly sped the faster one up further.
The answer to my poll question is not as obvious as some people think it is?
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 21, 2022 at 12:13#6459950 likes
Talk of totals assumes finitude - to say the planets total the same number of orbits you need finite numbers to compare; instead it seems right to say that one planet has always done more orbits than the other; it’s only if they were finite that at any point they could have done the same number.
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 21, 2022 at 12:31#6459980 likes
Dear rabbit, I have personally written a blog or two and collected and published data on the topic (non-being) of nothing. You may also find L.M. Krauss "A Universe from Nothing" an intriguing read.
I have not learned much from reading three pages of comments on here. I will tell you my vote is that time is perpetual and infinite in both directions.
Our newest Telescope, Webb's, will reveal more about the nature of time and the beginning of our universe (cosmology). .
The trouble is, we don't have any experience with "nothing" in the literal sense. What evidence have we got to say things don't just pop into existence out of nothing?
The title of the book should be "A Universe from Quantum Fields". I think he said in interviews that "A Universe from Nothing" was a sales trick.
Talk of totals assumes finitude - to say the planets total the same number of orbits you need finite numbers to compare; instead it seems right to say that one planet has always done more orbits than the other; it’s only if they were finite that at any point they could have done the same number.
For punch I added "even if you suddenly sped the faster planet up further". It is absurd that both planets would have done the same amount of orbits?
Speed one up all you like. I’m saying talk of them doing the same number of orbits assumes finitude - if they’ve been going forever there is no total number of orbits to compare. The most you could say is that, given any stretch of time within that infinity, one planet has invariably done more orbits than the other.
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 21, 2022 at 15:05#6460340 likes
Speed one up all you like. I’m saying talk of them doing the same number of orbits assumes finitude - if they’ve been going forever there is no total number of orbits to compare. The most you could say is that, given any stretch of time within that infinity, one planet has invariably done more orbits that the other.
I understand what you are saying; a total number of orbits and infinite orbits are incompatible. It still seems absurd that any extra orbits we suddenly add to one planet over the other actually adds nothing.
I’m not sure I’d call it absurd, because what you’re identifying again is simply that there isn’t a total to be added to, which given an infinite past is necessarily so. We can still say that one planet does so many orbits per year and the other does this many; in this light the lack of a grand total for each seems something to be accepted as necessary and unimportant.
I'm not sure where your preoccupation with number of periods of planets? If you increase the number of the revolutions of one planet in particular, what's the problem?
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 21, 2022 at 18:48#6461070 likes
I’m not sure I’d call it absurd, because what you’re identifying again is simply that there isn’t a total to be added to, which given an infinite past is necessarily so. We can still say that one planet does so many orbits per year and the other does this many; in this light the lack of a grand total for each seems something to be accepted as necessary and unimportant.
Okay, so you're saying Al-Ghazali's orbiting planets are unintuitive but not logically impossible?
Sorry to move the goalposts, but what if instead of the orbiting planets it's an infinitely ticking clock. What time would it show?
Sorry to move the goalposts, but what if instead of the orbiting planets it's an infinitely ticking clock
Ah! It's here that you make a wrong assumption. There is no clock tic-tac-ing eternally. Only an infinite sequence of clocks taking of from perfect clock states. The universe is eternal but there is an infinite succession of beginnings in time. An infinite eternal universe isn't a physical possibility. If there were no point zero in time life could not develop. It would be a time and spaceless universe devoid of matter. I.e. a nothing.
The steady state universe enjoyed some popularity but was not tenable.
It’s necessarily impossible to say what time it would show, precisely because it’s an infinite clock. If you saw it and it read 12 o’clock then the explanation for that would be that it said 11 o’clock an hour ago and 10 o’clock the hour before that, and there would be nothing more to it.
It strikes me that in neither case (the planets and the clock) is there a logical problem. It’s just that there are things missing or that you can’t do given the nature of infinity.
It strikes me that in neither case (the planets and the clock) is there a logical problem. It’s just that there are things missing or that you can’t do given the nature of infinity.
The thing missing is an initial state. Time needs an initial state and is irreversible because any state cannot serve as a begin state for the reversed process. There are two types of time. Coordinate, clock time, an imaginary for i entropic time, and the real (reversible) clock time, in which entropic time is still absent, the pre-inflationary state of our 3D universe on the 4D substrate space.
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 21, 2022 at 20:12#6461530 likes
I'm not sure where your preoccupation with number of periods of planets? If you increase the number of the revolutions of one planet in particular, what's the problem?
I'm not obsessed with orbiting planets y'know :lol: It's Al-Ghazali's example, that I've brought up a couple of times in these 5 pages and responded to criticisms of. It's unintuitive (at the least) that despite speeding the orbits of one planet over the other, it never actually orbits more. Although as @AJJ has said it's not clear that it's impossible.
Ah! It's here that you make a wrong assumption. There is no clock tic-tac-ing eternally. Only an infinite sequence of clocks taking of from perfect clock states. The universe is eternal but there is an infinite succession of beginnings in time. An infinite eternal universe isn't a physical possibility. If there were no point zero in time life could not develop. It would be a time and spaceless universe devoid of matter. I.e. a nothing.
The steady state universe enjoyed some popularity but was not tenable.
The ticking of a clock is an example to test an infinite chain of events (in this case the infinite ticks). Each of the "infinite succession of beginnings in time" you refer to is like the tick of a clock.
The ticking of a clock is an example to test an infinite chain of events (in this case the infinite ticks). Each of the "infinite succession of beginnings in time" you refer to is like the tick of a clock.
I don't refer to each tick as beginning of a new chain. I refer to beginnings in time for each new big bang. Suppose a big bang starts of like a 3D closed spatial structure on an infinite 4D substrate. When the two 3D structures have accelerated away towards the infinities on the 4D structures, conditions are set at the origin on the 4D substrate for two mirrored 3D universes to break free from the real, reversible perfect clock state. This state is a Planck sized 3D volume going back and forth , hence the perfect clock state. Then again, entropic time starts, not from t is zero but from the the slightly bigger Planck time (about 10exp-43 seconds). Again, two universes (matter/antimatter) are existent. The matter in these 3D pair can accelerate away again on the 4D substrate space (dark energy!). And again conditions are set at the origin of the 4D mouth to "shout" two new universes into existence. And again (entropic) time starts at about t=0 (slightly more actually, but precisely enough not to cause trouble).
Although this infinite series of bangs runs into the paradoxes, it might be the most plausible option. Sir Roger Penrose seems to think so.
Aristotle started the trend by pointing out that the world cannot possibly have been created out of nothing, and hence must be eternal. Since then many philosophers and scientists have thought the same. The opposite idea of a begining to the universe has more often been sported by religious institutions. When Georges Lemaître started to speak of a cosmic egg in the 20's, some chalked it up to his catholicism.
Aristotle started the trend by pointing out that the world cannot possibly have been created out of nothing
It's like the concept of charge nowadays. Charge is the cause of motion and it can be pure consciousness, or an fundamental form of it. His notion of the eternal circular motion is the predecessor of the modern concept of the ideal clock, which was the actually the pre-inflationary state of the universe. Add his pre quantum physics... Artistotle, my man!
HeracloitusJanuary 22, 2022 at 12:33#6464060 likes
It’s necessarily impossible to say what time it would show, precisely because it’s an infinite clock. If you saw it and it read 12 o’clock then the explanation for that would be that it said 11 o’clock an hour ago and 10 o’clock the hour before that, and there would be nothing more to it.
