The Problem With Time

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Let's take Paul's very common interpretation of his experience, and his absolute assurance that we live in a world full of people, places, and things, which exist in time, having a start date and an end date.

Perfectly reasonable. Except it's absolutely absurd.

Once we believe in people, places, and things existing in time, we also must believe in a causality which they must be subject to, and which defines their relationships. A red ball exists because the plastic was assembled in a Chinese factory. You and I exist because our parents decided to fuck. The entirety of so-called "life" on this planet is due to amino acids dicking around in primordial whatever and evolving and mutating this way and that. Everything is caused, and things happen one after the other.

If you believe in people, places and things, and do NOT believe in this causality, then you think these things can just poof, spontaneously pop out of nothingness into existence and then back again. Which, at that point, why not find a nice religion to believe in instead. I'm not a scientist, maybe there are quantum particles like this that just poof in and out, but even they rely on the space in which they poof in and out being there. No space, no poof. One thing happens after another.

The problem here is, then you have to go back to the Big Bang, or even past it -- who knows, there could have been trillions of universes Big Banging and then collapsing before this. So trace the causality back to the very first Big Bang, and then you are left with only two possibilities:

1. There was nothing, and then there was something. Not even "nothing" in the sense of "a big open empty space". Nothing in the sense of, not even the space in which there was nothing. A total and complete voidless void. And then, poof, BANG, and an unfathomably huge universe (or a trillion, if you'd prefer) came into existence. Totally uncaused, for there was nothing to cause it.

2. There was always something. Something that, no matter how far back in time you go, it was there. Uncaused again. Eternality.

The mind cannot grasp either of these. Go ahead, try it. The mind is the domain of people, places, and things existing in time, and neither of these choices fits with this conceptualization. It breaks the mind. You may feel like fainting. Please, don't try it standing up.

This is logic even a child could understand. If you believe in an objective, external world (people, places, things), and a subjective, internal world (self), all of which are subject to the laws of time, cause, and effect, then that's all well and good, but it also means that none of this could actually exist.

And yet, here we are.

So, once you realize that your conceptualization of your experience is simply an interpretation (an interpretation for which there is exactly zero evidence, by the way) of your experience, and that it could never actually be the case, perhaps there is room for something else to shine through.

I think this'll probably go pretty well. Paul?

[AArdvark]

Man, they's some good opioids going on there. This sounds like cosmology and some Eastern belief system mashing together.


THE
QUARKS, CAN YOU DIG IT
AARDVARK

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Well, I dunno what any of that means. I ain't even drinking. Just callin' it like I sees it.

[RealNC]

Sounds plausible. Except the part where the universe came from nothing. That sounds kinda weird.

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Did anyone read it? When did I say that? I said EITHER of those two descriptions of how an objective universe came to be are equally ridiculous.

A universe coming from nothing is ridiculous, and a universe having always been there, uncaused and without a beginning is equally ridiculous. So obviously the premise is wrong.

And yet, here's Paul to tell you why the premise is correct:

(that's your cue dude)

[Tdarcos]

The Website TVTropes examines the storytelling devices used by books, movies, TV Shows, and other forms of media. One of the thousands of tropes examined there is Take a Third Option where a character nominally has two choices, decides to take a third option.

So, in looking at your two choices on the origin of the universe, I'm going to do exactly that, reject both and Take a Third Option. When I heard - a long time ago - both of the common hypotheses of the origin of this universe (which you discuss below), it just came to me, as I realized one that I hadn't heard anyone else postulate, so you're going to hear my idea.

World Premere: Paul Robinson's theory of the start of the Universe

Let's take Paul's very common interpretation of his experience, and his absolute assurance that we live in a world full of people, places, and things, which exist in time, having a start date and an end date.

Perfectly reasonable. Except it's absolutely absurd.

I'll partially agree but for a different reason. "Dates" are man-made constructs used to identify points on the line representing the fourth dimension. There are no "dates" in the universe. There is only duration, and interval. Duration is how long an event transpires; interval is the duration between events. If there were no things capable of recognizing time there would be nothing but interval.(Remember this, I'll come back to it later.)

Once we believe in people, ... Everything is caused, and things happen one after the other.

I'll accept your premise here, it seems reasonable.

If you believe in people, places and things, and do NOT believe in this causality, then you think these things can just poof, spontaneously pop out of nothingness into existence and then back again.

This is exactly why Fundamentalist Christians reject the theory of Evolution. When it takes millions or billions of years for species to evolve the argument that God created the earth around 4004 BCE, and that there was a huge worldwide flood that Noah & Family escaped a couple thousand years later kind of falls apart.

