We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know • Hacker News Board

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#281

Post by tux1968 » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

synu wrote: post #257

DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well to quote user mensetmanusman: "Per thermodynamic axioms, incompleteness is implied by the arrow of time and information atrophy. This would imply an unknowable beginning." I think 'never' should be understood in this way—either there's something wrong or fundamentally incomplete about our theories, or we can not know certain things. Barring groundbreaking advancements in understanding akin to quantum physics and…

Ok, yeah maybe I could see that. But it’s kind of a confusing message - don’t read or take this research on this topic seriously, except in case some research on this topic comes that you should read and take seriously.

A more charitable reading would be "appreciate that all such theories are necessarily humble and limited; unless the entire context of science and human understanding becomes fundamentally and dramatically transformed"

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#282

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

yibg wrote: post #265

IAmGraydon wrote: post #178

“We will never know” is such a contradictory statement. On the surface, it implies the limits of our knowledge while simultaneously indicating that the author possesses the omnipotence required to know what humans will learn throughout the entirety of our future. Add it to your list of things to never write.

I don’t know if the statement is correct in this case but in general saying “we will never know” about a subject which we have incomplete knowledge isn’t a contradiction. I can say, we will never know what the first human that got to North America had for lunch on their 20th birthday, and I think that’s as true as it could reasonably be. Sure maybe we’ll invent a time machine or some other technology in the future th…

[deleted]

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#283

Post by akomtu » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

jondeval wrote: post #222

My strong opinions, weakly held: * God is not a good hypothesis for any secondary cause. The creation of space-time as we currently understand it must have had a secondary cause. Let's patiently keep looking for a scientific hypothesis (theoretical or empirical) that is an incremental improvement on what we already know. * Religious people who conceive of God as the creator, believing that the word 'creator' refers t…

On this note, did you know that the official age of the universe is 432 × 10^15 seconds and the diameter of the universe 7 × 432 × 10^15 light-seconds? An amazing coincidence.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#284

Post by ben_w » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

jondeval wrote: post #229

ben_w wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more productive approach is to recognize and acknowledge the necessary existence of a base reality. Then you simply assign the English word 'God' as a reference pointer to this base reality. You can, but I'm not sure how "then" onwards is going to help — the people I've seen conflating these things before will still conflate them after doing this.

I don't follow you. Can you elaborate?

Alice: "So, we're all agreed, the word 'god' just means 'base reality'?"

Bob: "Yup."

Christine: "Sure. And because this base reality exists, that proves I was right all along about Jesus: he did die for our sins."

Dhvan: "You mean it proves me right about Brahma."

Eris: "…the horned god."

Freya: "…Ragnarök."

and so on.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#285

Post by craftsman » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:21 PM UTC

tresqotheq wrote: post #251

hota_mazi wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but why should we care what the bible says, especially when what it says contradicts science?

> it says contradicts science? contradicting science is no great flaw. "Science" contradicts itself from time to time.

It would be more accurate to say that science corrects itself. At any given time there are ideas which appear to have been verified as much as possible, others which are near speculation, and others which are quite uncertain with evidence for and against.

What I think the parent means by contradicting science is rather different: the Bible says things which go against ideas which we believe have been verified by evidence, but the Bible won’t be changed to reflect that understanding. On the other hand, science will change its idea of what it thinks to be true as more evidence becomes available. Nobody changes things in the Bible.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#286

Post by pronlover723 » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

jjcon wrote: post #255

jondeval wrote: post #222

My strong opinions, weakly held: * God is not a good hypothesis for any secondary cause. The creation of space-time as we currently understand it must have had a secondary cause. Let's patiently keep looking for a scientific hypothesis (theoretical or empirical) that is an incremental improvement on what we already know. * Religious people who conceive of God as the creator, believing that the word 'creator' refers t…

> Religious people who conceive of God as the creator, believing that the word 'creator' refers to the creation of the universe at some point in the past, are completely misunderstanding the use of the word and need to do some more homework. Can you explain what you mean here - I couldn’t follow

I took it to mean "god is somewhere, you need to explain how that somewhere and god themselves came into being"

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#287

Post by moomin » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:24 PM UTC

I don’t think people are understanding the subtlety of what she’s saying here. She’s saying that since there are no predictions to be made, there’s nothing falsifiable in any of the many theories. Worse, if the theories _do_ make falsifiable predictions that still will only reduce the imaginative space, not reduce it down to one theory, and that instead we choose between theories on the basis of how many “constants” they require.