How about an infinity ticking stopwatch? Any number it shows would contradict its infinite ticks?
You’re right, but does the contradiction make impossible an infinite past or just an infinite stopwatch? I’d say the latter, since a stopwatch doesn’t run in cycles so its count necessarily has a beginning.
That's true. But so does the clock. Every tick it goes a step further. The hand return to the beginning, but that's a matter of convenience. Beneath both ticks there hides a periodic process. Which is equivalent to a circular motion. These, by the way, are never truly periodic. Even the atomic clock is not perfect. The time that can't be eternal is entropic time. This time needs a beginning.
Yes indeed! I think even Einstein, Galileo(i?), Newton, Hamilton, Lagrange, Hawking, or you and me (to name a few in arbitrary order), owe him (or not, depending on your POV). His thoughts about time, primal movers, eternal circular motion, can compete easily with contemporary notions of space and time. Okay, he didn't use math that much, if at all. I think though that math covers up understanding of the true nature of time (and space).
Aristotle, Aristotle
Left without you
Would be lurking the bottle
Could no more make do
Would be rigid-stuck
In Einstein's arse
On his objective clock
That bugger parse
Aristotle Aristotle
You embottle
modern rebottle
Full throttle
Aristo my man
Far you are in space and time
Still I know I can
Not go on without you
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 22, 2022 at 16:06#6464520 likes
You’re right, but does the contradiction make impossible an infinite past or just an infinite stopwatch? I’d say the latter, since a stopwatch doesn’t run in cycles so its count necessarily has a beginning.
I don't know if you've read the book, but this was the response I gave when asked about Oppy's Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity:
"A lot of the classical actual infinity thought experiments he has answers for, but for those he doesn't he asserts that just because certain actual infinity thought experiments are impossible, it doesn't mean actual infinities are impossible. He points out that even finite scenarios can be impossible".
I think you are right that although the conclusions are counter-intuitive, they are not necessarily impossible.
Something from literally nothing is counter-intuitive. Necessarily Impossible?
I haven’t read that book, but my thinking is influenced by the kinds of things I’ve heard him say in the discussions I’ve listened to, which fit with what you’ve described in your quoted response there.
And it’s actually from what Oppy has to say about chance that I don’t think something from nothing is necessarily impossible. He calls chance a brute contingency: A and B are possibilities, A happens instead of B and there’s no explanation why (because if there was it wouldn’t be a chance occurrence). So it strikes me that if chance is real then it’s an example of something coming from nothing, and it’s happening all the time.
John McMannisJanuary 23, 2022 at 02:45#6466520 likes
I think its harder to think of something coming from nothing than a infinite past because time could be a big circle. at least I can visualize It.
god must be atheistJanuary 27, 2022 at 08:27#6482370 likes
Yes. One after another. For example, if the current universe has accelerated away to infinity, that a new one originates behind us. And then again for that one, etc.
What seems more far-fetched:
(1) something from literally nothing
(2) an infinite past?
I usually enjoy a good polling, but this question is a choice between logical absurdities, with no good reason to favour one absurdity over another. I haven't voted yet, so I don't know what the numbers are, but my guess would be about two thirds - something from nothing, and one third, an infinite past. Neither of them make any sense. I don't know what would. The universe is weird. It's like a prison with no bars; we exist, suspended between the infinitely big and the infinitely small, with no 'edge of the map' from which we might imply the nature of existence. It's bizzarre. Forced to choose, on the basis of cosmic expansion, I'll say something from nothing. The Big Bang Theory, but that's not to say I find it satisfying.
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 27, 2022 at 22:17#6484320 likes
Yes. One after another. For example, if the current universe has accelerated away to infinity, that a new one originates behind us. And then again for that one, etc.
You don't think something more basic such as a quantum field is a better explanation?
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 27, 2022 at 22:30#6484370 likes
I usually enjoy a good polling, but this question is a choice between logical absurdities, with no good reason to favour one absurdity over another. I haven't voted yet, so I don't know what the numbers are, but my guess would be about two thirds - something from nothing, and one third, an infinite past. Neither of them make any sense. I don't know what would. The universe is weird. It's like a prison with no bars; we exist, suspended between the infinitely big and the infinitely small, with no 'edge of the map' from which we might imply the nature of existence. It's bizzarre. Forced to choose, on the basis of cosmic expansion, I'll say something from nothing. The Big Bang Theory, but that's not to say I find it satisfying.
You're not impressed by the above arguments about an infinite series of big bangs?
It does seem absurd that something has existed forever with no explanation.
You're not impressed by the above arguments about an infinite series of big bangs? It does seem absurd that something has existed forever with no explanation.
I cannot write anything that makes sense - the idea that the universe 'came into being' seems just as crazy as the idea it exists eternally. I wish it would all just go away! But then what would there be? Nothing? How can there be nothing? How can time not pass? How can space not be space? Even empty space is space! And, if it's not empty - what is it full of? None of it makes sense!
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 28, 2022 at 21:14#6487310 likes
Quantum fields are exactly the reason I think this will happen.
I mean as an explanation for where everything came from (such as Lawrence Krauss proposes).
The view you expressed of an infinite series of big bangs has no explanation for where it came from. In fact it never came from anywhere, it has always existed.
The view you expressed of an infinite series of big bangs has no explanation for where it came from. In fact it never came from anywhere, it has always existed.
But it explains the mechanism of subsequent big bangs. There is no physical explanation where the infinity came from. It has been created by an extra mundane power, how else got it there. The power lives outside the domain of space and time, so even when spacetime is eternal and infinite that won't be proof of no divine beings.
But it explains the mechanism of subsequent big bangs. There is no physical explanation where the infinity came from. It has been created by an extra mundane power, how else got it there. The power lives outside the domain of space and time, so even when spacetime is eternal and infinite that won't be proof of no divine beings.
Aren't you just pushing the question back, to where the "extra mundane power" came from? If your answer is that it has always existed, surely it would be simpler to just say the series of big bangs have always existed?
Aren't you just pushing the question back, to where the "extra mundane power" came from? If your answer is that it has always existed, surely it would be simpler to just say the series of big bangs have always existed?
This is where it gets interesting. You might indeed ask where the gods in their turn came from. But they don't exist in the way we or spacetime exist. There is no physical explanation why the universe is there. The only explanation why it displays the features it has can be by a preconceived plan. How can something showing the stuff we figure out by our theories exist on its own? Only creation by intelligent beings can be the cause. Asking where they come from is different from asking where the universe comes from.
Down The Rabbit HoleJanuary 29, 2022 at 19:29#6490190 likes
He says the question of whether there were other universes is "irrelevant".
It are those other universes that set the stage surrounding the singularity at the center of the spatially infinite universe. After each bang the singularity is "locked" only to be unlocked when a preceding universe is "over and done".
god must be atheistJanuary 29, 2022 at 22:39#6490890 likes
It's a physical impossibility. The 2nd law of TD requires a beginning in time.
No, that is not true. The 2nd law states that thermal entropy can't decrease. But it allows it to stagnate. That's A. B. is that entropy possibly never reaches an end state... it will approach an end state, the amount of heat energy differential between a state and absolute depletion constantly decreasing, but decreasing slower and slower, and that lasting forever.
god must be atheistJanuary 29, 2022 at 22:45#6490930 likes
Further to my previous post, if you are skeptical about the heat energy not dissipating at all:
Imagine that the heat energy follows a function of the sort of f(x)=1/(e^x), where x is the total heat energy differential. In this case it has never started, but has gone on forever since infinite past, and it will will never end. In this case, absolute entropy would be represented by f(x)=0, which never happens.
