Live data from Hacker News

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

backreaction.blogspot.com

551–560 of 610 posts

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

#551
post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the only logical conclusion to arrive at from an atheistic world view, at least he's being honest with himself. More atheists should be honest with themselves as well and we'll see how things end up. People may speak fantasies, but act - they mostly act as they honestly think. “Things” will end up just as they are now. You are dehumanizing atheists and, as I suspect, anyone who doesn’t follow your “ethical” g…

> You are dehumanizing atheists and, as I suspect, anyone who doesn’t follow your “ethical” god. I'm not. We see the evidence of the direction of where the world is heading right before our eyes. The wise people already see it coming. > thinking that all ethical people who do not agree with you are just not honest with themselves is delusional. I said that the conclusion that those atheists had reached is the ultimat…

These generalizations that you make about atheists basing on how messed up the world is are false. Any complex system will have issues, and you cannot compare it to an imaginary one. People may cry about many things but fact is they still do not express any interest in living in existing religious states. So maybe what you're seeing as a cultural myopia is an otherwise excellent tradeoff. It's easy to criticize any system while taking it for granted and not living in systems you're advocating for.

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

#552

I’m a big fan of the blog, but disagree with this entry. Her argument could be applied to the idea of the Big Bang itself: we can never receive light from any further back than the “surface of last scattering”, so the notion of a hotter prior epoch is an extrapolation. The extrapolation is a good one as it uses independently-tested laws of evolution, at least to the point these laws presumably break down, as she poin…

She does apply it to the big bang as well. She says that it's just the simplest explanation we have and that it's probably wrong too.

As I read the post, she takes the fact of a Hot Big Bang (narrowly construed in the modern sense of a homogenous, hot initial state prior to which vanilla GR breaks down, not as a literal singularity) to be a fact knowable by the normal process of science. Whereas the question of what came before that — I.e. what modified description takes over at higher temperatures yet — is placed in a different epistemic category of forever unknowability.

Of course, for any theory that applies within a certain domain, there’s always the question of what happens beyond that domain (“what came before that… and before that… and before that…?”). But this infinite regress isn’t particularly noteworthy. If I understand her correctly, she is claiming to be able to draw a particular line and to say that we can know things on one side of this line but— even in principle — can never know anything past this particular line.

She certainly understands her stuff. But I respectfully disagree with her conclusions — I see no reason to think that we might not make progress on the question through the normal process of science.

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

#553
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're straw manning when you say things like "cares about the sexual life of humans". I highly recommend you watch this to broaden your horizons: https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM

There is a great deal of evidence, philosophically and rationally, for the existence of God. The Big Bang, first theorized by theoretical physicist and Catholic priest Georges Lamaitre, states the universe sprang into existence 13.7b years ago; it was not eternal as previously thought. And we know from observation that everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence. This suggests that the universe was…

And we know from observation that everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence.

We actually never observed everything, cause there is a great shadow far in the past. We just launched yet another space telescope to look a little farther, btw.

This suggests that the universe was caused. ... A powerful, immaterial, timeless force outside of the universet that caused the universe to exist. This points to God.

Or to a multi-dimensional coffee machine which farts universes as a side product every multi-morning and its owner doesn't even know that. It doesn't point to anything and even less so to a conscious creator who decides where "you" go after your brain runs low on oxygen for a while.

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

#554
post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is why you evaluate those claims and see what evidence they bring forth. We have a lot of proof and evidence in Islam. Some are listed on www.provingislam.com Please bring a single proof of god here in your own words. I have already wasted one hour on that video which didn't lead anywhere. > Correlation vs causation. You might want to try apply that to your original claim that the western civilizations are de…

> Please bring a single proof of god here in your own words. I have already wasted one hour on that video which didn't lead anywhere. That video was a good start, the fine tuning argument, the fact that something cannot come out of nothing, etc. The next step is that when someone claims to have been sent by God, we look at the evidence he brings forth. Prophet Muhammad Prayers of God be upon brought with him signs an…

  > That video was a good start, the fine tuning argument, the fact that something cannot come out of nothing, etc.
No it was terrible. In another comment I explained why the fine tuning argument has been refuted because there are plenty other explanations.

