Heaven & Hell (Open to Everyone)

[NiftyNiblick]

My sense is the universe isn't infinite, but that depends on the four dimensional geometry of spacetime.

Even in an infinite universe, the conservative scientific assumption is that the universal physical constants are the same everywhere, and that leaves the exacte same question: why are they finely tuned to allow for matter, energy, biology.

I can only work with the concepts that I understand
so if the universe has boundaries,
it's not the universe
because it excludes what is beyond those boundaries,
even if it's just an infinite vacuum.

I will not flatly declare that other possibilities do not exist, of course.
I'm merely admitting the incapacity to understand what they could be.

 

[Cypress]

One theory is that they all have to balance out to ZERO. Like matter and anti-matter....although some research indicates there is more matter than antimatter.

Yes, we don't know why there was just slightly more matter created than antimatter after the big bang. Particle physics research seems to indicate they are created in exactly equal amounts.

I don't see why there couldn't be a universe of pure energy or plasma if you screwed around with the Higgs field and the universal physical constants. The fact that matter, biology, chemistry exist was seemingly a consequence of a precise mathmatical convergence of physical constants. Maybe it is a random coincidence.

 

[Saint Guinefort]

Anyone is free to believe that the fine tuning of the physical constants, the critical density, the mathmatical scaffolding of the cosmos are just a random coincidence.

When I see patterns or coincidences, I generally think it means something, even if I don't know what it is.

But if things were different you'd not be here to observe it, or it would be different. You would have NOTHING to compare it to. How would you know it could be different?

 

[Cypress]

But if things were different you'd not be here to observe it, or it would be different. You would have NOTHING to compare it to. How would you know it could be different?

That's a well known skeptical argument that's been around for decades.

My observation is not required. The universe and it's physical constants were around for billions of years before humans. We can surmise a universe can physically exist without humans looking at it.

The argument that a universe can't be any other way than ir it is, is at least as speculative as saying a universe can be manifested in different ways.


Now, are you going to follow me around all day again?
You wrote you don't like me, and claim I am poorly educated, misinformed, and incapable of insight.
If so, what is your relentless interest in me? I don't follow people around I think are stupid, uneducated, boring.

 

[Saint Guinefort]

That's a well known skeptical argument that's been around for decades.

Hence my invoking the "Anthropic principle".

Now, are you going to follow me around all day again?

There it is. Only took three posts before the whines and insults began.

I knew it was going to happen. Hoped it wouldn't, but you are SO EATEN UP with HATRED for me that you can't even be pleasant short term.

You really need to get a grip on your hate. It's eating you alive.

 

[Cypress]

Hence my invoking the "Anthropic principle".



There it is. Only took three posts before the whines and insults began.

I knew it was going to happen. Hoped it wouldn't, but you are SO EATEN UP with HATRED for me that you can't even be pleasant short term.

You really need to get a grip on your hate. It's eating you alive.

You bee relentlessly following me around for weeks, desperate for my attention, in spite of writing that you don't like me, think I am uneducated, and uniformed.


What's your explanation?

 

[Saint Guinefort]

You bee relentlessly following me around for weeks, desperate for my attention, in spite of writing that you don't like me, think I am uneducated, and uniformed.


What's your explanation?

Just tryin' to have a philosophical conversation. Apparently you have never been challenged in any of your thinking. It doesn't suit you. Maybe some day you'll actually take a philosophy class and see how people challenge each others' thinking.

But it's probably best you stay clear of that...you are too thin skinned and get bent to easily. Your hatred is off the charts.

 

[Into the Night]

Huxley invented the term. Learn SOMETHING other than electricity.

Huxley did not invent the term.

 

[Into the Night]

That is your speculation; you haven't seen everything everywhere.

No. A definition. Uni- means 'one'. Universe means everything. It is one universe. Nothing can exist 'outside' the universe because there is no 'outside'. There is no known boundary.

However, your speculation is as valid as anyone else's, or moreso in the case of irrational speculations that deny observations.

Not an observation.