It can last forever, which our universe does. When all mass has accelerated away to infinity all that will be left is pure potential energy, photons, with no mass. But a beginning is needed and even a prerequisite to give time a direction.
What do you mean? They have become infinitely heavy (full of mass)? Or their speed has become inifinitely large? or they reached a point in a distance far away which you call infinity?
Your entire claim hinges on this statement "When all mass has accelerated away to infinity" but I see no reason this can happen. Please explain what you mean. More precisely, because to me it makes no sense.
god must be atheistJanuary 29, 2022 at 22:52#6491020 likes
Indeed. I can see no heat differential in your function.
Thank you. I can't continue this argument until you learn what the 2nd Law of theromdynamics states, and until you learn how to read simple math equations.
I am sorry, I am not dissing you, and I am not trying to belittle you. I am just saying that if you can't understand my arguments, then there is no point in continuing.
In the menatime, we can continue on your claim "When all mass has accelerated away to infinity". What do you mean by this? a speed? an increase in mass? or a distance?
In the menatime, we can continue on your claim "When all mass has accelerated away to infinity". What do you mean by this? a speed? an increase in mass? or a distance
All mass in the universe tends towards chaos globally. As we see ordered structure time cannot have existed forever. We would see a state nowadays that will only be seen in the far future. All mass will be evaporated into photons then. Maximum entropy. This state will be the trigger for a new bang at the singularity at the origin. Two new universes will come into being. A new dawn of time. A new life...
Once all of existence will be nothing more than a timeless and massless memory, diluting into the oblivion on the waves of pure energy rushing into infinity, the sign is given for new life to burst into ull massive existence.
god must be atheistJanuary 29, 2022 at 23:15#6491160 likes
All mass in the universe tends towards chaos globally. As we see ordered structure time cannot have existed forever. We would see a state nowadays that will only be seen in the far future. All mass will be evaporated into photons then. Maximum entropy. This state will be the trigger for a new bang at the singularity at the origin. Two new universes will come into being. A new dawn of time. A new life...
This is nice. No denying that. But that is all that it is.
PossibilityJanuary 30, 2022 at 07:35#6492330 likes
Interesting discussion. We tend to shift almost effortlessly between physical, actual and literal descriptions of reality, and we use language, mathematics and physics to help us navigate. If we understood that we were shifting between dimensional structures of reality, then we might be more careful with how we used these terms.
I recognise that use of the term ’physical’ - in relation to physics - often includes 4D and even 5D universal structures. But when we’re talking philosophy rather than purely physics, and not relying on calculations, then I think it helps to distinguish between dimensional structures for ease of understanding. If you can suggest a more appropriate term to distinguish 3D structures then I’m open to it.
A physical (3D) universe is temporally finite, and any attempt we make to describe it would hypothesise a beginning and an end. An actual (4D) universe, however, appears (in mathematics and physics) to have emerged from (literally) nothing at t=0, even though we recognise its infinite existence. And a literal (5D) universe is ultimately both infinite and nothing, relative to one’s perception of value/potential.
(1) Something from literally nothing certainly seems far-fetched if by ‘literally’ we mean either physically or actually nothing. But literally nothing is a lack of awareness, and all it takes is attention and/or effort directed towards this ‘nothing’ for it to be literally something (value/potential) about an apparent nothing.
(2) An infinite past seems far-fetched if by ‘infinite’ we mean physically infinite. But an actually infinite past is mathematically plausible - zero and infinite being qualitative limitations - even if no evidence would ever exist.
So, while the poll is skewed towards (1) by the term ‘literal’, the unusually high proportion of (2) suggests a misunderstanding of distinctions between physical, actual and literal realities.
Comments (184)
Nothing does not exist physically. The big bang was not a universe banging into existence from nothing. The nothing. In physics one means the vacuum. And as is known nowadays, the vacuum is not empty. The dark energy drove the virtual Planck cell apart. The universe came into real existence in an inflationary expansion of the 3D singularity on an eternal 4D substrate. The universe cannot be non-eternal. It has to be temporal infinite. The eternity might even be parsed in sub infinites. The universe we are in can cause a new big bang behind us, at the symmetric origin from where all new big bangs spring. This origin can be called the magical umbellicus of life, the dual fountain source of life. The Wondrous Dual Ejaculata in cosmic orgasm, with infinite foreplay.
Since we are only familiar with being, non-existence is counter-intuitive. So, it's easier for us to imagine NOW extending into the Past and Future with no boundaries. But intuition tends to be prejudiced by personal experience.
The ancient Greeks were excellent mathematicians, but they had no concept of "Zero" (nothingness). Yet in more recent times, that non-intuitive notion has proven to be quite useful in abstract mathematics. Consequently, as hypothetical philosophical postulations, we are now more comfortable with such literal non-sense, even though it has no counterpart in physical Reality. That's why "Zero" and "Infinity" are meta-physical philosophical speculations, not physical scientific facts. And philosophical thinkers have been known to fetch some of their most exotic ideas from afar-far-away. :nerd:
Which is worse/better: Electric chair/Firing Squad?
I haven't really given these matters as much attention as I believe they deserve, but I will say this: the answer would depend on how bizarre the assumptions that are needed to prove these claims. Of course that raises the question, what do you mean by bizarre? Questions spawning questions - that's the heart of philosophy.
If I were to hazard a guess, infinity, nobody's really understood it very well. Paradoxes, paradoxes, and more paradoxes.
On the other hand, nothing, another concept that's a head-scratcher.
Quite the fix we find ourselves in. Nothing & Infinity or [math]0[/math] and [math]\infty[/math]. We're, in a sense, trapped between them, our minds struggling so much, too much?
Contrary to the results of my poll so far, something from literally nothing intuitively seems more far-fetched to me. However, as @Gnomon pointed out, non-existence is counter-intuitive, and intuition tends to be prejudiced by personal experience. Other than our intuition, what's to say actual no-thingness didn't give rise to everything else? Bear in mind, something having an infinite past is absurd too.
There isn't even anything particularly far-fetched about an infinite past at all; if anything, the proposition that the past isn't infinite strikes me as wildly implausible and far-fetched. That isn't to say a finite past is impossible, only that it would represent a radical and qualitative leap from anything we've experienced or previously known about how the world and causal order works and so the initial presumption is certainly against it.
In a sense, the singularity lies already infinitely far in the past. If we reverse our clock we would see the cosmic clock go slower and slower approaching the singularity as the mass density grows higher and higher, and when the end of inflation is reached, the universe was already big in size. If you count that inflation blew up the size about 10exp70 times, and multiply this by the Planck length, the universe was about 10exp35 meter in diameter. If you consider a lightyear to be about 10exp13 meter, you realize how big it was already then. About 10exp22 ly across! Thats not 100 billion (10exp11) ly, as the visible universe's diameter is now, but 10exp11 times as big!
Entropic time took off after inflation. But before that the perfect clock ruled supreme. When our universe has accelerated to infinity, conditions are set for a new bang at the singularity. A new entropic time appears from the total clock. Ad infinitum..
Why shouldn't they? It's about space matter and time.
Sure they are. Either the universe is past-eternal, or it is not (i.e. it came to be "from nothing"). If the one is true the other cannot be and visa versa.
And the only way "infinity and nothing are one and the same" is if you're re-defining one or both terms. Given their usual meanings in English, obviously they're very different concepts.
Because space and time are conceptual notions humans have developed to understand the world. I am not sure they map to anything beyond us.
