Conundrum: Infinite past & Clock

[Speakpigeon]

Seems like Bomb#20's got this.

Yes, thanks to keep me updated on what you think.
EB

And remember, too, that I'm still waiting for you to explain how your "clock" would work.

Look here:

I can assign a number between 0 and 1 to every moment in time, eternal past and infinite future. If you specifically wanted an 'actual infinity' of points infinitely far in the past/future, you could even include 0 being the time infinitely far into the past and 1 to be the time of an instant infinitely far in the future.

You keep thinking in terms of "assigning" values or numbers to moments in time. I already agreed you can do that but it's not a "measure".

Why couldn't my clock work like that?

You would have to explain how it would work, if only in principle.

There's no unique correspondance between [0,1] and time. There's even an infinite number of possible time functions of [0,1]. We don't even need to think in terms of continuous functions. So, how would you go about selecting which correspondance would do?

So, how would such a clock work in principle? Me, I don't know.

But that's definitely an interesting angle.
EB

Not a peep from you since then...

I really have to insist you tried to answer that question.
EB

 

[Bomb#20]

No.

Again, and I already said that, I have been considering two distinct possibilities: One, the ordinary notion of an infinite past, with no beginning, as per the dictionary definition; and Two, an actually infinite past, with an actual beginning in the past infinitely away from any other point in time, this second concept obviously departing from the ordinary notion of an endless infinity. So, clearly, I'm not making an inference from infinite, endless, past to an actual beginning. Yes, that would be a contradiction, and I didn't make it. You just conflated the two alternative concepts I have been considering.

Okay, sorry, there must be a subtlety in your explanation that went over my head. Let's try it this way. Was the concept of infinity you were presenting in your OP one of the two distinct possibilities you're referring to here, or was it a third distinct possibility? If it was one of these two, which one?

 

[untermensche]

Not a peep from you since then...

I really have to insist you tried to answer that question.
EB

It's the way she works.

I can assign a number between 0 and 1 to every moment in time, eternal past and infinite future....

When you say nonsense like this you have to run away from it.

Only a finite number of moments can ever be assigned. That is all that is possible.

At no time will an infinite number of moments ever be assigned. No matter how long you work at it.

No matter how much time passes it must always be a finite amount. It is not possible for an infinite amount of time to pass.

 

[Speakpigeon]

No.

Again, and I already said that, I have been considering two distinct possibilities: One, the ordinary notion of an infinite past, with no beginning, as per the dictionary definition; and Two, an actually infinite past, with an actual beginning in the past infinitely away from any other point in time, this second concept obviously departing from the ordinary notion of an endless infinity. So, clearly, I'm not making an inference from infinite, endless, past to an actual beginning. Yes, that would be a contradiction, and I didn't make it. You just conflated the two alternative concepts I have been considering.

Okay, sorry, there must be a subtlety in your explanation that went over my head.

I would have thought my explanations to be rather straightforward. What is there to not understand in the fact that I presented an alternative?

Let's try it this way. Was the concept of infinity you were presenting in your OP one of the two distinct possibilities you're referring to here, or was it a third distinct possibility? If it was one of these two, which one?

I'm afraid not quite any of these possibilities.

Again, anyone can have a look at the OP and I think what I say there is also rather straightforward.

First, I start with what I thought was still the mathematical concept of infinity, which is really just the formalisation of the Common Man's notion of it, then I explain how our ordinary idea of the future's infinity is broadly the same kind of idea as the mathematical concept of infinity.

So, up to this point, we're essentially 100% within the Common Man's notion of infinity.

Then I turn to the case of an infinite past to point out that such infinity would have to be regarded as a full-blown ontological reality, i.e. something very different from our ordinary, or Common Man's, notion of infinity.

Here you may have to realise that at this point, I wasn't yet thinking in terms of any kind of a beginning to the infinite past. It's Beero1000's post, where s/he exposed my ignorance of current mathematical thinking about the infinite, that put me on this track. This would be easy to verify by going through the exchange between Beero1000 and juma on the one hand, and me on the other.