  > The next step is that when someone claims to have been sent by God, we look at the evidence he brings forth. Prophet Muhammad Prayers of God be upon brought with him signs and performed miracles. The Quran itself is a living miracle, no one had been able to bring anything like it, and the Arabs at the time tried. Some even admitted but would not believe due to pride, this is quite well documented. Furthermore, the Quran and Hadiths talk about events that happen tens or even thousands of years later. The website I linked mentions over 100 of them. Some like the desolate bedouins competing to build tall towers or the fact that the deserts of Arabia were not only green, but would return to be rivers and meadows have only been discovered very recently.
You are calling writing a book a miracle? Sometimes I am a bit speachless. Horoscopes also "predict" the future. If I make many predictions without specific times into the future and some of them turn out to be true then is that evidence that I can predict the future? No. They were just realistic enough predictions and others have not come to fruition. Next I would claim they just have not happened yet...

  > The behavior of secular people is quite obvious as to what is causing these issues. Many of them get rich, have everything at their disposal and think, this is it? This has happened time and time again. I'd be interested to hear your explanation. The Quran already alluded to this over 1400 years ago, even when atheism was not common (another miracle):
You are confusing secular people with materialistic people. And btw. materialism is not just for secular people, religious people can be like that as well. There have been plenty of skandals in the country I currently live in with monks accumulating vasts amounts of wealth. The catholic church is one of the richest institutions in the world. You are claiming all secular people behave some way but that's just your bad point of view regarding them. Various times have you talked about western countries as if they are somehow suffering from a lot of issues in their societies. How come for example skandinavian countries again and again rank at the top of the quality of life index? Or the happiness index? I have lived in Europe and it really was not bad at all. When I watch news I also could get the impression that life really is terrible. Issue after issue. But when I stop consuming the news and just spend time with people then turns out life's pretty darn good.

  > Bold and false claim. Show me your proof. Islam is not Europe in the dark ages that you are talking about.

  Rhazes (865-925)
  Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī or Rhazes was a medical pioneer from Baghdad who lived between 860 and 932 AD. He was responsible for introducing western teachings, rational thought and the works of Hippocrates and Galen to the Arabic world. One of his books, Continens Liber, was a compendium of everything known about medicine. The book made him famous, but offended a Muslim priest who ordered the doctor to be beaten over the head with his own manuscript, which caused him to go blind, preventing him from future practice.

  > The Islamic world had the Caliphate established until WWI. Not saying that we did not make mistakes (one of the biggest was getting involved in WWI to begin with), but since then, it's been quite clear what's going on.
I live a few hundred meters from a mosque. Non-muslims are afraid to say anything against them because there was a history of violence. Even police does not dare to confront when there is open illegal behavior unless it is really serious. Insurance companies refuse to provide coverage for factories in the muslim controlled areas of the country because of numerous attacks. This is in Asia btw and the US is not meddling here. I'm sure not all Muslim are like that. And I guess the muslim community you are in is peaceful. I have met some absolutely fantastic human beings which were muslims. But there are groups in Islam which are not like that. Islam itself does not guarantee a peaceful society. The same problems exist in other religions and also secular societies.

  > But it's not wrong according to those atheist figures, who are heavily pushing atheism. You cannot force your view on him. Once such practices get adopted and popular, you have no retort.
That some atheist makes some claims does not mean it's a fact or that other people will listen to them. Atheism does not mean science. There's tons of batshit crazy atheists. I pay no attention to them. I am not forcing my view on them. There are also plenty batshit crazy theists. Same thing. Are you really suggesting that rape has a chance of getting adopted as a popular practice? You have a way too grim understanding of humanity.

  > Maybe, maybe not. Rape used to be common back in the day, and people were not as traumatized. Secondly, who cares about society, we're all "chemical scum" anyway. Why does it matter?
Of course most were traumatized. Why weren't they? They were just too scared to speak up. This can still happen today btw.

Not sure where the "chemical scum" comes from? I presented rational argument that can justify morals. Of course we care about society because we are part of society and when optimizing life in society we optimize also our own. That's why we don't eat our children and why we care for the elderly. One day we will be old and hopefully our children will care for us when we can't anymore.

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

#555
post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is not a replacement for religion because science is not a moral code. It can tell you how something can be done, but not what is right or wrong to do. Attempts to develop such moral codes by reasoning from first principles turns out to be incredibly difficult and can easily lead to degenerate conclusions. In another comment you ask what scientism is. We can define it as an attempt to turn science into religi…

> Science is not a replacement for religion because science is not a moral code. It can tell you how something can be done, but not what is right or wrong to do. Attempts to develop such moral codes by reasoning from first principles turns out to be incredibly difficult and can easily lead to degenerate conclusions. I have not seen any proof of that. Neither did I see proof that only religion can give you the correct…

Ah, I didn't argue that religion gives you a correct moral code, or that there is only one possible moral code. Religions are the result of memetic evolution so it's natural that there's some variety. All I argue is that science doesn't give you one at all.