Conceptual notions? They seem pretty non-conceptual to me. Space is where I move in, time is the number of periods the perfect clock ticks. The perfect clock is non-existent though and the strange thing is that on the singularity the universe constituted a perfect clock.
Of course - they map to human experience.
What do you mean then with them being conceptual?
Still. Even when both are an experience you can use them to go back in time and imagine how it was back then. How it would have looked if you were part of it. Pushing experience to the limit of the small and short. This can lead to a contemplation of how the situation must have looked, taking into account modern knowledge, its limitations, abstractions, and image of the micro cosmos.
Nothing can't be described, as it's nothing. Even empty space is something. But empty space can't exists without something in it. Nothing is the absence of anything.
Go for it Ray... I don't even know how things look now and I am here (I think), so I'm certainly not going attempt anything like that.
Such distractions about abstractions can go-on into the infinity before infinity -- if we don't put up an arbitrary barrier to eternal extrapolation. One way to do that is to narrowly define the subject of discussion. So, what is this "no-thing-ness" we are imagining for the sake of argument? Typically, the term refers to the concept of a vacuum or absence of physical objects. But we humans tend to think of imaginary non-physical concepts as-if they are things. Does Absence count?
Should we include ethereal Feelings and Qualia in the category of things-in-absentia? The "Future" does not exist in any physical sense, but we speak & act as-if it's a real thing. Plato insisted that his abstract Forms "gave rise" to concrete Reality, even though they were merely abstract designs for potential things. As mentioned above, the notion of "Zero" seemed absurd to the Greek philosophers. Yet today, we use those "far-fetched" symbols of nothingness (00000) as-if they are countable objects.
So, perhaps we need to distinguish between actual physical "things" and imaginary metaphorical "things", in order to abbreviate this thread. Does "Absence" exist in any meaningful sense? If not, this may be merely an excursion into mundane somethingness. If so, we may be talking about "Constitutive Absence". :smile:
Absence :
It’s more like Gravity and Strange Attractors of Physics that “pull” stuff toward them. It is in effect a Teleological Attractor. How that “spooky action at a distance” works may be best explained by Terrence Deacon’s definition of “Absence”.
Re : Terrence Deacon : Incomplete Nature, How Mind Emerged From Matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomplete_Nature
Absential : The paradoxical intrinsic property of existing with respect to something missing, separate, and possibly nonexistent. Although this property is irrelevant when it comes to inanimate things, it is a defining property of life and mind; elsewhere (Deacon 2005) described as a constitutive absence
Constitutive absence : A particular and precise missing something that is a critical defining attribute of 'ententional' phenomena, such as functions, thoughts, adaptations, purposes, and subjective experiences.
http://absence.github.io/3-explanations/absential/absential.html
I really don’t get this argument. What could “our environment” possibly mean, if you don’t use space and time in defining it?
Haha! Good one Tom! Maybe that's exactly my reason to try...Things were much simpler back then.
More far-fetched than either of the above is the conviction that by answering the above question, we will find the meaning of life and end suffering.
Yes well experience beats dictionary definition and through sustained practice of meditation one can begin to experience how these concepts dissolve into unity (as all concepts do).
Do you think the nothing has creation power?
Quoting tim wood
I'll have you know, I do know what I'm talking about on the subject of nothing :joke:
I wasn't sure if you was serious. When responding, I did add the hyphen in no-thingness to give an indication of what I mean.
Quoting Raymond
Quoting Raymond
No I don't. It seems to me that something having an infinite past is the least absurd option.
Nonetheless, you must agree that something just existing, with no reason or purpose, forever into the past, is very absurd. And then there are all the paradoxes of an actual infinity.
Very good. Not a very serious response, but definitely an amusing one.
I kinda like the notion. If there is no beginning, and every new bang forms the start, from a new time zero (well, not exactly zero, but a state fluctuating around it), of a new universe, then "it" will never end! But where then did an infinity come from? I think only the gods know that. But where did they come from then? They just are. I think it's more plausible though that the universe is created by gods (even in its infinity) than that it's an infinite spatial structure on which universes come into being one after another.
Nothing is the absence of delineating qualities. Infinity is the absence of limiting qualities. Even on a semantic level they are not 'very different concepts'.
Quoting Seppo
It's no secret and I am hardly the first person to claim something like this. The mind is stuck in the relativistic realm of concepts. That's why it cannot make sense of certain dualisms. Meditation is a different way to experience, unmediated by mind. Mock away though, I can tell you have never looked seriously into this.
These are, as I suspected, highly idiosyncratic definitions, and even on your personal non-standard definitions they are different. But in this context, the question is regarding the past duration of the universe, and so your personal stipulations aren't really relevant and the two possible answers are mutually exclusive (either the past temporal duration of the universe was finite, or it was not).
By re-defining the relevant terms, you basically just punted on the question entirely (and instead just posted some squishy pseudo-mystical woo), which makes one wonder why you bothered to post to the thread if you didn't intend to weigh in on the question.
I translate "literal nothing" into nothing-ness and (spatiotemporal) "infinity" into unbounded; thus, IME, the first option "seems more far-fatched" (even impossible).
That's also extremely dishonest to use the quote function to attribute to someone something they never said- reported, btw. If you want to strawman people in this way, at least use quotations rather than the quote function when its something the person didn't ever actually say.
I was in fact looking where you wrote this. Couldn't find it though.I had the same experience. Slightly different though. A "not" was left out, so it appeared I wrote something I actually denied.
Yep, exactly! That's why its a problem, and why its dishonest. Many people might not even realize you can manually input a quote into the quote function at all, and so would assume that the person must have said it.
So if people want to paraphrase someone else, by all means... but use quotations, or say "in other words, such-and-such"- only use the quote function to accurately quote things people actually said.
People talk about "the universe" and "the known universe" and they mix up the two concepts.
I am extremely unfamiliar with the math and physics of the big bang. However, I am certain that time dilation (whatever it is) did not involve Absolute Time. I am sure this is not the right name for it; but as in the effects of time differentia between super-fast moving objects and relatively stationary objects, the time-dilation was also a relative issue.
I can't prove any of this in any way. My only reason for being skeptical on the declaration that there was no time before time dilation is lingual, and human-intuitive. You say "before" time dilation, "before" big bangggg. That implies a TIME before; there is no other "befores" but time.
Hence, I reject that time started at the moment of the big banggggg started.
That's point one.
Point two is that the big banggg as far as we know, is responsible only for the matter we observe. There may or may not be other matter in the universe beyond our observational capacity. If there is matter beyond the matter we can account for, it may be of different origins from the big bangggg. So if they existed before the big banggg then they are proof that time did not start with the big bangggg.
Not sure there is any such thing. As we watch a spaceship fly by at half the speed of light times the linear 0< t<1, both the spaceship crew and you and I experience time as linear, however the passage of time on the spaceship as recorded here on Earth is curvilinear.
"If you count that inflation blew up the size about 10exp70 times, and multiply this by the Planck length, the universe was about 10exp35 meter in diameter. If you consider a lightyear to be about 10exp13 meter, you realize how big it was already then. About 10exp22 ly across! Thats not 100 billion (10exp11) ly, as the visible universe's diameter is now, but 10exp11 times as big!"
There was no time zero. When you reverse the clock, there comes a point, at about 10exp-36 second, inflation reverses and the whole shebang collapses to a Planck sized 6D closed sphere. The perfect clock where time ran forward nor backward. Waiting for the chance to explode on the Holy 7D Substrate, stretching to infinity. A Dual Ejaculate on the Infinite Substrate. Cosmic wanking of the gods. Once the present Ejaculate reaches for infinity, two new ejaculates will be shot to both sides of the magic fountain source. Hallelujah brothers and sisters!