This, however, doesn't detract to the fact that I kept distinct the two possibilities, that of an ordinary infinite past, i.e. past without a beginning, and that of an actually infinite past, i.e. one with an actual beginning infinitely away in the past. In particular, this idea of the infinity of the past as a full-blown ontological reality wasn't meant to suggest or imply that of an actual beginning to the infinity of the past.

That being said, and to answer your question, in considering the issue of the infinity of the past in the OP, I wasn't presenting or offering any concept of it, but was clearly suggesting that a new concept might be required that would be radically different from that of the future, i.e. different in some unspecified way from the ordinary, or Common Man's, notion of the infinite.

I wasn't presenting anything like a new concept of the infinite because the motivation for the thread was to find one. And I wasn't referring to the newly-minted mathematical concept of the infinite as actual infinity since I effectively ignored its existence, as sharply pointed out by Beero1000. The only specification for this potential new concept of the infinite past, was to point out that the fact that it had already happened suggested that the infinity of the past had to be a full-blown ontological reality. Yet, that specification wasn't in itself enough to entail the idea of a beginning for this infinite past, and that's why I kept alive the two distinct possibilities throughout this thread, which is also something very easy to verify.
EB

 

[Bomb#20]

I would have thought my explanations to be rather straightforward. What is there to not understand in the fact that I presented an alternative?

Let's try it this way. Was the concept of infinity you were presenting in your OP one of the two distinct possibilities you're referring to here, or was it a third distinct possibility? If it was one of these two, which one?

I'm afraid not quite any of these possibilities.

Again, anyone can have a look at the OP and I think what I say there is also rather straightforward.

Right back at you -- I'd have thought it was rather straightforward that the infinity you described there must necessarily either be one of the two alternatives you presented, or else a third variety; so "not quite any of these possibilities" is a bit mind-boggling. But that's okay -- things that are straightforward to one person often aren't straightforward to another, because people's minds work differently. If it helps you get past the exasperation of trying to explain straightforward stuff to somebody who just doesn't get it, feel free to assume I'm an idiot and construct your explanation accordingly.

Here you may have to realise that at this point, I wasn't yet thinking in terms of any kind of a beginning to the infinite past. It's Beero1000's post, where s/he exposed my ignorance of current mathematical thinking about the infinite, that put me on this track. This would be easy to verify by going through the exchange between Beero1000 and juma on the one hand, and me on the other.

No worries -- I'm not trying to apportion blame, just trying to figure out how to line our brains up enough for me to make sense of your arguments.

This, however, doesn't detract to the fact that I kept distinct the two possibilities, that of an ordinary infinite past, i.e. past without a beginning, and that of an actually infinite past, i.e. one with an actual beginning infinitely away in the past. In particular, this idea of the infinity of the past as a full-blown ontological reality wasn't meant to suggest or imply that of an actual beginning to the infinity of the past.

That being said, and to answer your question, in considering the issue of the infinity of the past in the OP, I wasn't presenting or offering any concept of it, but was clearly suggesting that a new concept might be required that would be radically different from that of the future, i.e. different in some unspecified way from the ordinary, or Common Man's, notion of the infinite.

I wasn't presenting anything like a new concept of the infinite because the motivation for the thread was to find one. And I wasn't referring to the newly-minted mathematical concept of the infinite as actual infinity since I effectively ignored its existence, as sharply pointed out by Beero1000. The only specification for this potential new concept of the infinite past, was to point out that the fact that it had already happened suggested that the infinity of the past had to be a full-blown ontological reality. Yet, that specification wasn't in itself enough to entail the idea of a beginning for this infinite past, and that's why I kept alive the two distinct possibilities throughout this thread, which is also something very easy to verify.
EB

Okay, maybe my screwup in reading your posts was that in my head "full-blown ontological reality" and "actual" are synoynms. I take it they aren't synonyms to you -- it sounds like you're leaving open the possibility that this new concept that might be required that you're trying to find might involve an ordinary infinite past, i.e. past without a beginning, that's a "full-blown ontological reality", but lacks an actual beginning infinitely away in the past, and therefore doesn't qualify as an "actual" infinity. If I've got that right, can you explain what the difference in meaning to you is between "full-blown ontological reality" and "actual"?

