Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning • Hacker News Board

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#271

Post by nf05papsjfVbc » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 12:40 PM UTC

philipov wrote: post #262

nf05papsjfVbc wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By definition axioms can't be proven but they are assumptions which we take for granted upon which we build science. However, in science, the axioms are such that they can be observed and discarded if we ever find them to be false. This is where it differs from religion.

I think that using logical fallacies to prove your own assumptions likewise discards observation in favor of a totalitarian explanation of everything, which amounts to a religious belief. A key aspect of science is accepting that our understanding is limited and contingent, whereas religion tends to use faith to prove itself.

Agreed.

EDIT: _Mostly agreed_. Religion never proves itself. It just demands that you have faith.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#272

Post by ionised » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 12:53 PM UTC

jdironman wrote: post #89

sarego wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious to know why that is. Would you mind expanding?

Because if we have not beginning, we have no purpose. If we have no purpose, this is all really for nothing. I am not arguing whether it is or not, or whether there is a beginning, but lets look at it this way... You woke up this morning, that was the beginning of this day at night you will rest. Now, lets say there is no memory or record of 'waking up' beginning, we therefor cannot anticipate an end and everything w…

I'm not seeing any purpose to humanity as it is.

What purpose are you seeing?

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#273

Post by ionised » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 12:54 PM UTC

jdironman wrote: post #194

antidesitter wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countered the downvote because I’m interested in this line of reasoning. Could you expand on that? Why do you think having no memory of “waking up” to existence makes it less meaningful? I'm reminded of the following quote by Alan Watts from The Way of Zen : To the Taoist mentality, the aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams; w…

I like that idea. I think the world is a beautiful place, and I think also that humans can be a beautiful species at the times they come together. What is that one quote? "All that wander are not lost." I believe we can find peace with our existence and mortality and its something we have to remind ourselves of that individually it is not forever, and how it will end in general is not yet perceived.

All of the worst things in human history have happened as a result of mob mentality or 'humans coming together'.

On the contrary, the only times humanity doesn't sap me of the will to live is when I'm dealing with people on an individual basis.

> All that wander are not lost.

I feel like you're misunderstanding that quote as well.

It's supposed to be "Not all who wander are lost" and it refers to loners, wanderers, vagrants and explorers that never settle down and 'plant roots'.

The idea being that there are plenty of people that exist like that and enjoy that way of life. Other people with families and steady jobs tend to look at them as if they are 'lost', without truly understanding what it is to walk the earth.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#274

Post by mantap » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

sgentle wrote: post #247

Possibly one of the most intriguing ideas I've ever heard is that there is no difference between "true" in the sense of "1+1=2" and "true" in the sense of "polar bears exist". The universe isn't described by the mathematics we have constructed to explain it, it is that mathematics. In that sense, the question of what happened before our universe is similar to the question of what happened before 1+1=2... sort of a st…

One of the dirty secrets of mathematics is that not all axiomatic systems are equally successful. There is a kind of survivorship bias whereby axiomatic systems that are "interesting" are studied whereas axiomatic systems that are "boring" fall into obscurity.

For example, number theory has an incredibly rich structure that stems from the very simple axioms of peano arithmetic. Linear algebra is another field that has been amazingly fruitful, not just in physics but also in pure mathematics too.

Those axiomatic systems survived infant mortality and grew to become adults, but they are the rare exceptions.

What "the universe is math" really means is that the universe has structure. The universe is not complete randomness, nor is it complete emptiness. The universe has enough structure that we can use increasingly sophisticated mathematics to describe it.

But don't think that the universe embodies all of mathematics. There are vast wastelands of mathematics that people thought up that didn't end up being interesting, even if internally consistent.

What is really happening is the intersection of survivorship bias in pure mathematics with the anthropic principle in physics. We can observe the structure of the universe only because it has structure, and there are certain theories of mathematics that survived because they are not "boring".

Is it a surprise that the "not boring" kinds of mathematics are often the kind required to describe the structure of the universe?

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#275

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

galaxyLogic wrote: post #125

jawns wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an interesting philosophical line of thought that distinguishes between things that are necessary and things that are contingent. A necessary thing must exist; it can't not exist. A contingent thing may exist, or it may not. In the classical definition of God, he has no beginning or end. He was not created by some other force. He exists necessarily. He just _is_. In fact, many theists describe God using terms…

Why is God a necessary thing?

Having traversed from being raised vaguely christian, through atheism, back to a form of what I suppose could be called pantheism, I see the truth of the statement but find it difficult to explain without also explaining a mountain of pre-requisites, if only to negotiate terminology for concepts you may already be aware of, so that the actual answer can be conveyed. Never the less, I will make an attempt at simplified statement of it:

God must necessarily exist because you, the thing that sits behind your eyes and experiences the world, exist.