No wonder it seems flat.
Very interesting. It is completely incomprehensible to me. I don't doubt your word, I am just putting it into perspective for you how informative this is for me.
My ineptitude, definitely, not yours.
People are actually voting that an infinite past is more "far-fetched" than something coming from nothing?
Jesus...
I can't imagine something lasting or being forever and ever. I suppose being born into this life, is a kind of "something from nothing", in terms of our experience of it. Of course, we can say that that's not true there were chemicals and atoms and biology prior to us. But we don't experience this prior birth (nor, presumably, after death).
Yet, forever doesn't fit in somehow. Before I was born, I have no temporal intuition at all.
It's just that moving clocks seem to move slower. If you accelerate them they actually move slower. On/in different points vertically above the Earth you have to accelerate in different amounts to stay where you are. This means that at these different points the clock runs at a different rate. On the surface the slowest.
:rofl: No offense @emancipate
Infinity, nobody's seen an actual infinity save in math but there too it's only an axiom.
(Wiki)
Wiki talks in riddles (the rate at which a clock is affected by time dilation...?). The speed of the clock is velocity dependent. If the velocity varies, wrt to a clock observer inertial rest frame from , the clock's speed varies and when the clocks meet again the accelerated one runs behind.
Thanks. No amount of explanation will stick. Because I don't see the underlying law that creates this effect.
All I am saying is that since there are different clocks present showing different times, the time-dilation may be a different clock from the what I called absolute time (or absolute clock).
According to the clock of TIME DILATION there was no time before the big banggg. According to the Absolute Clock there was time before the big banggg.
I don't see why this would be impossible, and I don't think you can tell me either. At least not in terms that I understand.
The person you mentioned is responsible for this philosophical mishap.
But I don't see the votes and the majority of opinion as a proof of truth. I see it as a measure of philosophical and knowledge impoverishment of society, due to the oppressive presence of religionism. Most users here are from America; if an international presence was represented by ratio of population, this figure would be much higher (due to Islam); but if Europe was only considered, or China, then the overwhelming majority would answer the opposite way, that is, that something getting out of nothing is far fetched.
The underlying law is simple. The speed of light has to be the same for everyone (or in any case, finite).
Quoting god must be atheist
What do you mean by an absolute clock? The clock running outside the universe? Inside the universe there is no absolute clock. All clocks run at their own pace and no clock shows an absolute time. The clock though is an imaginary. There is no physical process that has the characteristics an imaginary clock has. Only the process before the bang constituted a perfect clock. But there were no things yet to put this clock aside of. Except in the mind. Nowadays there are a lot of these things happening but there is no perfect clock to be found. Except in the mind. In both cases, something is missing.
Okay. Then let's put it this way: the time dilation and the clock that measures it after the big banggg pertains to the matter of the big banggg. Other matter may exist, and other clocks. However many clocks exist, they don't all necessarily start at the same zero time. Some before, some after the zero time of our known universe. So in effect there may be time T2 on some other clock that is larger than time T1 on our clock, in the same units.
Maybe we should reword the phrase how we envision that there was time before the Big banggg and that our time is not absolute. And then rephrase the fact in a way that makes sense to astrophysicists, quantum mechanics and street sweepers alike, that space and matter in it (in our beliefs) have existed forever.
If you (general you) insist that there was no time before the big banggg, then necessarily no matter existed then either, and therefore all of a sudden option 2 becomes very much more plausible than option 1.
Haha. There are a few steps in deducing facts from this law in-between the underlying law and understanding time dilation. And I am unfamiliar with those steps and no amount of explanation can make me make the logical connections between the underlying law and time dilation. That is what I meant by not understanding the underlying law. My mistake, I used the wrong concept to describe what it is that I don't understand.
For the street sweeper. The big inflation swept the universe into real existence. The era, also known as the big sweep, took a tiny part of an average sweep of the street sweeper. All sweeper in the universe sweep at relative sweeping rates. Only when they meet, they see that some sweepers have swept more garbage into the bin than other sweepers. They all feel they sweep at the same pace and, assuming they all sweep alike, only when they meet each other will see that the bins of fellow sweepers are filled more, the same, or less than their own bin.
There is no absolute sweeper who determines the absolute sweeping rate. Before the real sweeping took of there was only a virtual periodic sweeping, constituting a real clock. It contained the potential of the real sweeping and swept along rapidly sweeping to and fro with a period that takes an even tinier amount of the time it took for the great sweep to sweep the real sweeping matter into existence. The perfect sweeping to and fro, with no direction in time yet, lasted the amount of time it takes for the real sweeping to become impossible, i.e, when all sweeping matter has turned into potential sweep energy which lacks the matter to actually sweep with. The end of the possible sweeping era causes the virtual potential sweeping to become real: a new great sweep.
Hopefully the sweepers of this era become the heroes of the next.
It's simple. For the speed of light to stay the same for all, space contracts and time dilates. The gamma factor is introduced. In a lightclock this is easily visualized.
Why do you find that absurd, pray tell? What I (and most poll respondents) find counter intuitive is rather the idea of a possible begining and a possible end of time. The idea of an infinite past and future is perfectly fine.
Quoting Olivier5
(1) The thing(s) making up the infinite past would have no reason or explanation for their existence (2) An infinite past is paradoxical. E.g. Planets that orbit the sun at different speeds would at every moment have made the same amount of orbits. Despite us actually observing the faster one adding more orbits than the other. (Same principle for whatever came before the sun and planets).
Quoting Xtrix
I was surprised by the results too. And the comments aren't reflecting these results.
What if infinity in time is built up from infinite ùniverses following up each other in series, each with a beginning of time?
1) You are assuming that some thing(s) "made up the past", an assumption which a) I don't understand as phrased -- what do you mean? -- and b) that may be unwarranted.
2) An infinite past is not anymore paradoxical than an infinite anything (space, set, whatever). Think of it mathematically. What is most paradoxical: a never-ending series of natural numbers from zero to, well, infinity, or a finite series of natural numbers stopping at some maximum value or another?
WTF happens if you take that maximum and add 1 to it?
Similarly, what happens one second after the end of time?
The human mind is not so much seeking the infinite as dreading it, I think. There is a vertigo of the infinite in us. But on the other hand, our mind -- mine in any case -- can not possibly square with the idea of a hard end to time and space. Our natural sense of time and space is open-ended.
Quoting Raymond
This infinite series of universes would still have no reason or explanation for its existence.
As this is an infinite series of events, it still runs into the paradoxes. I don't think it matters whether or not thing(s) are "timeless", a series of events must still have a beginning to avoid the paradoxes.
This is a good one.
It would need to show some time, undoubtedly. But how do we know how it was set, if it was never set? Remember, it had no beginning, no manufacturing date. It has existed for ever. It shows some time, as it is a regular clock. What is the time it shows?
Yeeee-haaaw!
It would show the time that astronomers make us believe. About 13.8 billion years and counting.
The clock in this universe and that of preceding ones and subsequent ones are all starting from zero (well, actually 10exp-43 seconds away from it).
It’s necessarily impossible to say what time it would show, precisely because it’s an infinite clock. If you saw it and it read 12 o’clock then the explanation for that would be that it said 11 o’clock an hour ago and 10 o’clock the hour before that, and there would be nothing more to it.
