Something From Nothing

[SIB]

Depends on what we are looking for. I agree, there is nothing we can describe that isn't from a human perspective. That's a given. I am looking to see if we can come up with a description that matches what we see. Some will call it god, others anti-god, I will say ok, I don't. I have no such emotional connections.

"Alive" matches what we see and experience we see better than lovecraftmen pillars in a story, to me anyway. It offers and explanation, a mechanism, and makes predictions. Like the waste products we call humans.

 

[Jarhyn]

Depends on what we are looking for. I agree, there is nothing we can describe that isn't from a human perspective. That's a given. I am looking to see if we can come up with a description that matches what we see. Some will call it god, others anti-god, I will say ok, I don't. I have no such emotional connections.

"Alive" matches what we see and experience we see better than lovecraftmen pillars in a story, to me anyway. It offers and explanation, a mechanism, and makes predictions. Like the waste products we call humans.

Well, it's not really "alive" in any meaningful sense.

I would invite you to read At The Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft to understand what I mean.

It is NOT that we can only see from a human perspective but rather doing so, from an alien perspective, is hard and not something often taken on.

For it to be alive, it would need non-chaotic correlation and organization between it's parts. Gravity creates organization and correlation but it's all just chaotic and noisy, arising from direct process rather than thoughtful consideration or even a necessity unto a survival.

It's dynamic but it's not alive.

 

[lostone]

Alive matches a Lovecraftian deity. A process or mechanism seems more likely. Einsteinian Eternalism or a Block Universe also offers a possibility. And then there is the Eternal Return, a repeating universe.

 

[Jarhyn]

Alive matches a Lovecraftian deity. A process or mechanism seems more likely. Einsteinian Eternalism or a Block Universe also offers a possibility. And then there is the Eternal Return, a repeating universe.

Oh, that's the thing. I really don't want to spoil it and it's not long, just a novella.

Long story short, and it's something that, honestly you would have had to read more of my bullshit than anyone has time for to get otherwise:

I'm of the thought that stuff like that is indeterminate until it has to be determined, that it doesn't condense into a causality until it is caused such that it must.

As such, our universe is caused by everything and nothing of the set of things that create it simultaneously.

The example I like to use for this is to imagine the continuity of a game of Mario.

Ignoring the fact that Mario lacks self awareness, perhaps placing some randomized neural network of some kind in Plato's (Socrates's?) Cave, thus to see the game played.

"Mario" cannot know the difference between if it sees in a fixed sequence at fixed frames YOU holding the controller or ME. To "Mario", our AI watching the wall of this cave, it is the same universe, the same event.

Two different causes lead, here, to the same effect. It is the same game, it is the same "universe" being experienced.

If we were take the same AI process (assuming determinacy of process) and clone it, and subject one to your gameplay and one to mine, they would end up the same mind of the same observations, because it is the same gameplay.

We can extend this further.

If you care to download Dwarf Fortress, a stupid game where you are literally a god literally creating a universe full of thinking entities which are more or less about as smart as a worker ant, you can input a seed.

I can input the same settings and the same seed and end up with a universe with the same history, and assuming the inputs it receives from each of us are framewise identical, it will be the se universe, with all the same events. We could save our games on the same frame and they would contain all the same numbers.

Different mechanisms may yield the same outcome, and so all mechanisms which yield the outcome do so equally.

They share the same identity, until the probability wave is forced to collapse and the AI finds a way to exit it's cave, until the Dwarf (to be fair, I intend on replacing these with AIs once The Toady One releases his source) can effect an access violation that doesn't cause a fault.

At that point, the instances will differentiate.

The only question is whether or not something differentiates this universe.

Of course, I'm an infidel, so I don't really expect anything has and I'm not sure whether we have within us the power to effect such an access violation.

I guess we'll find out soon when LHC goes looking for gravitons, and if we can figure out anything useful with that knowledge.

 

[SIB]

Alive matches a Lovecraftian deity. A process or mechanism seems more likely. Einsteinian Eternalism or a Block Universe also offers a possibility. And then there is the Eternal Return, a repeating universe.

Alive would be one trait of that deity. But its not an over seer type thing. "Alive" is just a series of mechanisms. A short version: The hierarchy of structure goes from atom to molecule. In something we classify as alive, it goes to cell, multicell, then to systems. I just don't see the that structure stopping at humans. I see a few more steps but I don't go as far as gaia nor do I have an emotional connection to it. It is what it is for me.