Which, at that point, why not find a nice religion to believe in instead. I'm not a scientist, maybe there are quantum particles like this that just poof in and out, but even they rely on the space in which they poof in and out being there. No space, no poof. One thing happens after another.

Yeah, space-time is kind of a bitch about that, two things can't occupy the same space at the same time, except maybe matter and anti-matter and if you're anywhere near them if they're present in anything larger than microscopic quantities, soon you won't be, along with the building, the neighborhood, and (depending on the amount of matter - anti-matter in contact with each other), a substantial portion of the state.

The problem here is, then you have to go back to the Big Bang, or even past it -- who knows, there could have been trillions of universes Big Banging and then collapsing before this. So trace the causality back to the very first Big Bang, and then you are left with only two possibilities:

Modern science suggests arguing what was "before" the Big Bang is a non-sequitur, because the concept of space-time did not exist before the universe came into being. There was no time here "before" because there was no anywhere for there to be anything and thus time did npt exist

1. There was nothing, and then there was something. Not even "nothing" in the sense of "a big open empty space". Nothing in the sense of, not even the space in which there was nothing. A total and complete voidless void. And then, poof, BANG, and an unfathomably huge universe (or a trillion, if you'd prefer) came into existence. Totally uncaused, for there was nothing to cause it.

I think Lawrence Krauss likes this one, but it wasn't really "nothing" just consider the entire universe packed - and I mean packed into an unimaginably small doit perhaps so small it would make the space of one atom of hydrogen look like the distance from the sun to Pluto. (My analogy, it's actually much bigger.)

2. There was always something. Something that, no matter how far back in time you go, it was there. Uncaused again. Eternality.

The mind cannot grasp either of these. Go ahead, try it.

I can. Close your eyes and contemplate the brown all around you in a lit room or the black in a dark one. And were it waiting, then it waited an eternity, because if there is no space, there is no time, ans in which case, for the sake of argument, the interval that transposed until the universe became instantiated, whether it was a fraction of a second or 1 followed by googleplex eons, is the same interval, since nothing was there to measure it.

This is logic even a child could understand. If you believe in an objective, external world (people, places, things), and a subjective, internal world (self), all of which are subject to the laws of time, cause, and effect, then that's all well and good, but it also means that none of this could actually exist.

And yet, here we are.

This hypothesis, you have failed to justify your explanation for it. That we are here nullifies any argument to the contrary. As the saying goes, "just because science claims that bees should not be able to fly does not override the fact that they do."

So, once you realize that your conceptualization of your experience is simply an interpretation (an interpretation for which there is exactly zero evidence, by the way) of your experience, and that it could never actually be the case, perhaps there is room for something else to shine through.

I think this'll probably go pretty well. Paul?

When Dr. Franklin wanted to test his hypothesis that lightning was the same as electricity, flying a kite to find out was a reasonable way to do so, since lightning strikes happen fairly frequently and they are repeatable conditions (whether this method is reasonably safe is a different matter).

The problem with postulating the origin of the universe is that we lack data because the sample size we have to work with is exactly one. That does not bode well for science as any proposal is untestable and unfalsifiable because we lack additional samples of universes to try it against.

If you have not read my explanation about why I am of the opinion that there are 10 dimensions, right click on the link ahead and open in a new window to read my blog post from 2007, "I'll Take Dimensions For 10, Alex." The article might also imply that I also agree with the "multiverse" theory, that this is not the only universe and there could be more, perhaps as many as there are stars in our sky.

So, my underlying premises are that I claim there are 10 dimensions in a multiverse. And I will now offer my hypothesis on the origin of the universe.

3. Some universe has time - the fourth dimension - running backward to time in this universe. Their past is our future, our future is their past. The black holes in this and/or some other universe(s) leak matter and/or energy into that universe. But it has not yet reached "critical mass" and when it does, it will explode with its own "Big Bang" into its future, which is our past. Then its black holes (perhaps along with other forward moving time and/or backward moving time) at some time before this universe exploded, either energized our universe so it could have its Big Bang or it did so to a different universe that through the process I stated above started ours.

Now you've heard my hypothesis, and I'm sticking to it.

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You're still saying "there was nothing, then there was something." Even if, before the big bang and space/time was created, everything was packed into a tiny little speck, unless that speck - POOF! - just came into existence uncaused, something must have been there even before that, to bring it about.

And then the thing before that, and then the thing before that... (Or, if it's the universe where things run into the past, there must have been something after that, then something after that.)

This all sounds like a convoluted attempt to fit the universe into your preconceived model, which I think we're all pretty confident now is impossible, given how ridiculous and illogical all of these explanations are.