 

[Kharakov]

WTF do people have problems with eternals?

 

[bilby]

WTF do people have problems with eternals?

They take all the best jobs, and amass vast wealth through the use of compound interest, while we ephemerals are left with the scraps.

I'm sure some of them are nice people, but you wouldn't want your daughter to marry one.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Okay, maybe my screwup in reading your posts was that in my head "full-blown ontological reality" and "actual" are synoynms. I take it they aren't synonyms to you -- it sounds like you're leaving open the possibility that this new concept that might be required that you're trying to find might involve an ordinary infinite past, i.e. past without a beginning, that's a "full-blown ontological reality", but lacks an actual beginning infinitely away in the past, and therefore doesn't qualify as an "actual" infinity. If I've got that right, can you explain what the difference in meaning to you is between "full-blown ontological reality" and "actual"?

Right, I guess the mix up is understandable.

I talked initially of the infinity of an infinite past as a "full-blown ontological reality" to signal the inference I was making from our conception that the past has already happened, all of it, and therefore the whole infinity of it. I wasn't yet thinking of the possibility of any actual starting point to this infinity. I only formulated this idea in posts No. 51 and 64, in an exchange with juma:
Post #64

Ehat do you mean with ”was no definite time when the clock was set”. It doesnt make sense. Ir the clock is set then it was set at a specific time. There is no other option.

The clock is assumed to have existed at any time throughout the infinite past. There's no beginning of time, so there's no definite time when the clock was set. It was always running.
Perhaps in the new conception of mathematicians, whereas the infinite would be taken as an actual infinite rather than just the limit of an unbounded series, you could say that the clock was set at this actual infinite time. But that wouldn't help because we would still not have a definite time span between the setting of the clock and the reading of the clock to impose a definite value on the reading.
EB

You cannot set the clock at a infinitely remote time since there are no infinitely remote timepoints.
But you can say that it has always been running.

Good point, same problem. The clock must be in a definite state and must show a definite reading. Which is it?
And, again, if we assume infinity as actual infinity, i.e. one point on the line, infinitely far from all other points, then you can also assume the clock to be set at that time, to read zero for example.
EB

And there, the idea of a starting point to an infinite past is clearly presented as an alternative to the conventional "Common Man" notion of an infinite past as unbounded.

Personally, I have no problem looking at each of these two options as self-consistent.

I can conceive of a conventional infinite past, without a starting point, and I would still insist that it has to be seen as a "full-blown ontological reality", since it implies that a whole infinity of past moments has already happened. They're no longer there, so to speak, but they have happened, the whole lot of them, which can only be construed as an actual infinity of them, "actual" meaning "existing in reality". Of course, past moments no longer exist, but an actual infinity of them has happened.

This, however, doesn't entail an actual starting point to this actually infinite past. So, the actual starting point has to be part of an alternative concept of infinity, independent from that of the "Common Man" where there's no beginning in time.

Again, these two independent concepts both seem self-consistent to me. The only contradiction would come from conflating them. Which I didn't.

That being said, I would agree that it may not have been so obvious without going through all posts one by one.

Now, my own case was anyway beside the point. I am still expecting you to provide evidence that the Common Man is routinely using self-contradictory notions of the infinite.