Proving this would take at least a whole book, maybe more, but such books have been written many times in the past when science vs religion was more topical. Most people don't demand such a book because "science can tell you how to do it but not whether you should" is a pretty uncontroversial position that's been taken by scientists themselves many times, it's pretty much the starting point of the debate over whether Nagasaki should have been nuked for example.

Still, consider a sample moral problem: revenge. Christianity (to take a familiar example) has a very evolved take on revenge. It teaches that you shouldn't avenge wrongdoing (eye for an eye), instead you should "turn the other cheek". If everyone did this it has obvious advantages for stopping conflicts escalating into long term violence, but it denies people a sense of justice. So Christianity also has a whole lot of evolved stories about how that's OK because sinners will be judged in heaven by God and maybe sent to Hell if they've been bad, so you can turn the other cheek yet rest assured that justice will be done ... in the afterlife. Obviously all this is totally unfalsifiable, it doesn't attempt to be rational in any way but it's a really useful set of beliefs and stories for creating a more peaceful society.

If you take only science as a starting point, how do you derive this sort of moral code and - just as importantly - make it stick? How would you teach it to children? In fact you'd struggle even with the far more basic task of deriving a moral code that bans murder. You can't start with evolution because animals kill each other all the time; there's nothing unnatural about murder. It's the prohibition against it that's unnatural, but science is just the study of the natural world, so that's no help. See for yourself, try it. Come up with a rational first-principles explanation of why murder is bad without invoking religion, and which doesn't simply boil down to tautologies, circular reasoning, appeal to authority or other logical fallacies. I've tried - it's hard!

"if that were the definition of scientism then I wouldn't subscribe to scientism."

Right, but nobody explicitly subscribes to scientism. We don't even have such a word as "scientismist" because it's pretty much the defacto default religion of the modern population.

Scientism is perhaps the nastiest of all religions because it denies its own nature. Other religions accept what they are, but this one presents itself as pure rationalism even though it's not. It's very, very easy to accidentally become a follower of scientism which is why so many people are. All you have to do is use reasoning like this:

1. Science is a good way to determine what is true.

2. But I am busy and don't have time to do science. Therefore I will delegate it to professional scientists.

3. I don't have time to figure out who is applying the scientific method on a person-by-person basis, so I'll delegate that to scientific institutions (universities, governments, corporations etc).

3. I don't have time to verify that these institutions are actually using the scientific method. Actually I'm not even sure what the scientific method is, beyond the very basics. So I'll assume that if people are being referred to as scientists by other people who are also being called scientists, and the places they work have money, then they are scientific institutions.

4. I don't have time to actually read what these institutions write down in their holy books/journals, because a lot of it is written in Latin, but I am sure that it is Science and that The Word of Science is Truth, so whatever these institutions claim must be true.

5. I don't have time to actually find out what these institutions claim, but there's this noisy town crier in the middle of our village who says that the institutions claim X, and nobody seems to be objecting, so I have Faith that this must be The Word and therefore Truth.

5. I don't understand why these oddball heretics keep popping up who lack Faith in The Word as transcribed by the priests at the Institutions, because why would anyone doubt what is obviously and clearly True? Yes, scientists are merely men and may sometimes be unclear about the universal underlying Truth, which may even be unknowable to us mere mortals, but nonetheless it is important for community cohesion to have Faith and therefore we should banish these heretics as far outside the village as possible.

In other words, although people like to think they're rational, being rational is time consuming and difficult so most people delegate it. But - and this is where it becomes scientism - they don't recognize that this is what they've done. They conflate belief in a hierarchical Church-like system with rationality, and end up believing anything that people working at these institutions say even if it's obviously pseudo-scientific. And, they treat doubt in the sciencey-ness of the priestly class as terrible heresy; such heretics deserve to get their printing presses smashed up (cancelled).

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

#556
post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Faith is belief without evidence or belief in the presence of contrary evidence. If we were to suppose the "base presumptions" of science were on the same level as religious claims, then they could be arbitrarily ignored without real-world consequences.

Disclaimer: not a scientist. Part1: For the sake of the argument: Have you seen evidence of scientific fact-x? (For example x=“water is made of H2 + O”) Since set of “x” is so wast, no matter who you are, for most of “x” the answer will be “NO”. Time, accessible equipment and brain-capability constraints force us to outsource the evidence check to others. (even smartest scientists read papers instead of reproducing a…

This isn’t a good comparison. Science can do something religion can’t: it can predict what will happen ahead of time based on prior knowledge. Religion works backwards to explain why a thing that happened was the will of some god (in the example of Christianity).

This then has practical, real-world implications. Praying harder never seemed to stop a bridge collapsing but a better understanding of physics allowed humanity to build bigger and stronger bridges.