[RealNC]

Someone please call Neil deGrasse Tyson. He can explain the creation of the universe as the result of ripples in the quantum bogofield better than I ever could.

I'll do it anyway. Remember that this is SCIENCE:

Universes are swimming in the hyperdimensional fabric of something. The something is there due to the "why is there something rather than nothing" question and thus has no beginning.

The quantum bogofield is disturbed due to quantum fluctuations, thus causing waves. These waves give rise to matter and space. Matter and anti-matter are the crests and troughs of the ripples in the bogofield, thus there is always an equal amount of them. That means you can create universes from nothing, since everything cancels out (for every crest there is a trough) and thus the total net energy of a universe is exactly zero.

At least that's what the documentary I watched half a year ago said. I might have forgotten some tiny details, but I don't think they were important.

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So which is the part that has always been here? The hyperdimensional fabric?

[RealNC]

So which is the part that has always been here? The hyperdimensional fabric?

Nah, the something. The hyperdimensional fabric is just the result of somethingness.

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So there IS something eternal, that has always been. Are the things that appear within it separate from it?

[RealNC]

There is something, but it can't even be described as eternal. There is something simply because there can not be nothing. Nothing is something that can not exist. So there can only be something and never something that's nothing.

I need another Mars bar.

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Poof!

[RealNC]

Who are you to question a BBC documentary and my ability to recall what the fuck it was talking about.

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Well, I think we did a fine job nailing down the true, ultimate nature of the universe.

Good job, everyone!

[Tdarcos]

You're still saying "there was nothing, then there was something."

No I'm not. I'm saying he universe was loaded from somewhere else. This is no more "there was nothing, then there was something" than an empty grain elevator becoming full because automatic trains delivered multiple loads of grain to the bottom of the conveyor.

Even if, before the big bang and space/time was created,

In that specific universe. It already existed in some others.

everything was packed into a tiny little speck, unless that speck - POOF! - just came into existence uncaused, something must have been there even before that, to bring it about.

I already explained the cause, and you didn't read. When the amount of energy pours from external universes via their black holes into the new, unformed universe. causing it to exceed critical mass, the universe "bursts" like a popcorn kernel, turns inside out (maybe) and starts expanding.

This all sounds like a convoluted attempt to fit the universe into your preconceived model, which I think we're all pretty confident now is impossible, given how ridiculous and illogical all of these explanations are.

Oh no, you don't get to play that game. Argument from Incredulity won't work here. If you think the points are illogical, please provide the specific logical fallacies. Just making a claim of illogic proves nothing.

This particular argument eliminates the need for a specific actor and allows the universes to do "self-service" instantiation.

Otherwise you end up in either an infinite regression of "this created the universe, but what created that, "and so on, and so on, and so on,..." or you have to beg Special Pleading, this created the universe but it was never created.

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No I'm not. I'm saying he universe was loaded from somewhere else.

And what was the "somewhere else" loaded from? Cassette?

I already explained the cause, and you didn't read. When the amount of energy pours from external universes

What formed the OTHER universes? Was there a point before all of those universes where there was nothing? Or were there always all these other universes?

Where is the start point, SIR?

Otherwise you end up in either an infinite regression of "this created the universe, but what created that, "and so on, and so on, and so on,..."

Exactly right. So, what's the answer? Either it's that, or it's poof, something came out of nothing, according to your religious model of there being an objective universe that you have no evidence of.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Someone please call Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Honestly, if he registered, I'd probably delete his account thinking it was just another spam one.

[Tdarcos]

No I'm not. I'm saying he universe was loaded from somewhere else.

And what was the "somewhere else" loaded from? Cassette?

From the Black Holes in one or more different fucking universe, which you would have understood if you actually read what I wrote.

What formed the OTHER universes? Was there a point before all of those universes where there was nothing? Or were there always all these other universes?

Where is the start point, SIR?

Again, I told you. The other universes run backward to ours; we triggered them and they triggered ours . It's no worse than the existing universe, which you also have to go back to its instantiation and ask for its cause. As for the cause of that, all we ever hear in either infinite regression of the universe was caused by A, which was caused by B, which was caused by... or, you have to argue Special Pleading and say the universe was started/created by A but A was not created.

And since Jonsey has brought the hammer down and wants a ten-line limit restored I'll answer the next piece of your series of errors tomorrow.

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And since Jonsey has brought the hammer down and wants a ten-line limit restored I'll answer the next piece of your series of errors tomorrow.

Oh, that's okay. I think we've heard enough of your religious rambling for now.