I already made clear I don't see how that would be. You've admitted the dictionary definition isn't self-contradictory. I also explained why our ordinary notion of the past doesn't give any opportunity for self-contradiction since we tend to assume that the world was created, as per the religious notion of God creating the world (and also more recently as per the scientific idea of the Big Bang), and therefore that the past had not been infinite. Ordinary people also don't venture into conceiving of God as having existed in time, and if they did, they would probably still rely on the ordinary notion of an unbounded past, and I don't see how that would be a problem. God presumably wouldn't have been created, so you can believe that God has existed for ever, without any definite starting point to its existence, and therefore without any contradiction.

So, I'll be waiting.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

WTF do people have problems with eternals?

They take all the best jobs, and amass vast wealth through the use of compound interest, while we ephemerals are left with the scraps.

I'm sure some of them are nice people, but you wouldn't want your daughter to marry one.

You might want to marry the daughter of one, though.

If so, you'd need to know it's costly.

Diamonds are forever.

And nothing would do, I guess.
EB

 

[beero1000]

And remember, too, that I'm still waiting for you to explain how your "clock" would work.

Look here:

I can assign a number between 0 and 1 to every moment in time, eternal past and infinite future. If you specifically wanted an 'actual infinity' of points infinitely far in the past/future, you could even include 0 being the time infinitely far into the past and 1 to be the time of an instant infinitely far in the future.

You keep thinking in terms of "assigning" values or numbers to moments in time. I already agreed you can do that but it's not a "measure".

Why couldn't my clock work like that?

You would have to explain how it would work, if only in principle.

There's no unique correspondance between [0,1] and time. There's even an infinite number of possible time functions of [0,1]. We don't even need to think in terms of continuous functions. So, how would you go about selecting which correspondance would do?

So, how would such a clock work in principle? Me, I don't know.

But that's definitely an interesting angle.
EB

Not a peep from you since then...

I really have to insist you tried to answer that question.
EB

That's been answered already; I'm not the one claiming a contradiction, you are. I don't have to show how it would work, you have to show why it wouldn't.

And the clock could pick any of them, just like any other clock. You don't think there's something fundamental about matching numbers to time in base 60 do you? Or anything special about 9 million odd vibrations of a cesium atom? Or hands turning in circles with markings on them?

Honestly, you seem a bit muddled about the basics here and I'm getting pretty disinterested in continuing. Wouldn't want you pining away waiting for my responses, so I figured I'd just let you know ahead of time.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Alright, I fear we won't get any answer better than that now.

Still, I'll repeat here the crucial point and question of the OP, just in case:

Now, the idea of an infinite past seems something different altogether in this respect. The concept of the past as something already done with, seems to require that in the case of an infinite past, infinity has already happened, and therefore that infinity is a full-blown ontological reality, not just a pure abstraction. At any moment in time, including now, there's been an infinity of seconds, and an infinity of millennia, that have already gone by.

This may be something of a problem to get our heads around it. Think of a simple clock. If we try to assume that such a simple clock had always existed, what time would this clock display right now?
EB

Hopefully, everybody should be able to see the inadequacy of the answers given so far.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

Well if there was a big bang after energy how would one find a reference that could be measured?

 

[Phil Scott]

Alright, I fear we won't get any answer better than that now.

Still, I'll repeat here the crucial point and question of the OP, just in case:

Now, the idea of an infinite past seems something different altogether in this respect. The concept of the past as something already done with, seems to require that in the case of an infinite past, infinity has already happened, and therefore that infinity is a full-blown ontological reality, not just a pure abstraction. At any moment in time, including now, there's been an infinity of seconds, and an infinity of millennia, that have already gone by.

This may be something of a problem to get our heads around it. Think of a simple clock. If we try to assume that such a simple clock had always existed, what time would this clock display right now?
EB

Hopefully, everybody should be able to see the inadequacy of the answers given so far.
EB

I maintain a distinction between potential and actual infinities, and am happy with the idea that this might have implications for a metaphysics of time, much as you describe.

As for what the clock should display right now? Wouldn't it just be one second ahead of where it was a second ago?