We may be in a living system. For me, that's what it looks like anyway. Its predicts evolution, the system "aliveness" means it will change to better match conditional changes through time. And the reverse claims of "not alive" just doesn't match as well.

It predicts some people feeling connected to something bigger. We are a seriously more complex set of proteins that may sense its part of something bigger. Its not a grand purpose or serving thing, its just a thing. For me that is. Much like a cell in your big toe being complex enough to sense its part of something bigger.

But it is not a bible god type thing to me at all. I guess pantheist would understand it.

 

[SIB]

Alive matches a Lovecraftian deity. A process or mechanism seems more likely. Einsteinian Eternalism or a Block Universe also offers a possibility. And then there is the Eternal Return, a repeating universe.

Oh, that's the thing. I really don't want to spoil it and it's not long, just a novella.

Long story short, and it's something that, honestly you would have had to read more of my bullshit than anyone has time for to get otherwise:

I'm of the thought that stuff like that is indeterminate until it has to be determined, that it doesn't condense into a causality until it is caused such that it must.

As such, our universe is caused by everything and nothing of the set of things that create it simultaneously.

The example I like to use for this is to imagine the continuity of a game of Mario.

Ignoring the fact that Mario lacks self awareness, perhaps placing some randomized neural network of some kind in Plato's (Socrates's?) Cave, thus to see the game played.

"Mario" cannot know the difference between if it sees in a fixed sequence at fixed frames YOU holding the controller or ME. To "Mario", our AI watching the wall of this cave, it is the same universe, the same event.

Two different causes lead, here, to the same effect. It is the same game, it is the same "universe" being experienced.

If we were take the same AI process (assuming determinacy of process) and clone it, and subject one to your gameplay and one to mine, they would end up the same mind of the same observations, because it is the same gameplay.

We can extend this further.

If you care to download Dwarf Fortress, a stupid game where you are literally a god literally creating a universe full of thinking entities which are more or less about as smart as a worker ant, you can input a seed.

I can input the same settings and the same seed and end up with a universe with the same history, and assuming the inputs it receives from each of us are framewise identical, it will be the se universe, with all the same events. We could save our games on the same frame and they would contain all the same numbers.

Different mechanisms may yield the same outcome, and so all mechanisms which yield the outcome do so equally.

They share the same identity, until the probability wave is forced to collapse and the AI finds a way to exit it's cave, until the Dwarf (to be fair, I intend on replacing these with AIs once The Toady One releases his source) can effect an access violation that doesn't cause a fault.

At that point, the instances will differentiate.

The only question is whether or not something differentiates this universe.

Of course, I'm an infidel, so I don't really expect anything has and I'm not sure whether we have within us the power to effect such an access violation.

I guess we'll find out soon when LHC goes looking for gravitons, and if we can figure out anything useful with that knowledge.

To me, I stop at this universe. We can't speak to "outside of it". Heck, we don't even know the inside of it.

We can describe the here and now to the best of our ability. With the understanding its ok to change our mind with new information. I have no idea why people follow a 2000 year old description. It just doesn't make sense to me. Its like not letting go of the candle.

 

[lostone]

Alive matches a Lovecraftian deity. A process or mechanism seems more likely. Einsteinian Eternalism or a Block Universe also offers a possibility. And then there is the Eternal Return, a repeating universe.

Alive would be one trait of that deity. But its not an over seer type thing. "Alive" is just a series of mechanisms. A short version: The hierarchy of structure goes from atom to molecule. In something we classify as alive, it goes to cell, multicell, then to systems. I just don't see the that structure stopping at humans. I see a few more steps but I don't go as far as gaia nor do I have an emotional connection to it. It is what it is for me.

We may be in a living system. For me, that's what it looks like anyway. Its predicts evolution, the system "aliveness" means it will change to better match conditional changes through time. And the reverse claims of "not alive" just doesn't match as well.

It predicts some people feeling connected to something bigger. We are a seriously more complex set of proteins that may sense its part of something bigger. Its not a grand purpose or serving thing, its just a thing. For me that is. Much like a cell in your big toe being complex enough to sense its part of something bigger.

But it is not a bible god type thing to me at all. I guess pantheist would understand it.