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

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is, effectively, religion/faith in a particular set of base presumptions (axioms of set theory or logic theory guide all "logical" reasoning). Basically, limits of human mind understanding things come with just having to trust some things are simply so. The biggest difference from things more commonly referred to as "religions" is that science invites you to challenge all these assumptions and look for a bett…

It’s treated that way by the masses but it most certainly isn’t. You aren’t going to find the origin of reality via science but science is used to describe reality. Otherwise I agree. It will always be our approximation and until we meet aliens and do science with them we can’t be sure all of reality isn’t a construct of the human mind.

Going back to the simplicity statement from the video: you can model the universe as the product of your imagination but it seems surprisingly consistent if it is. It’s clear that the universe continues existing even when you’re not paying attention to it. For this to be true either:

* Your brain is storing and processing the entire universe all the time * Your brain is constantly rewriting its own memory on a mass scale to pretend the universe is consistent

Both of these seem way more complicated than just “the universe exists and you’re a part of it.”

(Yes, I know our brains rewrite history but not on the scale required to make all of reality seem consistent in this way)

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

#558
post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Science is not a replacement for religion because science is not a moral code. It can tell you how something can be done, but not what is right or wrong to do. Attempts to develop such moral codes by reasoning from first principles turns out to be incredibly difficult and can easily lead to degenerate conclusions. I have not seen any proof of that. Neither did I see proof that only religion can give you the correct…

Ah, I didn't argue that religion gives you a correct moral code, or that there is only one possible moral code. Religions are the result of memetic evolution so it's natural that there's some variety. All I argue is that science doesn't give you one at all. Proving this would take at least a whole book, maybe more, but such books have been written many times in the past when science vs religion was more topical. Most…

  > All I argue is that science doesn't give you one at all.
But I have given you examples of arriving at moral rules through arguments that are not based on religious thought.

  > Proving this would take at least a whole book, maybe more, but such books have been written many times in the past when science vs religion was more topical. Most people don't demand such a book because "science can tell you how to do it but not whether you should" is a pretty uncontroversial position that's been taken by scientists themselves many times, it's pretty much the starting point of the debate over whether Nagasaki should have been nuked for example.
Why would it take a book? I just gave counter examples and have disproven your claim already. That you can find examples where science can not explain something does not mean it cannot explain anything in terms of "why". The whole point of science is to explain the "why". Why it happened, why it is that way and why it will happen.

You can use science to debate if Nagasaki should have been nuked. That though would probably be a complex discussion but I can see a possibility that someone scientifically shows that there would have been better ways to solve the conflict.

  > Obviously all this is totally unfalsifiable, it doesn't attempt to be rational in any way but it's a really useful set of beliefs and stories for creating a more peaceful society.
Only under the assumption that everyone in the society strictly follows the rule. As soon as one guy just turns into a tyrrant or if another group comes in order to suppress them the framework collapses and so it is unworkable in the real world where there are real threats.

  > If you take only science as a starting point, how do you derive this sort of moral code and - just as importantly - make it stick?
We have laws that prohibit harming others and they don't need religious justification. Harming a member of society is against everyones interest because we are part of society and we optimize for a good quality of life of society as that optimizes our own. Take Sweden as an example. Very secular country. Are you claiming their society has weak morals? Are they full of revenge killings?

  > In fact you'd struggle even with the far more basic task of deriving a moral code that bans murder. You can't start with evolution because animals kill each other all the time; there's nothing unnatural about murder. It's the prohibition against it that's unnatural, but science is just the study of the natural world, so that's no help. See for yourself, try it. Come up with a rational first-principles explanation of why murder is bad without invoking religion, and which doesn't simply boil down to tautologies, circular reasoning, appeal to authority or other logical fallacies. I've tried - it's hard!
I did it in other comments but here we go again: it's easy to argue that since we optimize the survival of our society we should not kill each other. A species that is happy to just randomly kill each other has real disadvantages that should be obvious. Your claim that animals kill each other all the time: killing within their own group is rare. Take two random animals from the same species and put them together in a room and see if they will kill each other. Do this with enough animals and different species. The vast majority will not kill each other. How come?

  > Right, but nobody explicitly subscribes to scientism. We don't even have such a word as "scientismist" because it's pretty much the defacto default religion of the modern population.
I don't agree with that. You seriously claim that the majority just blindly believes in science but wouldn't admit it? Or is it maybe because people started to trust a system which they can at least partially verify and that can explain a lot of the real world?