 

[Bomb#20]

The clock is assumed to have existed at any time throughout the infinite past. There's no beginning of time, so there's no definite time when the clock was set. It was always running.
Perhaps in the new conception of mathematicians, whereas the infinite would be taken as an actual infinite rather than just the limit of an unbounded series, you could say that the clock was set at this actual infinite time. But that wouldn't help because we would still not have a definite time span between the setting of the clock and the reading of the clock to impose a definite value on the reading.
EB

You cannot set the clock at a infinitely remote time since there are no infinitely remote timepoints.
But you can say that it has always been running.

Good point, same problem. The clock must be in a definite state and must show a definite reading. Which is it?
And, again, if we assume infinity as actual infinity, i.e. one point on the line, infinitely far from all other points, then you can also assume the clock to be set at that time, to read zero for example.
EB

And there, the idea of a starting point to an infinite past is clearly presented as an alternative to the conventional "Common Man" notion of an infinite past as unbounded.

And there, twice, you equate "an actual infinity" with having "this actual infinite time" "infinitely far from all other points", that a clock could be set at.

Personally, I have no problem looking at each of these two options as self-consistent.

I can conceive of a conventional infinite past, without a starting point, and I would still insist that it has to be seen as a "full-blown ontological reality", since it implies that a whole infinity of past moments has already happened. They're no longer there, so to speak, but they have happened, the whole lot of them, which can only be construed as an actual infinity of them, "actual" meaning "existing in reality". Of course, past moments no longer exist, but an actual infinity of them has happened.

This, however, doesn't entail an actual starting point to this actually infinite past.

And there, you call an infinite past without a starting point "an actual infinity". You seem to be using "actual" in two different senses.

So, the actual starting point has to be part of an alternative concept of infinity, independent from that of the "Common Man" where there's no beginning in time.

Again, these two independent concepts both seem self-consistent to me. The only contradiction would come from conflating them. Which I didn't.

That being said, I would agree that it may not have been so obvious without going through all posts one by one.

No worries; I'll just have to carefully examine the context whenever you say "actual" to figure out which meaning you're using.

Now, my own case was anyway beside the point. I am still expecting you to provide evidence that the Common Man is routinely using self-contradictory notions of the infinite.

Why? It was only an issue because I took you to be a Common Man. I've seen Common Men take for granted that an actual infinity implies the existence of an infinitely distant point many times; if your experience is contrary, that's okay -- it just means we've encountered different random samplings of the Common Man population.

I also explained why our ordinary notion of the past doesn't give any opportunity for self-contradiction since we tend to assume that the world was created, as per the religious notion of God creating the world (and also more recently as per the scientific idea of the Big Bang), and therefore that the past had not been infinite.

Yeah, no opportunity for self-contradiction in a Being who caused the beginning of time and therefore must have existed before the beginning of time. But we're not here to dump on theists.

Alright, I fear we won't get any answer better than that now.

Still, I'll repeat here the crucial point and question of the OP, just in case:

Now, the idea of an infinite past seems something different altogether in this respect. The concept of the past as something already done with, seems to require that in the case of an infinite past, infinity has already happened, and therefore that infinity is a full-blown ontological reality, not just a pure abstraction. At any moment in time, including now, there's been an infinity of seconds, and an infinity of millennia, that have already gone by.

This may be something of a problem to get our heads around it. Think of a simple clock. If we try to assume that such a simple clock had always existed, what time would this clock display right now?
EB

Hopefully, everybody should be able to see the inadequacy of the answers given so far.
EB

Why do you perceive this as a metaphysical problem specifically for an infinite past? You have exactly the same problem if the past is finite. If we assume the universe began at some definite finite number of seconds in the past, with a clock in it, what time would the clock display right now? The universe could have started with the clock reading anything.

At several points in this thread you appear to be taking for granted that the universe is deterministic. But we have no reason to think the real world doesn't contain irreducibly random processes -- and quantum mechanics seems to point in that direction. So if we hypothesize an infinitely old universe in which the clock occasionally unpredictably steps by an amount other than one second per second, then this will have happened infinitely many times by now, and the answer to your question becomes simple: the clock could read anything, regardless of what state it was in in the distant past. We can't get any information about the state of the world far enough in the past because it's obscured by the fog of randomness.