Panpsychism or panentheism also may be decent enough approximations

 

[SIB]

Alive matches a Lovecraftian deity. A process or mechanism seems more likely. Einsteinian Eternalism or a Block Universe also offers a possibility. And then there is the Eternal Return, a repeating universe.

Alive would be one trait of that deity. But its not an over seer type thing. "Alive" is just a series of mechanisms. A short version: The hierarchy of structure goes from atom to molecule. In something we classify as alive, it goes to cell, multicell, then to systems. I just don't see the that structure stopping at humans. I see a few more steps but I don't go as far as gaia nor do I have an emotional connection to it. It is what it is for me.

We may be in a living system. For me, that's what it looks like anyway. Its predicts evolution, the system "aliveness" means it will change to better match conditional changes through time. And the reverse claims of "not alive" just doesn't match as well.

It predicts some people feeling connected to something bigger. We are a seriously more complex set of proteins that may sense its part of something bigger. Its not a grand purpose or serving thing, its just a thing. For me that is. Much like a cell in your big toe being complex enough to sense its part of something bigger.

But it is not a bible god type thing to me at all. I guess pantheist would understand it.

Panpsychism or panentheism also may be decent enough approximations

Maybe,

But some people freak out when they see the letters, in the wrong order, msieht and doG. They lose sight of what is being said. Sometimes (especially on the internet) It gets hard to talk around people hyper focused on the word "dog". In person its a lot easier. People agree that religion can be very bad and a deity probably isn't the best we can do. Then we move on to how the universe works to the best of our ability.

 

[lostone]

A problem I see with gaia or some large scale structure of life is that we, as a species, seem to be hell bent on making this planet uninhabitable. As if this large scale structure is trying to commit suicide.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

A working thory does not have to reflect reality exactly, it has to predict measurable outcomes.

And a lightbulb doesn’t need to work, it just needs to look like it works. But then you need to figure out why it looks like it works.
The fact that you can create a rats nest of fields and photons doesn’t explain the results of any (let alone all) of the experiments that are consistent with virtual particles as physically real. If I’m wrong about that, you should be the first engineer to win a Nobel prize in physics.

This has been done. Google Lamb shift. Virtual Particles explain why atoms act as they do. Willis Lamb won the Nobel prize in physics in 1955 for his work on this

 

[Jarhyn]

A working thory does not have to reflect reality exactly, it has to predict measurable outcomes.

And a lightbulb doesn’t need to work, it just needs to look like it works. But then you need to figure out why it looks like it works.
The fact that you can create a rats nest of fields and photons doesn’t explain the results of any (let alone all) of the experiments that are consistent with virtual particles as physically real. If I’m wrong about that, you should be the first engineer to win a Nobel prize in physics.

This has been done. Google Lamb shift. Virtual Particles explain why atoms act as they do. Willis Lamb won the Nobel prize in physics in 1955 for his work on this

That was a fantastic little dive into some particle physics!

 

[lostone]

A working theory is viewed as law until a theory comes up that describes reality better.

 

[steve_bank]

A working thory does not have to reflect reality exactly, it has to predict measurable outcomes.

And a lightbulb doesn’t need to work, it just needs to look like it works. But then you need to figure out why it looks like it works.
The fact that you can create a rats nest of fields and photons doesn’t explain the results of any (let alone all) of the experiments that are consistent with virtual particles as physically real. If I’m wrong about that, you should be the first engineer to win a Nobel prize in physics.

This has been done. Google Lamb shift. Virtual Particles explain why atoms act as they do. Willis Lamb won the Nobel prize in physics in 1955 for his work on this

Long before quantum mechanics George Simon Ohm discoveed the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance in an electrical circuit.

Ohm's Law E = I * R. Voltage across a resistor equals current times resistance.

There were no electronics and digital meters. He made measurements using D'Arsonval electromechanical meters. The idea of a quantized electron was unheard of.

Ohm's Law today remains a cornerstone of diaily electronics. It is predictive in terms of instrumentation. It does not reflect what we now take to be a depper reality in terms of quantum mechanics.

A working theory does not have to be exactly correct as to reality. Newtonian mechanics and Newtonian gravity.

 

[SIB]

Literally something from literally nothing would seem to be a physical impossibility. In the same fashion, a "first cause", to get stuff moving, would present the same problem. So, it would seem natural to conclude that "stuff-in-motion" has always been and always will be.