  > Scientism is perhaps the nastiest of all religions because it denies its own nature. Other religions accept what they are, but this one presents itself as pure rationalism even though it's not. It's very, very easy to accidentally become a follower of scientism which is why so many people are. All you have to do is use reasoning like this:
Blind belief is always bad. Which one is the worst is not a particularly interesting conversation to me.

We alreay agree that scientism (meaning religious corruption of science as you've shown) isn't good. Don't think we need to expand on that further.

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

#559
post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I didn't argue that religion gives you a correct moral code, or that there is only one possible moral code. Religions are the result of memetic evolution so it's natural that there's some variety. All I argue is that science doesn't give you one at all. Proving this would take at least a whole book, maybe more, but such books have been written many times in the past when science vs religion was more topical. Most…

> All I argue is that science doesn't give you one at all. But I have given you examples of arriving at moral rules through arguments that are not based on religious thought. > Proving this would take at least a whole book, maybe more, but such books have been written many times in the past when science vs religion was more topical. Most people don't demand such a book because "science can tell you how to do it but n…

I don't quite see where you provided examples before this comment, sorry, could you repeat them? I looked through the thread and see you asserting we don't need religions anymore, but not where you give concrete worked examples of moral questions and how to resolve them with science.

"You can use science to debate if Nagasaki should have been nuked"

I'm not really sure how. It would be interesting to see an attempt. Note that doing this without relying on ambient moral principles like "killing people is bad" is probably impossible but those moral principles don't come from science, as I point out, hence why I don't see how to do it.

"We have laws that prohibit harming others and they don't need religious justification."

Yes I thought you might go there. It doesn't work. Those laws are derived from religious codes originally. Also, the law is not a moral code, the law is supposed to implement moral codes. If you believe morality flows from law as the original source, you have to believe that lawmakers are inherently more morally capable than the people they rule. Moreover you cannot have such a thing as a tyrant because the moment they achieve power and change the law, whatever they do becomes axiomatically moral and therefore they are not a tyrant. Are you really going to argue that? No way are most people going to go anywhere near a claim like that, quite the opposite, it is often argued that lawmakers are less moral than regular people!

"Harming a member of society is against everyones interest because we are part of society and we optimize for a good quality of life of society as that optimizes our own"

This isn't a logical argument from first principles. Harming someone else can very much be in your interest in all sorts of situations. For it to be considered immoral, there must be some higher justification that states that your clear self-interest in harming an enemy is subservient to some other principle.

Claims like "we optimize for a good quality of life of society" don't mean anything concrete. It's just restating a belief that the original position is morally correct in different words. Every tyrant in history has always claimed to be acting for the betterment of society and how can you argue otherwise without some system deeper than "this is morally good because we say it's best for everyone therefore it is"?

That's what I mean by it being difficult. All the obvious answers just lead you in circles.

"Your claim that animals kill each other all the time: killing within their own group is rare. Take two random animals from the same species and put them together in a room and see if they will kill each other."

So by analogy it's OK to kill other races but not your own? That's certainly a moral code that has existed in the past, but it's not one that is accepted today.

But it's an odd argument because it's really common that animals will fight and injure each other within the same species, sometimes fatally. Usually fights over territory or mating dominance. Even in pack animals there are fights over who gets the mates. By coincidence I was at a zoo just two days ago and they had a few cages where there was only a single animal, with an explanation that they had to do this because if they put more than one animal of the same type in the same cage they would fight for dominance. It's normal e.g. the antlers on a deer are for fighting. One of them was a type of crane, and the explanation was that cranes pick a single mate for life and this one had picked "Man", so would fight with any other crane. Animal jealousy!

"You serious claim that the majority just blindly believes in science but wouldn't admit it?"

After what we saw in the last two years! Wow yes, absolutely I seriously claim that. The amount of pseudo-scientific garbage that the population swallowed about COVID is just incredible. Claims that fell apart the moment you read the papers or even just thought about them were routinely passed off and accepted by the population because they came from "experts". It is one of the major themes of our age.

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

#560

I dont think we can get there. First, we would need to solve time. I am not sure if we are able to grasp it. Then we must figure out what happened at T-1 or T-2, which I think will be simple once we understand time. The theory creates a start and then explains the progress from there. but not what caused it. In theory of the cylinder than the universe travels to that is good but it does not explain how everything cam…

Why does there have to be time before The Big Bang? IIUC, the hypothesis is that everything was packed into one super-dense black hole. Wouldn't there not be any time?

However, you play around with words the same question always remains what was before.

Where did this super dense black hole come from? What caused it to be? What was it before it was a black hole?

Our current theories for the origin of black holes as far as I know does not include the spontaneous appearance of a black hole for no reaosn.

Post reply on HN