One way or another, there seems to be a source of entropy in the world; does it really make a difference whether it's trickled out to us over eons or was all supplied at one moment we call "the initial state"?

 

[Speakpigeon]

I maintain a distinction between potential and actual infinities, and am happy with the idea that this might have implications for a metaphysics of time, much as you describe.

I'm not sure I could explain why this is good, but, still, I'll take it as such.

As for what the clock should display right now? Wouldn't it just be one second ahead of where it was a second ago?

Sure, but that clearly doesn't answer the question since we can then ask the same question again about what the clock displayed one second ago. And so, your algorithm doesn't work, because if we assume an infinite past, we would ask the same question again and again, and for ever again without you giving any definite time reading.

Obviously, if it was an epistemological question, that would be it. But it's not. It's an ontological question. Presumably, the universe, or reality, cannot possibly hesitate about which state it should be in at any given point in time. Now is such a point in time. So, if the past is infinite, what would be the state of the universe, of reality, of the clock. The answer you give assumes an implicit algorithm whereby the state of the universe now is a function of what it was the moment before. If the past is finite, we can assume a starting point, and a particular state at this point, which would be enough to cause all the subsequent states, including the current state of the universe as we see it. If there's no starting point, or if the starting point is infinitely far away in the past, why should we be in the specific state we are in now, and not in any of the other possible states, of which, as it happens, there is at least a very, very, very large number. What would be the rationale for the universe being in the particular state it is in now?
EB

 

[Phil Scott]

Sure, but that clearly doesn't answer the question since we can then ask the same question again about what the clock displayed one second ago. And so, your algorithm doesn't work, because if we assume an infinite past, we would ask the same question again and again, and for ever again without you giving any definite time reading.

I suggest you are working under the "Principle of Sufficient Reason", which requires such ontological justifications to terminate, and in the case of temporal, causal justification, requires an initial moment of time.

 

[Speakpigeon]

...
And there, twice, you equate "an actual infinity" with having "this actual infinite time" "infinitely far from all other points", that a clock could be set at.
...
And there, you call an infinite past without a starting point "an actual infinity". You seem to be using "actual" in two different senses.

Yes, I used the same expression "actual infinite", but not in different senses. It's the same sense but in distinct cases, with two different reasons for "actual".

Where I was definitely wrong, however, was in my response to juma to limit actuality to the case of a starting point in time.

So it's true I got something mixed up but that came as I was taking into account, on the hoof, the new concept of the mathematicians, effectively new to me.

So, to try and clear things up, there are two distinct cases where I think the expression "actual infinity" applies. One is the Common Man's notion of an infinite past, without a beginning. It's an actual infinity because it has already happened and the number of moments in the past has to be an actual infinity, even without a beginning to time. Here, the past itself may not be an actual infinity since it still only exists one moment at a time, at least in our way of talking about it, but the number of past moments certainly is.

The second is the newly-minted concept of infinity of mathematicians today, with bounds included. It's an actual infinity because it includes its boundary, i.e. a point "at the infinite". This also applies outside considerations of the particular case of an infinite past. So, you could say that an infinite past with a beginning would be doubly actually infinite.

So, you're right, I did get something wrong.

Good job, thanks.
EB

 

[Juma]

I maintain a distinction between potential and actual infinities, and am happy with the idea that this might have implications for a metaphysics of time, much as you describe.

I'm not sure I could explain why this is good, but, still, I'll take it as such.

As for what the clock should display right now? Wouldn't it just be one second ahead of where it was a second ago?

Sure, but that clearly doesn't answer the question since we can then ask the same question again about what the clock displayed one second ago. And so, your algorithm doesn't work, because if we assume an infinite past, we would ask the same question again and again, and for ever again without you giving any definite time reading.

