The idea of an infinite past

[untermensche]

I'm not saying that ''we understand everything'' - I'm not saying anything. It's a question. I am asking you to explain your own rules and principles; that 'everything that exists (detectable) must have a beginning and a cause' in relation to an initial beginning, the first cause.

I am talking about the impossibility of real completed infinities.

It is a subject that stands on it's own.

Bringing in some conversation from left field about causes is a distraction.

It is not in any way a demonstration that a real completed infinity is possible.

Try to stick to the matter at hand. Your diversions are a totally different topic.

 

[Elixir]

It is not in any way a demonstration that a real completed infinity is possible.

By definition, infinities are not "completed" - they keep going.

 

[Juma]

It is not in any way a demonstration that a real completed infinity is possible.

By definition, infinities are not "completed" - they keep going.

What is that supposed to mean? Of course infinite sets can be complete. Take the set of all real values from 1 to 2. Why wouldnt that be complete? In what meaning is that set not complete.

 

[Elixir]

It is not in any way a demonstration that a real completed infinity is possible.

By definition, infinities are not "completed" - they keep going.

What is that supposed to mean? Of course infinite sets can be complete. Take the set of all real values from 1 to 2. Why wouldnt that be complete? In what meaning is that set not complete.

He wants you to LIST all those values. You can't "complete" such a list, therefore (per Unter) no "completed infinity".

 

[untermensche]

It is not in any way a demonstration that a real completed infinity is possible.

By definition, infinities are not "completed" - they keep going.

What is that supposed to mean? Of course infinite sets can be complete. Take the set of all real values from 1 to 2. Why wouldnt that be complete? In what meaning is that set not complete.

The set has endless elements.

What is the first real and what is the last in that set if the set completes?

You have a set that approaches 1 and approaches 2. And no matter how many elements are named infinite elements are not. You can never reduce the unnamed elements.

It is magical. Not real world.

For an event to occur it must be expressed.

I am talking about an expressed infinity. Not an assumed infinity. Two different things.

 

[Beer With Straw]

If I am addicted to anything it is the laughs I get as one person after another twists themselves into a pretzel trying to demonstrate infinity could be something real.

After I play with them for a while they suddenly realize the stupidity of their arguments and leave in a grand childish huff.

It is very amusing from my end.

To get to see adults claim that an infinite series completes if we just call it a set. Magical thinking.

The laughs you get from stuff like that are priceless.

Are you laughing at me?

 

[untermensche]

If I am addicted to anything it is the laughs I get as one person after another twists themselves into a pretzel trying to demonstrate infinity could be something real.

After I play with them for a while they suddenly realize the stupidity of their arguments and leave in a grand childish huff.

It is very amusing from my end.

To get to see adults claim that an infinite series completes if we just call it a set. Magical thinking.

The laughs you get from stuff like that are priceless.

Are you laughing at me?

If you could demonstrate how an infinity could be expressed and not just assumed you would end my laughter.

 

[Poppa Popobawa]

I don't plan to rejoin this thread in an ongoing capacity, but I thought this might be of interested to any
"combatant" parties in the thread . . .

---

Stephen Hawking - The Beginning of Time.

Located at: http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures.html

It is a lecture of Hawking's on the topic at hand. I recommend to all that they read it, (download and read offline if you like).
Hawing's conclusion is :-

Stephen Hawking - 1996
http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures.html

"The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever".

He puts in quite a lot of discussion as to how the universe can have had a beginning, and that "the no boundary
proposal can explain all the rich and varied structure, of the world we live in." Hawking is at pains to point out that no
supernatural explanation is either necessary or involved, (no god ~ no magic).


One of the most compelling arguments for me is the one of entropy. He quotes cosmologist, Sir Arthur Eddington -
"Don't worry if your theory doesn't agree with the observations, because they are probably wrong."

But, Hawking says, ". . . if your theory disagrees with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is in bad trouble . . .

. . . In fact, the theory that the universe has existed forever is in serious difficulty with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Second Law, states that disorder always increases with time".

