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Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs

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Re: Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs

#101

Post by bawolff »

rubicon33 wrote: post #82
bawolff wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That presumes that the cycle isn't the ground state and something had to start it. Also,i feel there are no satisfactory answers here. See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover

What you are describing is infinity. For infinite time, this cycle has existed. That concept is easy to say, but very difficult to mentally accept. We’re too accustomed to thinking of time linearly since we’ve never had examples to the contrary.

I disagree.

For starters, linear things can be infinite too (e.g. integers). Being cyclic and being infinite are separate.

Second, I do not know if time is finite or not, but i do know it lasts longer than i do, and anything that does is essentially infinite from my perspective.

Is a time crystal a counter example? Guess its not something we would normally encounter anyways.

Re: Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs

#102

Post by sorokod »

GalenErso wrote: post #5

I know HN hates religion, but after being an atheist all my life, and graduating with a STEM degree (the 'S' part) from a top tier institution, I've started in the last year or so to turn to the church (Roman Catholic) and theism, both to find answers to some of life's mysteries, such as the origin of the Universe, and for personal reasons (I plan to start my initiation, starting with a baptism, within the next year…

If it is more satisfying to you so be it, it is a personal choice to believe in this and that.

As long as these are non overlapping magisteria.

Not sure what your stem credentials have to do with anything here.

Re: Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs

#103

Post by _a_a_a_ »

bawolff wrote: post #100
_a_a_a_ wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what other measure should we use? The truth, meaning accepting our best accordance of theory to observable reality, then acting on that? That means not just in physics but in ethics as well and any other area.

> The truth, meaning accepting our best accordance of theory to observable reality, then acting on that? That sounds like satisfaction to me. You looked for the answer that made sense and satisfied your notions of reality. But its not like you have access to divine revelation or Truth. You are working on what you think is like based on your observations and throwing ideas that aren't in accordance with what you know…

> You looked for the answer that made sense and satisfied your notions of reality

I've no doubt you have as much experience as I have people who will reject things that are clearly true, or even arguably true, rejecting evidence, to maintain a position that doesn't stand up. So what I'm saying is, some people don't "accept our best accordance is… to observable reality…". I mean, it amazes me the number of people on HN who will take and hold a position regardless.

> There is no emperical basis for ethics

Do you think I'm unaware of this. But suppose you see a small child in a street crying because they're lost. Assuming we have an inner life, you can deduce the child is unhappy. What is the right thing to do in this circumstance, to help them or walk on by?(I'm assuming the circumstances are as they appear, this is not intended as a trick question).

Morality isn't physics but it's not something too complex to tackle, and the religious don't have a monopoly on ethics (I mention this because you said you are an atheist, like me, and we don't need a book to tell us how to do the right thing Edit: I have been asked online by a Christian what the basis of my ethics is if I'm not religious. Cheeky sod)

Re: Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs

#105

Post by umvi »

HybridCurve wrote: post #93
umvi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I myself am partial to the Latter-day Saint teaching that matter/energy has always existed (and forever will exist) and that the creation of the world involved "organizing" existing matter in an iterative process. That matches the pattern of creation I've experienced myself where I take something that already exists and iterate on it until it is in a refined state that I desire. I find it hard to believe that the min…

Conway's game of life is a good example of how complex behavior can evolve from systems with a simple set of rules. Molecular dynamics follow a more complex set of rules at a much more rapid rate. This combined with the fact those interactions have been happening for billions of years in parallel at such a massive scale does not make it surprising that persistent and self replicating patterns emerge. On a large enoug…

> This combined with the fact those interactions have been happening for billions of years in parallel at such a massive scale does not make it surprising that persistent and self replicating patterns emerge. On a large enough scale, even improbable events become likely.

I don't think anyone has proven the scales necessary for life to happen by chance. What you have done is worked off the base assumption that abiogenesis happened accidentally and therefore the time and scale needed to do so is the age and scale of the observable universe. Under the infinite monkeys theorem the works of Shakespeare will eventually be produced, but we are not working with infinite time and resources here. We are working with "just" 9 billion years and "just" 100 billion galaxies, which, for abiogenesis seems pretty short especially considering what % of planets have zero chance for life due to their composition and star proximity.

How many billions of years of compute time across how many parallel computers do you think it would take Conway's game of life with random RNG seeds to simulate itself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP5-iIeKXE8)? Regardless of your answer, I still find it more likely Conway's game of life simulating itself points to an intelligent force of some sort having iteratively created it.