Obviously, if it was an epistemological question, that would be it. But it's not. It's an ontological question. Presumably, the universe, or reality, cannot possibly hesitate about which state it should be in at any given point in time. Now is such a point in time. So, if the past is infinite, what would be the state of the universe, of reality, of the clock. The answer you give assumes an implicit algorithm whereby the state of the universe now is a function of what it was the moment before. If the past is finite, we can assume a starting point, and a particular state at this point, which would be enough to cause all the subsequent states, including the current state of the universe as we see it. If there's no starting point, or if the starting point is infinitely far away in the past, why should we be in the specific state we are in now, and not in any of the other possible states, of which, as it happens, there is at least a very, very, very large number. What would be the rationale for the universe being in the particular state it is in now?
EB

That is very simple to answer: because it is! How could be different than it is?

 

[Speakpigeon]

QUOTE=Speakpigeon;510978]Now, the idea of an infinite past seems something different altogether in this respect. The concept of the past as something already done with, seems to require that in the case of an infinite past, infinity has already happened, and therefore that infinity is a full-blown ontological reality, not just a pure abstraction. At any moment in time, including now, there's been an infinity of seconds, and an infinity of millennia, that have already gone by.

This may be something of a problem to get our heads around it. Think of a simple clock. If we try to assume that such a simple clock had always existed, what time would this clock display right now?
EB

Why do you perceive this as a metaphysical problem specifically for an infinite past? You have exactly the same problem if the past is finite. If we assume the universe began at some definite finite number of seconds in the past, with a clock in it, what time would the clock display right now? The universe could have started with the clock reading anything.

At several points in this thread you appear to be taking for granted that the universe is deterministic. But we have no reason to think the real world doesn't contain irreducibly random processes -- and quantum mechanics seems to point in that direction. So if we hypothesize an infinitely old universe in which the clock occasionally unpredictably steps by an amount other than one second per second, then this will have happened infinitely many times by now, and the answer to your question becomes simple: the clock could read anything, regardless of what state it was in in the distant past. We can't get any information about the state of the world far enough in the past because it's obscured by the fog of randomness.

One way or another, there seems to be a source of entropy in the world; does it really make a difference whether it's trickled out to us over eons or was all supplied at one moment we call "the initial state"?

In this case, we don't expect the present state of the universe to be necessarily determined by its state the moment before. In effect, you have exhibited a mechanism explaining in this case whatever state the universe is in at any moment.

Similarly, we don't expect the state of the universe at the origine of time, in both cases of a finite and an infinite past, to be necessarily determined. Any state will do.

Still, I agree that the problem disappears if we assume a non-deterministic universe.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Sure, but that clearly doesn't answer the question since we can then ask the same question again about what the clock displayed one second ago. And so, your algorithm doesn't work, because if we assume an infinite past, we would ask the same question again and again, and for ever again without you giving any definite time reading.

I suggest you are working under the "Principle of Sufficient Reason", which requires such ontological justifications to terminate, and in the case of temporal, causal justification, requires an initial moment of time.

Assuming the Principle of Sufficient Reason you're talking about stipulates that everything has a reason or a cause, I'm open to the idea that it's wrong. I recently suggested reality (and time itself with it) may well have started without anything having caused it to happen, somewhat like Last Thursdayism.

Still, I certainly implicitly assumed determinism to be true (see my previous post replying to Bomb#20), and determinism is a good explanation to the current state of the universe.

But I didn't assume here an initial moment in time. I only included it as a possible alternative after Beero1000 updated me on current mathematical thinking about the infinite. So, I'm open to somebody finding a solution even without a beginning to time. As I see it, past infinity makes the beginning of time irrelevant.

I would admit to not having thought about that and I guess I just implicitly assumed that most people accepted the validity of the PSR, expecting them to find a way to reconcile the possibility of an infinite past with the PSR.

Could there be anything else to it?
EB