If you feel that this is a naive statement, as you likely do, then it is because we lack sufficient shared context attached to the words. However, I am confident that if you spend enough time thinking about the nature of the world, and of yourself, you will come to the same conclusion, though you may use different words to describe it.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#276

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

dmbaggett wrote: post #108

d0m wrote: post #98

Say we could break any physical rules of our current universe, is there a good theory that would explain how something might have been created out of nothing? i.e. imagine for a second that we're in a simulation and that the current laws of physic are just arbitrary created by a "host". This "host" could have very different physical laws. Could we think of any theory that would explain the creation of something out o…

You might be interested in Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark. He tries to argue that, fundamentally, the universe is "just math." In other words (glossing over enormous complexity here) if the basic axioms of math are true, the universe must exist. I have to admit I didn't fully buy the line of reasoning. But it's very interesting.

I haven't read it, but that certainly sounds a lot like saying that the map is, in fact, the territory.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#277

Post by andrepd » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #256

sgentle wrote: post #247

Possibly one of the most intriguing ideas I've ever heard is that there is no difference between "true" in the sense of "1+1=2" and "true" in the sense of "polar bears exist". The universe isn't described by the mathematics we have constructed to explain it, it is that mathematics. In that sense, the question of what happened before our universe is similar to the question of what happened before 1+1=2... sort of a st…

Note that this idea -- that the basis of the universe is math itself -- is attributed to the presocratic philosopher Pythagoras. In the ensuing Platonic worldview, it was understood that the world began with total Oneness. In modern terms, that's treating the entropy of the universe as equal to 1; there is only one state for the entire universe to be in. Then, this increases to twoness, between the something and the…

>In modern terms, that's treating the entropy of the universe as equal to 1; there is only one state for the entire universe to be in. Then, this increases to twoness, between the something and the nothing. As the something and the nothing interact, that interaction is the threeness; and from the three, the multitude. They then believed that this resulted in the formations of geometry which led to the elements, which they expected to consist of the simplest 3 dimensional shapes.

>They were pretty much spot on.

Is it me or is that paragraph completely devoid of meaning? Is it actually saying anything? This reads like medieval scholastic philosophy: so far up its own bottom it no longer makes any sense.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#278

Post by andrepd » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

JudgeWapner wrote: post #221

golover721 wrote: post #184

For me the hardest idea to grasp is the concept of “nothing”. It seems to me that is something the human brain cannot possibly comprehend. There is always something as far as our senses are concerned. I guess that’s why the idea of nothingness after we die so such a hard notion to comprehend.

I can momentarily stun myself if I concentrate long enough on the idea of "what if there was just nothing? No universe, no cosmos, no light, no time, no matter. Just nothing." Think about that for a minute or two.

I have exactly the same thought, to a tee.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#279

Post by Retra » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

dugluak wrote: post #127

djsumdog wrote: post #10

This seems different than the concept of infinite time, where prior to the big band there was something the collapsed into a ball of energy and maybe someday our universe will collapse back again (which has lost merit since we've seen matter in the universe isn't slowing down in spreading apart, but accelerating .. meaning in a few trillion years, atoms may be so far apart that light can't reach anything .. the event…

>> Are we sitting in a ball on some gigantic alien's coffee table? sometimes I have the same question but quite opposite. What if there are miniscule worlds right on our coffee table.

There are. Look into a microscope.

Re: Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning

#280

Post by dr_dshiv » Fri, Jun 07, 2019, 3:43 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #277

dr_dshiv wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that this idea -- that the basis of the universe is math itself -- is attributed to the presocratic philosopher Pythagoras. In the ensuing Platonic worldview, it was understood that the world began with total Oneness. In modern terms, that's treating the entropy of the universe as equal to 1; there is only one state for the entire universe to be in. Then, this increases to twoness, between the something and the…

>In modern terms, that's treating the entropy of the universe as equal to 1; there is only one state for the entire universe to be in. Then, this increases to twoness, between the something and the nothing. As the something and the nothing interact, that interaction is the threeness; and from the three, the multitude. They then believed that this resulted in the formations of geometry which led to the elements, which…

I'm curious what you find meaningless about a plausible mathematical origin story for the universe. You don't sense meaning in the idea of "Oneness" or "Twoness", I'm guessing? Oneness is clear, I hope and twoness can be understood as a contrast or gradient (which we know to be necessary for energy flows). I'd be happy to unpack further.

And by saying something, you mean predicting something? One clear prediction (from the Pythagorean Democritus) is that the geometries of atoms would determine their physical properties. Is that meaningful?

I don't know if your comment intends to dismiss all premodern scholarship, but I would guess that there is more depth and meaning than you may have personally encountered.

I'd be happy to share some references or further ideas.