The question that remains, and you don't need to give an answer, is whether you agree that the part we observe is expanding. If you agree that it is expanding, you are signing up for the properties that Hawking lays out in his thesis (and not for any narrative of the past).

No. It is not 'expanding', because there is no boundary.

Actually (damn, I hate sounding like Swan) Hawking clearly specifies boundaries for the purposes of creating an unambiguous model.

Assigning a boundary to something that has no boundary is itself a fallacy and an attempted proof by contrivance.

You might very well disagree, but Hawking gives you all the ammunition you might want in the way of context and assumptions for you to rip into the model if you so choose. I'll explain it here for you.

Imagine time going in reverse and you are observing that everything observable is contracting towards a single point. You rewind the clock all the way to the point of the singularity, then you allow time to resume going forward and the light that escapes from the singularity forms an expanding outer sphere that wholly contains the expanding sphere of the matter within. The outer light sphere forms the limit to what we can observe (we can't see anything beyond that) and the outer sphere contains all the information about the singularity and the moments thereafter. Many people who are desperate for attention and who wish to appear "thuper thmart" talk about the mysterious cosmic background radiation as unlocking all the secrets to the mysteries of the universe and, you'll get a kick out of this, confirming the Big Bang ... but only certain thientithts are qualified and blessed by the right universities to "interpret" the wonderful information being provided by the holy cosmic background radiation.

Again, an attempted proof by contrivance. You are actually trying to argue for the so-called 'multiverse'.

Look at this post by Cypress. We can all use a laugh.

Heh. I've already laughed at it.

The bad news for humanity is that all the information about what happened at the singularity (and possibly before) was off to the races at the speed of light long ago and as hard as we might ride to catch that herd we ain't a gonna be catching it.

The multiverse. It figures both Cypress and keepit would share a liking for that fantasy.

Oddly enough, YOU are currently arguing for the 'multiverse' as well!

There are many.

None. There is no unit called 'universe'.

The meter works well enough. The light year works as well. My favorite is the cubit; we should bring that back. If it was good enough for the window on the ark, it's good enough for me.

These are units of length, not units of universe.

You are making a strong case for getting rid of the unfortunate "uni" prefix.

So you are arguing for the so-called 'multiverse'??

You start by recognizing the boundaries that are there (see above).

I cannot recognize what is not there. I do not accept a proof by contrivance either.

If you don't wish to recognize those boundaries then you should probably discard the model. The speed of light, however, makes for quite a good boundary.

I must discard that model as contrivance. The speed of light is not a size. Unit error.

I really haven't discussed any of Hawking's science, i.e. the properties of an expanding universe. You are correct that all I have discussed thus far is the context of the expanding universe model into which Hawking's properties fit.

Not science. Adding artificial concepts like a boundary does not make Hawking's views a theory of science.

 

[Into the Night]

The Indian philosopher Rabindranath Tagore basically said it, but better than me:

"According to Indian Philosophy there is Brahman, the absolute Truth, which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the individual mind or described by words but can only be realized by completely merging the individual in its infinity. But such a Truth cannot belong to Science. The nature of Truth which we are discussing is an appearance – that is to say, what appears to be true to the human mind and therefore is human, and may be called maya or illusion."

This particular argument was later reversed, by phenomenology, a branch of philosophy.

Observations must be interpreted. Our sensors (or any instrument that augments them) produces a stimuli, but that stimuli must be interpreted by us to give them meaning of any kind. That interpretation must necessarily be made according to our own version of how we figure the universe works. Thus, every observation is colored by our own previous experiences. That interpretation is as unique to each of us as a fingerprint. To each of us, therefore, that is our own 'reality'.

The part that is wrong with this philosophy you have provided is that science itself, as well as mathematics, logic, and even philosophy itself, are creations of the mind. Even the concept of infinity is created in the mind.

None are 'absolute truth'. None is 'absolute reality'.

Can reality change? Certainly. What was once a real god carrying the Sun across the sky becomes a real effect of a spinning Earth in space as one simple example.