This argument isn’t invalidated by possible future discoveries. It’ll still be possible to generate competing elegant mathematical models that only differ in ways that are unobserved.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#288

Post by eis » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

al_mandi wrote: post #213

eis wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you survey all religions to make such claim? That is the definition of religion. They are believes that relate to supernatural beings and sprituality. They cannot be proven or disproven. > And it's not like you don't need axiomatic bases that need to be accepted as is to base science on. Correct, there are axioms - assumptions - which the rest of the logical system is based upon. Same as for example in Mathemat…

> They are believes that relate to supernatural beings and sprituality. They cannot be proven or disproven. That's not 100% true. There can (and is) proof and evidence for validating religious claims. You're conflating belief in the unseen (with evidence) with blind faith without evidence, those are two different things. > I am not a religious person but I do have morals. He mentions that non-religious people can hav…

  > That's not 100% true. There can (and is) proof and evidence for validating religious claims. You're conflating belief in the unseen (with evidence) with blind faith without evidence, those are two different things.

Any religion who claims there is a God does not have proof of such. If there was real experimentally testable and unambigous proof than scientists would need to accept that.

What does belief in the unseen with evidence mean?

  > He mentions that non-religious people can have morals later in the lecture.

So he is contradicting himself then. I'm now at minute 30 but there are so many logical fallacies it's really hard to watch.

The example with the kid asking why the mother is boiling water and apparently science not being able to explain the "why" ("because I love you") or the reason of why the universe exists: he then turns around and just claims religion can give you the correct answer which clearly it can't because there are different religions that would give you possibly different answers and they can't all be right at the same time.

He claims science cannot "prove" emotions or other workings of our brain. Well I think we're getting closer and closer to understand how the brain works. We already know that emotions are in part controlled by substances like hormones. We don't know 100% of it but we're working on it.

He further goes on to claim that science cannot provide morality. He again gives no evidence of this. Why can't we derive morals from logical scientific arguments?

Another claim is that science could not explain why someone would go and help a drowning kid. Once more no evidence. How about us being evolutionary programmed to keep our offspring alive to increase chance of the survival of our species? Just earlier to that he claimed animals have no morals. But that is the exact same behaviour that animals are showing...

I can't also follow the argument about science needing to find all possible combinations of DNA mutations that show the transition from apes to humans. Why does it need to show every minute step? How does that show religion is correct instead?

The constant flood of strawmans is impressive at least. I'm at minute 30 and not sure if I will comment more on it, it is very tedious because there is just such an enormous amount of illogical argumentation.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#289

Post by wizofaus » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

tresqotheq wrote: post #270

craftsman wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between the two claims is whether they are verifiable.

Tell me, how many scientific "claims" that you rely on a day to day basis, have you verified personally? Or How many such claims can be verified with a single average person's limited resource?

Why do you think that matters? You might as well ask "what makes you trust your own perception when you verify scientific claims"? As it happens, literally every time you switch on a light you are, in fact, verifying multiple scientific theories. Not to mention interacting with your phone or computer to type your HN comments.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#290

Post by eis » Sat, Aug 27, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

wizofaus wrote: post #271

eis wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ratio of babble to sound reasoning is much better in science than in religion. That being said, there is also a lot of science babble and we should call it out and try to keep it at a as low amount as possible. The core tenets of science are pretty sound. Religions are based on a lot of completely made up stuff. They are not 100% bad of course. But we seriously can do much much better than that. I think t…

> I think the ratio of babble to sound reasoning is much higher in science You mean lower surely?

Correct, I have edited the comment. Thank you.