Graham Oppy (philosopher of religion) makes the point that whatever world view you hold you always wind up with something brute at the foundation of it all. The 3 explanations you have are a necessary God, a necessary universe, or a universe that is a brute contingency. I don’t think any of those options are absurd; they just make it clear that whatever explanations you choose they terminate somewhere.
It can't have existed forever. Every time a new universe bangs into existence the clock in the previous one indicates it's very late. Say it makes one full turn in every universe. The a new clock, causally disconnected, springs into existence, in the universe behind the old one. This clock can make one full turn just like the one it follows up. The clock only exist for real in the small era before each inflation (each bang). Time was perfect then, a perfect periodic motion, without the direction of entropic time.
Actually, there is only one in the end. Gods.
Concerning just the foundation of being I agree with Oppy that God isn’t any more illuminating as an explanation than asserting that there’s some necessary aspect of the universe.
I don't agree. I think I have a model for a cyclic model. No beginning no ending. Now what? How can it exist, even if infinite in time and (4D) space? Where does it come from? Aren't gods the only answer possible?
To say something is necessary (it can’t not exist) is an explanation - it’s the same one that gets applied to God.
"Seems" is a weasel word for perception. Which is dependent on several factors that are ultimately irrelevant to higher understanding. A homeless man high on PCP who runs into freeway traffic thought that avenue "seemed good" at the time.
You feel the need to quantify "nothing" as in no thing with "literally" perhaps for our benefit sure, as if we are unable to grasp the concept. Perhaps you are projecting your inabilities and shortcomings on us? Granted, it is a mind bending concept for most so moving on.
Obviously the "something" was not actually from nothing but rather your idea of nothing. Common human trait, cognitive bias, aka being told you're wrong or in short "no". Makes you question your life choices and simultaneously your sacrifices made. This is a biological survival mechanism, nothing more.
An "infinite past" is again prodding at the idea that your own judgements and beliefs may be incorrect. You will be biologically disinclined to consider this possibility.
In short, it varies depending on person to person. Basic psychology.
The explanations are different. A new physical mechanism behind the known ones cannot be reduced further at some point. The gods don't become them gap ones but, well, actual gods. Not to protect my theory from further parsing, but at some point you just don't wanna go deeper because hard rock has been hit.
Quoting Olivier5
If there is not literal nothingness, there is some thing(s). As @PoeticUniverse has said in other threads, the thing(s) making up the infinite past would most likely have been in motion for infinity, in order for anything to have developed - otherwise we have development from infinite stillness, which is not much better than something from literally nothing.
Yes, I don't know of a solution for actual infinities. A never ending future is reasonable though - it keeps going, never actually reaching infinity.
This is basically what I’m getting at, except that at some point you just can’t go any further, and if you did you’d be going forever. For what it’s worth I’m not an atheist either.
It could be though that you have hit rock bottom and that bottom is just, well, the bottom. However hard you bang, it won't crack.
Yeah, that’s what happens when something is referred to as necessary. It can’t not exist and the explanation stops there; if you give any further explanation then the thing is no longer necessary, but contingent upon the explanation being given. “It’s necessary” or “it’s a brute contingency” is the rock bottom.
Unless no further physical explanations are possible. What if a model is obviously true? You assume a reality never to be in reach.
I’m not sure where we’re disagreeing now. I don’t particularly think that there’s a reality we can’t “reach”.
I have the impression you call the hard rock a contingency. Doesn't this imply a gap, somehow? Why calling the rock a contingency then? Or do I get you wrong?
I called the hard rock either necessity (something that can’t not exist) or a brute contingency (something that might not have existed but it does and there’s no further explanation). They might not seem like satisfying explanations, but in neither case is there a gap.
I see. But why, if no gap, are they not satisfying explanations then? If you think you know how it works, isn't that satisfying? Apart from the fact that you can't explain where that of what you think to know the workings of came from?
I don’t mind those explanations; I was just preempting others’ feelings towards them.
What could those feelings be? Feelings of contingency?
Dissatisfaction
Why is it dissatisfactory to know the working of the universe?
It isn’t the workings of the universe I’m talking about, but the possible reasons why it exists (which encompass the two possibilities mentioned in the OP).
Do the two alternatives encompass possible reasons? Maybe the something from the nothing does. But can't you apply something from the nothing to an infinite universe also. Nothing, and then "logos, bang!"an infinite universe. "Then" not taken literally.
I’ve taken infinite to mean it’s always existed.
Always existed goes with necessity.
Came from nothing goes with brute contingency.
What's the necessity for infinite existence? And what's the brute contingency in the case of coming from nothing? A coming from nothing in the finite case is in need of further physical explanation. An infinite universe delivers such cause. How can a finite universe come into existence without a preceding time?
Can't gods create a spatiotemporally infinite universe from nothing?
Necessity is an explanation you can assert for an infinite universe.
Brute contingency is something you can assert for a universe from nothing.
Both explanations preclude any further explanation.
Then the ultimate reason must be the gods. An infinite universe necessitates previous universes. A finite universe is a brute artifact. Only gods can create an infinite universe. A necessity.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
The past and future could be an infinite cycle if big bangs and big crunches for all we know.
It can be bang after bang too. Without crunch, but more tasty!
Quoting Outlander
I chose the word "seems" as I wanted the poll to be inviting to everyone, not just those with a reasoned answer (if such a thing exists for this question). It is interesting to see what people perceive to be the most absurd, and as you can see from the results, opinion is split.
Quoting Outlander
Some people's (most notably Lawrence Krauss's), use of "nothing" excludes quantum fields. I said "literally nothing" and "no-thing", to help express that I am including every-thing, including quantum fields, in my use of the word.
Quoting Outlander
It's not obvious - around 50% of respondents find "something from literally nothing" the most plausible.
Quoting Olivier5
Quoting Raymond
Although this infinite series of bangs runs into the paradoxes, it might be the most plausible option. Sir Roger Penrose seems to think so.
Quoting Raymond
I don't see a problem with God creating a universe infinite in size. However, if the universe has existed infinitely long, it had no beginning, and so could not have been created.
I was exactly referring to a temporally infinite one. Why can't that be created from nothing too?
Create means "bring something into existence". This cannot be done for something that has always existed.
Why not?
I have not learned much from reading three pages of comments on here. I will tell you my vote is that time is perpetual and infinite in both directions.
Our newest Telescope, Webb's, will reveal more about the nature of time and the beginning of our universe (cosmology). .
What have you learned from Krauss? I think he talks nonsense and offers no solution for dark energy. What is the nothing he talks about?
What will it reveal about the nature of time? Ain't that clear?
I also have some of my own ideas, as classifying time into domains. Such that there is 1) Cosmic time, the Big Cycle 2) Rotation and Revolution Cycles, 3) Relative time 4) Atomic time and 5) Time as a variable that can be reached by mathematical expression and equation.
Did you learn something with your time reading this? Certainly more than you will gain from Krauss's "flat universe" and "zero-point beginnings" concepts.
If I could I would write a polemic against Krauss, spare with him, if you will. But I don't think that's very likely. I am sure you can access positive and negative reviews online, no need to debase the fool further, here.
Can time be a variable? How do you vary time?
Else-while, there is something called time dilation (TD) it works with Einstein's relativistic mechanics. In such a state, my time is a variable of my reference frame compared to the reference frame of some one else. There is a widely known example of this. Its a great thought experiment to run, if you don't want to get into just the hard math, and simply stay with the visual aspects of TD.
With TD in mind, time is "very, very, very, varied." :)
:smile:
Eternal, perhaps?