Re: Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs

#106

Post by some_other_time »

This reminds me of something I read some time back. It was about hypervelocity stars, stars with escape velocity. These are stars that are moving fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of their galaxy. If they are escaping their galaxy and moving away from the galactic center, they may also be beyond the pull of any retraction. This, in turn, would mean the subsequent post-retraction Big Bang contains less matter than the prior one. Over an infinity of time and thus an infinity of these cycles, there would eventually be too little matter to go bang at all.

So, after that happens, we're back to the originating questions. From where did sufficient matter originate to go bang? And, how did that bang not violate the laws of motion?

To throw a match on this pile: To me, this seems to be science asserting the existence of God. ;)

Re: Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs

#107

Post by hemantv »

hemantv wrote: post #23

Very similar to Hinduism. Hinduism also describe multi verse, number of species on planet. A lot of theory in science is around advance Civilization that existed before modern day human (they are usually referred to as Giants). Hinduism talk about how earlier human were larger in height and have been reducing since the beginning.

https://youtube.com/shorts/x-ZomoV6xhs?feature=share

Re: Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs

#108

Post by bawolff »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #103
bawolff wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The truth, meaning accepting our best accordance of theory to observable reality, then acting on that? That sounds like satisfaction to me. You looked for the answer that made sense and satisfied your notions of reality. But its not like you have access to divine revelation or Truth. You are working on what you think is like based on your observations and throwing ideas that aren't in accordance with what you know…

> You looked for the answer that made sense and satisfied your notions of reality I've no doubt you have as much experience as I have people who will reject things that are clearly true, or even arguably true, rejecting evidence, to maintain a position that doesn't stand up. So what I'm saying is, some people don't "accept our best accordance is… to observable reality…". I mean, it amazes me the number of people on H…

> But suppose you see a small child in a street crying because they're lost. Assuming we have an inner life, you can deduce the child is unhappy. What is the right thing to do in this circumstance, to help them or walk on by?

Right. However the part you can't deduce emperically is if its a good thing to reduce the suffering of the child.

Sounds simple enough because mainstream morality demands a specific answer. But consider the vegan version of this question - animals clearly are suffering in slaughterhouses, how can you justify just walking by? This is a lot less compelling to a lot of people and yet the argument seems pretty much identical to the child case in terms of pure logic.

All this is to say, i think at the very bottom it always comes down to: i believe what i believe because i believe it. Or to phrase it a certain way, i found an answer that satisfies me. I help the child because it gives me satisfication to reduce the amount of human suffering in the world.

Re: Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs

#109

Post by _a_a_a_ »

bawolff wrote: post #108
_a_a_a_ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You looked for the answer that made sense and satisfied your notions of reality I've no doubt you have as much experience as I have people who will reject things that are clearly true, or even arguably true, rejecting evidence, to maintain a position that doesn't stand up. So what I'm saying is, some people don't "accept our best accordance is… to observable reality…". I mean, it amazes me the number of people on H…

> But suppose you see a small child in a street crying because they're lost. Assuming we have an inner life, you can deduce the child is unhappy. What is the right thing to do in this circumstance, to help them or walk on by? Right. However the part you can't deduce emperically is if its a good thing to reduce the suffering of the child. Sounds simple enough because mainstream morality demands a specific answer. But…

In the context of ethics "i found an answer that satisfies me", I believe you're right. Thanks.

Re: Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs

#110

Post by rad88 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #41
pyrolistical wrote: post #29

I don’t see what is the alternative. If it’s not cyclic how can there be something from nothing? The only solution is every thing has always existed and there is no such thing as nothing

There are alternative hypotheses like Eternal Inflation, and Blackhole Cosmology. Mathematical Universe hypothesis would have our existence merely be one expression of consistent mathematical laws, all possible variations of which exist in a level 4 multiverse. Or we could just be a Boltzmann Brain that only imagines it is a universe that started with a big bang and real physics are markedly different. It is worth ke…

Natural phenomena do tend to make sense when investigated scientifically. It seems rather that not all cosmologists and mathematicians have an obligation to develop scientific theories:

  - Blackhole Cosmology, Eternal Inflation: unscientific, dismiss reality
  - Mathematical Universe: unscientific, no reality
The actual sciences brought to bear on cosmology (thermo and statistical mechanics) can make enough sense of our observations, without the psychedelics, but do nothing for cosmology as the search for meaning which is what it really is.

Most of these concepts, in all their variety, share the same metaphysical premise that our observed universe was inevitable. To the extent that it appears very distinct, we simply cannot see the overall structure in which it was actually a certainty.

The Boltzmann Brain at least gets closer to facing the issue objectively. The basic reality that we experience today -- in which there's some amount of matter and charge, spacetime, in which eggs only scramble, etc. -- just happens to be so. From our point of view, something highly "improbable" happened in the distant past.

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