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The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

nautil.us

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Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#191

Post by SamBam »

awb wrote: post #122
1270018080 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The total arrogance of people in technology lol. We're still just sentient specs of dust abiding by the laws of the universe on a spec of dust planet. Writing CRUD apps, flying to Mars, or driving an electric car, isn't going to save the universe.

Yet it would have been impossible for many folks to even imagine such things 1,000 years ago.

Sure, but a "universe-ending event" on the scale of the big crunch is a whole universe-worth of orders of magnitude different.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#192

Post by breuleux »

TylerLives wrote: post #187
breuleux wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that life is its own point. If you organize your metaphysics in such a way that nothing matters unless it leads to a future that matters, then nothing can possibly matter, because by definition value is always postponed to "the future". But you can never get there, because once you do, it becomes "the present". Basically, you can't say that the value of every moment depends entirely on the value of future m…

We mostly find meaning in moving towards a goal. Once we attain it, it no longer brings us happiness. Having no goals or thinking that some future reward will change our lives doesn't seem to lead to good outcomes. It's strange, but "becoming" itself is meaningful.

Surely some goals can bring happiness when they are achieved? I have made some things that I like, and I am happy when I recall that I made them myself. Or if your goal is to cure cancer, and you succeed, wouldn't that bring you happiness? Sure, you can set other goals for yourself, but that doesn't erase the satisfaction.

Either way, my point was that if your goal is to leave a permanent, meaningful mark on the universe, first, that's borderline delusional, second, the actualization of the goal is basically infinitely far in the future. Personally I'd rather pursue goals that can be achieved within my lifetime and aren't some crazy improper integral over the lifetime of the universe...

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#193

Post by wizzwizz4 »

platz wrote: post #121
stan_rogers wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the things we can observe to be the way they are, the furthest things that can be observed by the furthest things we can observe must be more or less the same as well, and so on.

This is a bad inference

Yet that kind of inference seems to generally work.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#194

Post by rovolo »

NateEag wrote: post #153
wwweston wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they do -- I can pick any basis I want for saying their ideas are worse. I can make that basis arbitrary (because I don't like their names), or I can ground it in appeals to things that people value widely. One can get lost in the idea that things are meaningless on a purely narrative/mental basis, but you're embedded in a biological matrix that will very likely re-orient you on the idea that some things matter…

Sure, but if someone doesn't grant that they want to reduce suffering for others, you have no legitimate way to argue to them that they should. You get to pick your meaning and they get to pick theirs. It's "do what you want", at the end of the day.

In each of your responses, you're saying there needs to be a shared base of ethics.

> you have no legitimate way to argue to them that they should

> There's no shared basis I can legitimately use to argue with them

> you could not legitimately argue to them that their choices are wrong, philosophically speaking

But you're not answering these questions: Which values are included in that shared basis? Where do those values come from? How do we know that those values are correct?

The idea that values are arbitrary isn't saying you can't criticize other people's values. It's acknowledging that you don't have some authoritative source of ethics. How do you try to convince people that something is worthwhile or wrong? Do you appeal to this authority of ethics, or are you making some other argument?

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#195

Post by a_e_k »

figassis wrote: post #160
allendoerfer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps to think of time as a dimension. Sure, you, anyone or anything will not last measured on this dimension. But it still has a span. You would not call objects meaningless or less beautiful just because they physically end at some point in space. Why is time so different? It is just the fourth dimension of their shape, giving them a more unique character.

The way I think of the universe is: we are the universe discovering itself, gaining consciousness and trying to figure itself out. Our fears are exactly the same as the universe’s. Our curiosity and wonder, also the universe’s. RN, this universe is a child, maybe a baby, and the way it’s expanding, it’s processes and consciousness will simply be on a much different time/space scale, require less energy (cold dark uni…

Babylon 5 had a scene about this idea:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VhD0hbGEDSU

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#196

Post by krylon »

NateEag wrote: post #106
krylon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Albert Camus wrote a beautiful (IMHO, at least) book about it, The Myth of Sisyphus . His point, as I understand it, is that nothing matters in the sense that the universe is vast and empty does not care what happens to you or me. But that also means we get to choose what matters to us . Life has no meaning, but it has meaning to us , and we can, in a way, choose what we want it to mean. I agree, I find this perspect…

In this framework, Stalin and Kim Jong-Il created their own meaning and no one has a basis for saying what they chose is worse than anyone else's choice. To many of us, that is horribly demoralizing.

Either you are twisting my words, or I phrased what I said very badly. Let me rephrase what I said, hopefully more clearly:

First, from the perspective of "the universe", the very concept of meaning is meaningless (sorry, no pun intended). From THAT perspective, Stalin or Pol Pot or Hitler or Djenghis Khan killing millions of people is no more or less meaningful or morally good or bad than the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.

But you and I are not "the universe". Nor is any other human being. To us, it DOES matter, a lot, what choices Stalin, Djenghis Khan or Napoleon make. As well as the choices you and I make, every minute of every day.

From a cosmological perspective, life is quite likely nothing more than a chemical curiosity. From our perspective, it is pretty much everything. The sun doesn't care if you are happy or sad or angry or scared. It cannot care (at least as far as we know). I can. So can anyone else who is reading this.

Ethics, I am trying to say, does not exist outside ourselves the way gravity or time does. But to us, it is just as real, maybe even more real, than any force of nature. This is what makes us human.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#197

Post by zem »

misthop wrote: post #12

Wikipedia has a page on the Timeline of the far future[1]. It lists a ton of physical and cosmological things that are predicted to happen based on our current understanding of physics. A really fun read that always takes me down a rabbit's hole of phenomena wikipedia pages. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

"The Melancholy of Infinite Space" is a beautiful take on this: http://www.geoffreylandis.com/infinite.htp

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#198

Post by rbanffy »

rootbear wrote: post #143
rbanffy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People pointed to Asimov's Last Question, I'll point you to Clarke's The Star: https://sites.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/TheStar.pdf

I reread this most years over the Holidays.

It is a beautiful Christmas story.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#199

Post by TylerLives »

breuleux wrote: post #192
TylerLives wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We mostly find meaning in moving towards a goal. Once we attain it, it no longer brings us happiness. Having no goals or thinking that some future reward will change our lives doesn't seem to lead to good outcomes. It's strange, but "becoming" itself is meaningful.

Surely some goals can bring happiness when they are achieved? I have made some things that I like, and I am happy when I recall that I made them myself. Or if your goal is to cure cancer, and you succeed, wouldn't that bring you happiness? Sure, you can set other goals for yourself, but that doesn't erase the satisfaction. Either way, my point was that if your goal is to leave a permanent, meaningful mark on the univ…

> Or if your goal is to cure cancer, and you succeed, wouldn't that bring you happiness?

You would, for a time, and then you would get used to it. People in the past used to struggle to find food. Today almost everyone in the first world countries can eat as much as they'd like, but do we wake up happy and grateful because we have food? I do agree that not all of our happiness comes from moving towards goals in the future, but a lot of it does.

> Personally I'd rather pursue goals that can be achieved within my lifetime and aren't some crazy improper integral over the lifetime of the universe...

Me too, but I don't think that you have to choose. Even if you have some less realistic goals, it's still better to focus on the immediate problems.

Re: The universe has already made almost all the stars it will ever make

#200

Post by lelanthran »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #23
platz wrote: post #17

Whenever you see the word Universe in pop sci, you can just sub in Observable Universe.

It's interesting that we can presently see two galaxies that will never be able to see each other. They will drift out of Earth's observable universe before each other's light would have a chance to reach the other. Dark energy & accelerating expansion is weird.

Which two galaxies?
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