Pondering
Ha! Ain't that killing time?
What's the great mystery about time?
Isn't s, the speed, already involving t?
Sure
Quoting god must be atheist
Yes, ostensibly a clock that has always been ticking cannot exist. How about the infinite number of red books and infinite number of black books, that when added together total the same amount of books as just the red books. And the planets orbiting the sun at different speeds, but making the same amount of orbits, even if you suddenly sped the faster one up further.
The answer to my poll question is not as obvious as some people think it is?
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Raymond
Having always existed means it didn't start to exist.
Talk of totals assumes finitude - to say the planets total the same number of orbits you need finite numbers to compare; instead it seems right to say that one planet has always done more orbits than the other; it’s only if they were finite that at any point they could have done the same number.
Quoting Josh Alfred
The trouble is, we don't have any experience with "nothing" in the literal sense. What evidence have we got to say things don't just pop into existence out of nothing?
The title of the book should be "A Universe from Quantum Fields". I think he said in interviews that "A Universe from Nothing" was a sales trick.
But still... The eternal can be created from outside of spacetime.
Quoting AJJ
For punch I added "even if you suddenly sped the faster planet up further". It is absurd that both planets would have done the same amount of orbits?
Speed one up all you like. I’m saying talk of them doing the same number of orbits assumes finitude - if they’ve been going forever there is no total number of orbits to compare. The most you could say is that, given any stretch of time within that infinity, one planet has invariably done more orbits than the other.
Quoting AJJ
I understand what you are saying; a total number of orbits and infinite orbits are incompatible. It still seems absurd that any extra orbits we suddenly add to one planet over the other actually adds nothing.
I’m not sure I’d call it absurd, because what you’re identifying again is simply that there isn’t a total to be added to, which given an infinite past is necessarily so. We can still say that one planet does so many orbits per year and the other does this many; in this light the lack of a grand total for each seems something to be accepted as necessary and unimportant.
I'm not sure where your preoccupation with number of periods of planets? If you increase the number of the revolutions of one planet in particular, what's the problem?
Quoting AJJ
Okay, so you're saying Al-Ghazali's orbiting planets are unintuitive but not logically impossible?
Sorry to move the goalposts, but what if instead of the orbiting planets it's an infinitely ticking clock. What time would it show?
Ah! It's here that you make a wrong assumption. There is no clock tic-tac-ing eternally. Only an infinite sequence of clocks taking of from perfect clock states. The universe is eternal but there is an infinite succession of beginnings in time. An infinite eternal universe isn't a physical possibility. If there were no point zero in time life could not develop. It would be a time and spaceless universe devoid of matter. I.e. a nothing.
The steady state universe enjoyed some popularity but was not tenable.
Earlier in the thread I gave this response to the clock example:
Quoting AJJ
It strikes me that in neither case (the planets and the clock) is there a logical problem. It’s just that there are things missing or that you can’t do given the nature of infinity.
The thing missing is an initial state. Time needs an initial state and is irreversible because any state cannot serve as a begin state for the reversed process. There are two types of time. Coordinate, clock time, an imaginary for i entropic time, and the real (reversible) clock time, in which entropic time is still absent, the pre-inflationary state of our 3D universe on the 4D substrate space.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Raymond
I didn't say always in time. If it was created, it began to exist.
Quoting Raymond
I'm not obsessed with orbiting planets y'know :lol: It's Al-Ghazali's example, that I've brought up a couple of times in these 5 pages and responded to criticisms of. It's unintuitive (at the least) that despite speeding the orbits of one planet over the other, it never actually orbits more. Although as @AJJ has said it's not clear that it's impossible.
Quoting Raymond
The ticking of a clock is an example to test an infinite chain of events (in this case the infinite ticks). Each of the "infinite succession of beginnings in time" you refer to is like the tick of a clock.
I don't refer to each tick as beginning of a new chain. I refer to beginnings in time for each new big bang. Suppose a big bang starts of like a 3D closed spatial structure on an infinite 4D substrate. When the two 3D structures have accelerated away towards the infinities on the 4D structures, conditions are set at the origin on the 4D substrate for two mirrored 3D universes to break free from the real, reversible perfect clock state. This state is a Planck sized 3D volume going back and forth , hence the perfect clock state. Then again, entropic time starts, not from t is zero but from the the slightly bigger Planck time (about 10exp-43 seconds). Again, two universes (matter/antimatter) are existent. The matter in these 3D pair can accelerate away again on the 4D substrate space (dark energy!). And again conditions are set at the origin of the 4D mouth to "shout" two new universes into existence. And again (entropic) time starts at about t=0 (slightly more actually, but precisely enough not to cause trouble).
Aristotle started the trend by pointing out that the world cannot possibly have been created out of nothing, and hence must be eternal. Since then many philosophers and scientists have thought the same. The opposite idea of a begining to the universe has more often been sported by religious institutions. When Georges Lemaître started to speak of a cosmic egg in the 20's, some chalked it up to his catholicism.
It's like the concept of charge nowadays. Charge is the cause of motion and it can be pure consciousness, or an fundamental form of it. His notion of the eternal circular motion is the predecessor of the modern concept of the ideal clock, which was the actually the pre-inflationary state of the universe. Add his pre quantum physics... Artistotle, my man!
You are right, I apologize.
Quoting AJJ
How about an infinity ticking stopwatch? Any number it shows would contradict its infinite ticks?
You’re right, but does the contradiction make impossible an infinite past or just an infinite stopwatch? I’d say the latter, since a stopwatch doesn’t run in cycles so its count necessarily has a beginning.
Actually, a stopwatch is the ultimate example of a cyclic process.
Is it? They don’t go in circles like a clock does; they keep ascending from 0 and left alone they never go back to the beginning.
That's true. But so does the clock. Every tick it goes a step further. The hand return to the beginning, but that's a matter of convenience. Beneath both ticks there hides a periodic process. Which is equivalent to a circular motion. These, by the way, are never truly periodic. Even the atomic clock is not perfect. The time that can't be eternal is entropic time. This time needs a beginning.
Odd that he's mentioned only now, for a discussion that he started.
Yes indeed! I think even Einstein, Galileo(i?), Newton, Hamilton, Lagrange, Hawking, or you and me (to name a few in arbitrary order), owe him (or not, depending on your POV). His thoughts about time, primal movers, eternal circular motion, can compete easily with contemporary notions of space and time. Okay, he didn't use math that much, if at all. I think though that math covers up understanding of the true nature of time (and space).
Aristotle, Aristotle
Left without you
Would be lurking the bottle
Could no more make do
Would be rigid-stuck
In Einstein's arse
On his objective clock
That bugger parse
Aristotle Aristotle
You embottle
modern rebottle
Full throttle
Aristo my man
Far you are in space and time
Still I know I can
Not go on without you
Quoting AJJ
I don't know if you've read the book, but this was the response I gave when asked about Oppy's Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity:
"A lot of the classical actual infinity thought experiments he has answers for, but for those he doesn't he asserts that just because certain actual infinity thought experiments are impossible, it doesn't mean actual infinities are impossible. He points out that even finite scenarios can be impossible".
I think you are right that although the conclusions are counter-intuitive, they are not necessarily impossible.
Something from literally nothing is counter-intuitive. Necessarily Impossible?
I haven’t read that book, but my thinking is influenced by the kinds of things I’ve heard him say in the discussions I’ve listened to, which fit with what you’ve described in your quoted response there.