 

[Saint Guinefort]

Huxley did not invent the term.

Ummm, yeah he did. 1869.

Go ahead and Google it if you don't believe me.

 

[Into the Night]

I grew tired of back-chaining to find out what you and Into the Night were each saying specifically, but it appears on first glance that you are each arguing different sides of the same coin.

Agnosticism is a position on the knowability of the supernatural (that which is outside nature), specifically that it cannot be known and, of course, applies to the Christian God among other deities, spirits and supernatural entities. I don't want to speak for Into the Night but if I read correctly, he seems to be saying the same thing, i.e. agnosticism holds that where supernatural entities are presumed, you can't know anything about them.

What am I getting wrong? Anybody?

You have summarized my position nicely. You have also shown what agnosticism is very nicely.

This whole argument, of course came out of the confusion between an atheist, such as you, and a member of the Church of No God, a fundamentalist style religion. Atheism is not a religion at all. It isn't 'militant'. It simply doesn't address whether there is a god or gods at all. It doesn't care.

 

[Into the Night]

I think the good scientist is humbled by how much we don't know. The ordinary matter and energy we can detect only comprise five percent of the universe. We really don't know what the other 95 percent is.

The fine tuning of the universe and it's physical constants is either a remarkable coincidence, or it points to a teleological explanation. And I just accept being agnostic about it.

Math error. Failure to declare boundary. Argument from randU fallacy. You are just making up numbers again.
Buzzword fallacy. What is 'fine tuning of the universe'??

 

[Into the Night]

I'm not so sure.

In an infinite universe
over the course of eternity.
every physical possibility will eventually manifest itself.

Some of them will appear to be amazingly fine tuned
when they are actually totally random.

Remember, 1-2-3-4-5-6

has just as good of a chance to win the national lottery

as any other six digit combination

and if we have the lottery long enough

it definitely WILL eventually win.

What is this 'fine tuning'?

 

[Into the Night]

Widely discussed in scientific journalism, books, and articles.

Mathmatically, the chances are infinitesimally small that the values of the universal physical constants would line up presicely to allow for matter, energy, chemistry in the way they exist.

This is either a coincidence, or it suggests some higher organizing principle underlying the cosmos we don't percieve.

We can perceive it. Those constants are created by us to convert a relation to our units of measurement. Man created those constants.

 

[Into the Night]

Agumentum ad populum.



That is true for ANY given random arrangement of said physical constants and laws. Sounds like you are bordering on the anthropic principle.



Not necessarily an explanation of why so much as a guess based on the "mystery". I disagree with the "mysteriousness" of it all.

The constants of nature are not random. They are not mysterious either.

 

[Into the Night]

You are right. Dark energy and dark matter are just placeholder names for phenomena we don't understand, but we may have a viable theory for in 50 years.

You are not 'we'.
Buzzword fallacies.

 

[Into the Night]

Anyone is free to believe that the fine tuning of the physical constants, the critical density, the mathmatical scaffolding of the cosmos are just a random coincidence.

When I see patterns or coincidences, I generally think it means something, even if I don't know what it is.

What is 'fine tuning of physical constants'? Constants are not random. There is no 'coincidence'.

 

[Into the Night]

My sense is the universe isn't infinite, but that depends on the four dimensional geometry of spacetime.

Even in an infinite universe, the conservative scientific assumption is that the universal physical constants are the same everywhere, and that leaves the exacte same question: why are they finely tuned to allow for matter, energy, biology.

They aren't.
Constants in physics are created by Man.

 

[Into the Night]

Yes, we don't know why there was just slightly more matter created than antimatter after the big bang. Particle physics research seems to indicate they are created in exactly equal amounts.

I don't see why there couldn't be a universe of pure energy or plasma if you screwed around with the Higgs field and the universal physical constants. The fact that matter, biology, chemistry exist was seemingly a consequence of a precise mathmatical convergence of physical constants. Maybe it is a random coincidence.

What Big Bang?
You are are just assuming it happened?