---

The point is that if the universe has infinite age, then it would also have infinite entropy or disorder, and the fact is evident.
The universe does not have infinite disorder, (it's not in a state of heat death). This means that it cannot have experienced
increasing entropy over an infinity of time, so it can't be of infinite age.

Cheers,

Pops.

 

[Speakpigeon]

The point is that if the universe has infinite age, then it would also have infinite entropy or disorder, and the fact is evident.
The universe does not have infinite disorder, (it's not in a state of heat death). This means that it cannot have experienced
increasing entropy over an infinity of time, so it can't be of infinite age.

You have your methodology wrong here. It's certainly a good idea to help your science with some philosophical musings, it's been done by the best scientists in the past and I believe it's routinely done by all of them, possibly often without them realising they do it, but it's definitely a mistake to think your science tells you when some philosophical idea is wrong. There's really only logic that can tell you such a thing and even that could be disputed.

Facts are just that very small part of reality we think we know.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

What is that supposed to mean? Of course infinite sets can be complete. Take the set of all real values from 1 to 2. Why wouldnt that be complete? In what meaning is that set not complete.

He wants you to LIST all those values. You can't "complete" such a list, therefore (per Unter) no "completed infinity".

Well, it is like asking that incommensurate infinities should be commensurate. It's just idiotic. Yes, we can't count from zero to one! We can't even go beyond counting zero, for God's sake!

Equally, it's true we couldn't finish counting even commensurate infinities, and the set of Integers itself to begin with.

Still, we all know that, and mathematicians and physicists all know that, and still they don't see why that would make infinities somehow an impossible reality. And certainly nobody here ever provided any good reason for that.

Also, I don't think anyone understands what "complete" would mean exactly in this context. There haven't been any clear explanation about that, even after more than 600 posts in this thread alone.

I think at some point you have to conclude that the guy you're talking to just has a serious personal issue and that no amount of rationality will ever solve his problems.

It's legitimate to try it but sane people can only stop at some point because the guy just repeats himself without ever explaining what he means.

Plus, his English sucks.
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

The point is that if the universe has infinite age, then it would also have infinite entropy or disorder, and the fact is evident.
The universe does not have infinite disorder, (it's not in a state of heat death). This means that it cannot have experienced
increasing entropy over an infinity of time, so it can't be of infinite age.

Cheers,

Pops.

Without wishing to claim that I do, will or can ever understand as much as Stephen Hawking did, I wonder if it's possible that he was right, but only about the relatively miniscule (possibly infinitesimal) part of the universe which it's possible for us to know anything at all about. I'm thinking of the analogy of the blind men trying to describe an elephant.

Or, to put it better than I can:

"Thus the vast expanse of our visible universe, Guth said, is but an insignificant speck within just our own inflating pocket universe. And this universe itself is only one pocket universe among an innumerable or even an infinite number of other pocket universes."

https://www.space.com/31465-is-our-universe-just-one-of-many-in-a-multiverse.html

 

[ruby sparks]

It is not in any way a demonstration that a real completed infinity is possible.

By definition, infinities are not "completed" - they keep going.

What is that supposed to mean? Of course infinite sets can be complete. Take the set of all real values from 1 to 2. Why wouldnt that be complete? In what meaning is that set not complete.

This is one aspect of infinity that blows my mind. Take a cube of size 1cm x 1cm x 1cm. It is, it would seem, complete and bounded, but on the other hand it can be subdivided and subdivided infinitely. But in a manner of speaking, you can literally put infinity in your pocket.



Menger Sponge. Only 3 iterations shown, for convenience.

This would suggest that if we made the units of time infinitely small, the universe would have existed for an infinite amount of time (or at least an infinite number of infinito-seconds). On the other hand, I am thinking that there is something badly wrong with that reasoning.

 

[Beer With Straw]

If I am addicted to anything it is the laughs I get as one person after another twists themselves into a pretzel trying to demonstrate infinity could be something real.

After I play with them for a while they suddenly realize the stupidity of their arguments and leave in a grand childish huff.

It is very amusing from my end.

To get to see adults claim that an infinite series completes if we just call it a set. Magical thinking.

The laughs you get from stuff like that are priceless.

Are you laughing at me?