How long has this been going on? Well, the notion of "eternity" comes to mind. Eternity is infinite time. And, where would we find ourselves in this infinite time line? Right in the middle seems as reasonable as anywhere else, with one eternity behind us and another eternity in front of us. (Yep. 1/2 of eternity = eternity. Eternity is funny that way).

This would suggest that entropy is a purely local phenomena, and that, within infinity, no matter is ever added and no matter is ever lost. If matter were ever lost, then, given that an eternity has already past, it would all be gone by now. But, here we are, looking around, and seeing stuff in motion. So, stuff in motion must be eternal.

It would seem reasonable then that our universe (and any other universes too far away to see) would follow a Big Bounce cosmology, alternating eternally from a Big Bang of expansion into a new universe followed by a Big Crunch as matter is re-accumulated into a very large Black Hole that eventually reaches some tipping point and explodes into another Big Bang, ad infinitum.

But what about the accelerating expansion of our current universe? Perhaps that is a problem of relative viewpoint. We know that gravity causes acceleration as things fall toward each other. Perhaps, instead of expanding, we are accelerating back to the middle, the center of gravity from which we originally sprang. And we are not viewing the stars beyond us as moving away from us, but it is instead us, falling away from them, at an accelerating rate back toward the center, in a Big Crunch, and on our way to the next Big Bang.

I disagree. Sort of ...

We don't know enough to say that way. Changing it to "Since we have never seen something from nothing there is no reason to say it has." Or "We could have came from something or nothing. I think something because we have never seen something from nothing."

Either way, a deity and no god or gods of any type are the least reliable stances we have today. In terms of statement of belief about "something more" that is. to me anywayz.

 

[SIB]

A working thory does not have to reflect reality exactly, it has to predict measurable outcomes.

And a lightbulb doesn’t need to work, it just needs to look like it works. But then you need to figure out why it looks like it works.
The fact that you can create a rats nest of fields and photons doesn’t explain the results of any (let alone all) of the experiments that are consistent with virtual particles as physically real. If I’m wrong about that, you should be the first engineer to win a Nobel prize in physics.

This has been done. Google Lamb shift. Virtual Particles explain why atoms act as they do. Willis Lamb won the Nobel prize in physics in 1955 for his work on this

Long before quantum mechanics George Simon Ohm discoveed the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance in an electrical circuit.

Ohm's Law E = I * R. Voltage across a resistor equals current times resistance.

There were no electronics and digital meters. He made measurements using D'Arsonval electromechanical meters. The idea of a quantized electron was unheard of.

Ohm's Law today remains a cornerstone of diaily electronics. It is predictive in terms of instrumentation. It does not reflect what we now take to be a depper reality in terms of quantum mechanics.

A working theory does not have to be exactly correct as to reality. Newtonian mechanics and Newtonian gravity.

exactly ... the cell phone is the tangle example of how we don;t know far more than we do know but its enough to say "Using what we know to describe what we do not know is more reliable than using what we don't know to describe what we don't know."

And maybe even more important is the "presupposition" trhat "Its ok, even required, to be allowed to change our minds when we get new information."

 

[steve_bank]

That's quite a tongue twsiter, but yes.

 

[SIB]

The problem is some people can't sit down and sort out what is being said. Even worse, some people are using tong twisters as mind benders to mislead people. Atheist and theist a like in my opinion. I call them fundy think types and the word religion-ist fits.

 

[steve_bank]

There is money to be made selling tongue twisters to theist and atheist alike.

 

[Politesse]

In my experience, there are two kinds of folks: those who grok the reason religionists and mystics ask where everything came from, and those who don't. They are unable to communicate with one another, because both groupings tend to presume their favored epistemology is part of the question. The clever retort "WELL WHO MADE GOD THEN" sounds ridiculous to someone whose real question was why anything exists at all, and the clever retort "WELL WHO MADE THE BIG BANG HAPPEN THEN" sounds ridiculous to someone trying to explain why the material facts of the universe explain themselves without need for magic. The problem isn't that someone has "the answer" to the question and someone else does not, but that different worldviews lead to very different questions, even if they are stated in very similar or even identical terms.

 

[steve_bank]

I grok, you grok, together we grok in fullness.....