And it’s actually from what Oppy has to say about chance that I don’t think something from nothing is necessarily impossible. He calls chance a brute contingency: A and B are possibilities, A happens instead of B and there’s no explanation why (because if there was it wouldn’t be a chance occurrence). So it strikes me that if chance is real then it’s an example of something coming from nothing, and it’s happening all the time.
I don't get it. Why can't it exist? What is it in its supposed eternal ticking that makes it impossible to exist?
The second law of thermodynamics.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting god must be atheist
Like Al-Ghazali's orbiting planets, it's not necessarily logically impossible, just counter-intuitive.
An infinitely ticking stopwatch is a better example - any number it shows would contradict its infinite ticks. Now that's logically impossible?
It's a physical impossibility. The 2nd law of TD requires a beginning in time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeahffPMR5c
The alternative is something coming from literally nothing.
The alternative is repeated starts from zero.
Quoting Cornwell1
You mean like an infinite series of big bangs?
Yes. One after another. For example, if the current universe has accelerated away to infinity, that a new one originates behind us. And then again for that one, etc.
I usually enjoy a good polling, but this question is a choice between logical absurdities, with no good reason to favour one absurdity over another. I haven't voted yet, so I don't know what the numbers are, but my guess would be about two thirds - something from nothing, and one third, an infinite past. Neither of them make any sense. I don't know what would. The universe is weird. It's like a prison with no bars; we exist, suspended between the infinitely big and the infinitely small, with no 'edge of the map' from which we might imply the nature of existence. It's bizzarre. Forced to choose, on the basis of cosmic expansion, I'll say something from nothing. The Big Bang Theory, but that's not to say I find it satisfying.
Quoting Cornwell1
You don't think something more basic such as a quantum field is a better explanation?
Quoting karl stone
You're not impressed by the above arguments about an infinite series of big bangs?
It does seem absurd that something has existed forever with no explanation.
Quantum fields are exactly the reason I think this will happen.
I cannot write anything that makes sense - the idea that the universe 'came into being' seems just as crazy as the idea it exists eternally. I wish it would all just go away! But then what would there be? Nothing? How can there be nothing? How can time not pass? How can space not be space? Even empty space is space! And, if it's not empty - what is it full of? None of it makes sense!
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Cornwell1
I mean as an explanation for where everything came from (such as Lawrence Krauss proposes).
The view you expressed of an infinite series of big bangs has no explanation for where it came from. In fact it never came from anywhere, it has always existed.
Krauss uses QFT and it's implications for the vacuum. He doesn't explain where the singularity itself, with virtual particles only comes from
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
But it explains the mechanism of subsequent big bangs. There is no physical explanation where the infinity came from. It has been created by an extra mundane power, how else got it there. The power lives outside the domain of space and time, so even when spacetime is eternal and infinite that won't be proof of no divine beings.
In Wikipedia he is quoted as saying, "Turtles all the way down" Has he gone beyond this view? I haven't read anything by him.
Quoting Cornwell1
No, it is proposed as a simple default state. This is different from an infinite series of big bangs, as proposed by Roger Penrose?
Quoting Cornwell1
Aren't you just pushing the question back, to where the "extra mundane power" came from? If your answer is that it has always existed, surely it would be simpler to just say the series of big bangs have always existed?
This is where it gets interesting. You might indeed ask where the gods in their turn came from. But they don't exist in the way we or spacetime exist. There is no physical explanation why the universe is there. The only explanation why it displays the features it has can be by a preconceived plan. How can something showing the stuff we figure out by our theories exist on its own? Only creation by intelligent beings can be the cause. Asking where they come from is different from asking where the universe comes from.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting jgill
He says the question of whether there were other universes is "irrelevant". He appears to propose quantum fields as the default state of reality.
It are those other universes that set the stage surrounding the singularity at the center of the spatially infinite universe. After each bang the singularity is "locked" only to be unlocked when a preceding universe is "over and done".
No, that is not true. The 2nd law states that thermal entropy can't decrease. But it allows it to stagnate. That's A. B. is that entropy possibly never reaches an end state... it will approach an end state, the amount of heat energy differential between a state and absolute depletion constantly decreasing, but decreasing slower and slower, and that lasting forever.
Imagine that the heat energy follows a function of the sort of f(x)=1/(e^x), where x is the total heat energy differential. In this case it has never started, but has gone on forever since infinite past, and it will will never end. In this case, absolute entropy would be represented by f(x)=0, which never happens.
It can last forever, which our universe does. When all mass has accelerated away to infinity all that will be left is pure potential energy, photons, with no mass. But a beginning is needed and even a prerequisite to give time a direction.
?
What's the heat differential?
What do you mean? They have become infinitely heavy (full of mass)? Or their speed has become inifinitely large? or they reached a point in a distance far away which you call infinity?
Your entire claim hinges on this statement "When all mass has accelerated away to infinity" but I see no reason this can happen. Please explain what you mean. More precisely, because to me it makes no sense.
You quoted the 2nd Law of TD, and you ask that question?
Indeed. I can see no heat differential in your function.
Thank you. I can't continue this argument until you learn what the 2nd Law of theromdynamics states, and until you learn how to read simple math equations.
I am sorry, I am not dissing you, and I am not trying to belittle you. I am just saying that if you can't understand my arguments, then there is no point in continuing.
In the menatime, we can continue on your claim "When all mass has accelerated away to infinity". What do you mean by this? a speed? an increase in mass? or a distance?
Okay...
All mass in the universe tends towards chaos globally. As we see ordered structure time cannot have existed forever. We would see a state nowadays that will only be seen in the far future. All mass will be evaporated into photons then. Maximum entropy. This state will be the trigger for a new bang at the singularity at the origin. Two new universes will come into being. A new dawn of time. A new life...
Once all of existence will be nothing more than a timeless and massless memory, diluting into the oblivion on the waves of pure energy rushing into infinity, the sign is given for new life to burst into ull massive existence.
This is nice. No denying that. But that is all that it is.
It's enough for me!
I recognise that use of the term ’physical’ - in relation to physics - often includes 4D and even 5D universal structures. But when we’re talking philosophy rather than purely physics, and not relying on calculations, then I think it helps to distinguish between dimensional structures for ease of understanding. If you can suggest a more appropriate term to distinguish 3D structures then I’m open to it.
A physical (3D) universe is temporally finite, and any attempt we make to describe it would hypothesise a beginning and an end. An actual (4D) universe, however, appears (in mathematics and physics) to have emerged from (literally) nothing at t=0, even though we recognise its infinite existence. And a literal (5D) universe is ultimately both infinite and nothing, relative to one’s perception of value/potential.
(1) Something from literally nothing certainly seems far-fetched if by ‘literally’ we mean either physically or actually nothing. But literally nothing is a lack of awareness, and all it takes is attention and/or effort directed towards this ‘nothing’ for it to be literally something (value/potential) about an apparent nothing.
(2) An infinite past seems far-fetched if by ‘infinite’ we mean physically infinite. But an actually infinite past is mathematically plausible - zero and infinite being qualitative limitations - even if no evidence would ever exist.
So, while the poll is skewed towards (1) by the term ‘literal’, the unusually high proportion of (2) suggests a misunderstanding of distinctions between physical, actual and literal realities.
[math][0-10^{-43}]_{CT}\rightarrow \infty_{TT}[/math]
[math]\rightarrow [/math]
[math][0-10^{-43}]_{CT}\rightarrow \infty_{TT}[/math]
[math]\rightarrow [/math]
[math][0-10^{-43}]_{CT}\rightarrow \infty_{TT}[/math]
The symbolic representation of a serial, non-cyclic, worlds universe.