If you could demonstrate how an infinity could be expressed and not just assumed you would end my laughter.

I indicated that infinity wasn't a Real number and is a limit.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I indicated that infinity wasn't a Real number and is a limit.

That's what I thought myself until I was remonstrated by this Beero1000 dude. It turns out that while I was busy somewhere else, mathemagicians have conceived in secret of infinities whereby the limit or boundary of an infinite set is part of the set itself, what I choose to call an actual infinity. Look here:

Infinity is conceived by mathematicians as the purely notional limit of an unbounded series of terms. In this sense, infinity is not thought of, conceived, as anything like an ontological reality.

Not really. That idea is outdated by 100+ years, and persists because the first (and usually only) time most people see infinity in math classes is usually in the context of precalculus or calculus, where it is used as a shorthand for a version of the epsilon-delta limit definitions, which don't formally require the infinite at all. Mathematicians actually see being 'infinite' as a property of objects, where the infinite numbers are sizes (or orders) like any other.

Not exactly properly explained but still good enough.

And then Juma just reminded us all that such a simple thing as the interval of Real numbers between 0 and 1 contains an actual infinity of numbers:

By definition, infinities are not "completed" - they keep going.

What is that supposed to mean? Of course infinite sets can be complete. Take the set of all real values from 1 to 2. Why wouldnt that be complete? In what meaning is that set not complete.

See?

Hey, try to keep up to date, man!
EB

 

[untermensche]

This is one aspect of infinity that blows my mind. Take a cube of size 1cm x 1cm x 1cm. It is, it would seem, complete and bounded, but on the other hand it can be subdivided and subdivided infinitely. But in a manner of speaking, you can literally put infinity in your pocket.

I am talking about a real completed infinity.

You do not have any kind of real infinity there.

You have an infinite process that can never finish.

You will never reach your infinity.

You confuse advancing without limit with actually having an infinity.

 

[untermensche]

I indicated that infinity wasn't a Real number and is a limit.

A limit is something you can theoretically reach.

There is no "infinity" to reach.

An infinite series progresses WITHOUT limit.

You can have an infinite series approach something but it can't approach "infinity"

 

[untermensche]

Not really. That idea is outdated by 100+ years, and persists because the first (and usually only) time most people see infinity in math classes is usually in the context of precalculus or calculus, where it is used as a shorthand for a version of the epsilon-delta limit definitions, which don't formally require the infinite at all. Mathematicians actually see being 'infinite' as a property of objects, where the infinite numbers are sizes (or orders) like any other.

Not exactly properly explained but still good enough.

It's not real. It's not applicable to reality.

Objects do not have infinite properties or infinity as a property. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

The absurdity is not avoided by talking about different kinds of infinities.

 

[Juma]

What is that supposed to mean? Of course infinite sets can be complete. Take the set of all real values from 1 to 2. Why wouldnt that be complete? In what meaning is that set not complete.

He wants you to LIST all those values. You can't "complete" such a list, therefore (per Unter) no "completed infinity".

Then you have define what the operation ”LIST” is.
If it means that performing some operation that takes a specified time then it can still complete: if has always been going on.

 

[untermensche]

"Always going on" is just a miracle phrase that has no explanation or possible evidence.

If the time before last week was "always going on" then the start of last week could be pushed back without end.

Last week could never occur in such an absurd magical situation.

 

[DBT]

I'm not saying that ''we understand everything'' - I'm not saying anything. It's a question. I am asking you to explain your own rules and principles; that 'everything that exists (detectable) must have a beginning and a cause' in relation to an initial beginning, the first cause.

I am talking about the impossibility of real completed infinities.

It is a subject that stands on it's own.

Bringing in some conversation from left field about causes is a distraction.

It is not in any way a demonstration that a real completed infinity is possible.

Try to stick to the matter at hand. Your diversions are a totally different topic.

It's not that I am diverting but that you are avoiding problems that are being raised. I am asking you to explain the problem of infinite regression if, as you claim, everything that exists (detectable) must have a beginning and a cause, which in turn must have a beginning and a cause, ad infinitum. This being a major flaw in your proposition.