Is infinite chain of effects in the universe possible?

[Link]

And this is wrong. If there are an infinite number of such commanders, it is possible to have no 'highest', each waiting for a command from another, and to always have commands be given.

You are assuming there needs to be a first to get the process going. Instead, consider what happens if the process is always going.



The analogy holds, but your conclusion about the infinite string of commanders doesn't follow. And, similarly, there is no logical issue with an infinite sequence of previous events for every event.

Once again, don't assume there needs to be a start if the process is always happening.

I don't think I can explain things to you any clearer or better. And you and I tend to go in circles and you keep asserting over and over gain same thing and never grasp simple things.

 

[blü 2]

Infinite commanders all different rank to one another. All won't give an order unless one higher up gives it. There is infinite, so who is highest? There is no highest, and so you would wait forever, and never get an order.

I can't think of any way of applying that idea to the real universe, which is made of mass-energy, and in which it may be possible to measure things in units along the number line without limit, but as you more or less say, 'infinity' is not a point on the number line ─ it just refers to the unbounded nature of the number line.

Infinite effects all different stages of time to one another in the universe.

I don't follow. What's an example?

And bear in mind that every second across the universe an absolutely enormous number of events occur at the quantum level which are uncaused in terms of classical physics, and so must be described in statistical terms.

 

[ppp]

This is just one of the components usually debated with the cosmological argument hence I have it in the religious debate section. Although it's part of cosmological argument, the topic is just this component of it.

I put this analogy before:

Infinite commanders all different rank to one another. All won't give an order unless one higher up gives it. There is infinite, so who is highest? There is no highest, and so you would wait forever, and never get an order.

Infinite effects all different stages of time to one another in the universe. All won't come to be unless one previous effects it to be . There is infinite, so who is first? There is no first, so you would wait forever, and never get an effect.

Does the analogy hold?

• You are attempting to treat infinity as a number.
• There are causeless effects.
• If this were a valid analogy, it would apply to your god making an "infinite number" of decisions before deciding to create the universe.

 

[firedragon]

This is just one of the components usually debated with the cosmological argument hence I have it in the religious debate section. Although it's part of cosmological argument, the topic is just this component of it.

I put this analogy before:

Infinite commanders all different rank to one another. All won't give an order unless one higher up gives it. There is infinite, so who is highest? There is no highest, and so you would wait forever, and never get an order.

Infinite effects all different stages of time to one another in the universe. All won't come to be unless one previous effects it to be . There is infinite, so who is first? There is no first, so you would wait forever, and never get an effect.

Does the analogy hold?

Yes that analogy holds. It's probably the most used analogy to explain the absurdity of infinite regression.

 

[firedragon]

• You are attempting to treat infinity as a number.
• There are causeless effects.
• If this were a valid analogy, it would apply to your god making an "infinite number" of decisions before deciding to create the universe.

Is there an example of a "causeless effect" in the real world?

 

[sayak83]

Who said anything about a computer? The probability of picking a rational number from the collection of real numbers in [0,1] is 0.

Your mistake is thinking that probability 0 implies impossibility and using that as an argument against infinity. But the implication does not hold for infinite sets.

@leroy and @Link
What all of this basically boils down to is this:- If the universe is infinite in some way, then its mathematical and logical structure will follow the well-developed mathematics and logic of transfinite sets (and associated logic). In such a structure many of the questions derived from intuitions of finite systems are simply non-sensical (just as questions based on classical intuitions prove to be nonsensical in quantum realms). So...FIRST you must understand the mathematical structure of transfinite sets and THEN you must formulate questions that are meaningful in such systems.
This even before we start with the problematic notion of causality and causation and whether it has any role to play in the fundamental physical structure of the world or not.

I can also demonstrate this with a simple example that should be understandable.
For a regular polygon, the angle between sides increase as the number of sides of the polygon increase. (Equilateral triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon etc.). Now it can be shown mathematically that the angle between two sides of an infinite-sided polygon should be 180 degrees. But this seems absurd...how can you get a closed figure if the angle between two sides is 180 degrees. So you conclude that an infinite sides polygon cannot exist. But that is obviously wrong. Because an infinite sides polygon does exist...its called a circle and the angle between the sides simple transforms into the tangent at any point on the circumference of the circle. This gives a direct and visceral example that intuitive thinking from the finite can only lead you so far....

 

[sayak83]

Yes that analogy holds. It's probably the most used analogy to explain the absurdity of infinite regression.

No it does not.
It can be simply be shown by the following additional questions:-
Assertion: In an infinite sequence of cause-effect chain one has to wait forever to get to any one cause/effect.
Question: At which cause/effect event should I start to wait from in order to prove this assertion in such an infinite sequence?
Answer: From the initial event.
Counter: In an infinite chain there is no initial event. So you are asking me to start the waiting from an event that does not actually exist in the event chain in question. Hence your request is nonsensical. Hence you are getting a nonsensical answer.

 

[exchemist]

I'm talking about virtual particles, they pop into and pop out of existence, cause is unknown.
But just because cause is unknown is not proof that things can be uncaused.

I don't know of any other events for which cause is unknown?

First of all, "proof" is not part of any scientific theory. A theory is just a model of reality - one that successfully predicts what we should expect to observe in nature. So yes, nothing is final. There may always be new discoveries, leading to changes to the model. But the evidence is that there can be uncaused events.

I don't think you are right in saying that in this case the "cause" is "unknown". In the theory, there is no cause required. It's all part of the concept of indeterminacy, which is at the heart of QM (Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle being the best known expression of it). In QM, some properties are simply not even defined exactly, i.e. they have no exact existence. This is a feature of the maths of the theory, which I still dimly recall from my university days: non-commuting operators, Fourier transforms and so forth.

There have been attempts to get rid of quantum indeterminacy - thereby recovering a deterministic universe, of the kind Newton and Einstein would aesthetically prefer - by way of a variety of so-called "hidden variable theories". However none of these has worked. So at this point in human history it really looks as if quantum indeterminacy is a genuine feature of the world.

On the question of examples of uncaused events, the decay at a particular instant of an atom of a radioisotope is another popular example. The radioactivity can be expressed as a probability of decay within a certain time interval, but there is nothing that makes a particular atom decay at a particular moment. (My understanding is you can model it as being induced by vacuum fluctuations, but all that does is push the issue back onto the lack of cause for vacuum fluctuations to fluctuate the way they did, in that place, at that instant. So you still can't get away from quantum indeterminacy.)

 

[1213]

This is just one of the components usually debated with the cosmological argument hence I have it in the religious debate section. Although it's part of cosmological argument, the topic is just this component of it.

I put this analogy before:

Infinite commanders all different rank to one another. All won't give an order unless one higher up gives it. There is infinite, so who is highest? There is no highest, and so you would wait forever, and never get an order.
...

Unless they form a circle. As you may know:

In this world only infinite way is a circle, or a double circle (8).

And it is an interesting idea, if this world would be infinite, without beginning and end, this would have to be circular, all that happens now, would have happened infinite times before.

 

[Polymath257]

I don't think I can explain things to you any clearer or better. And you and I tend to go in circles and you keep asserting over and over gain same thing and never grasp simple things.

I understand your argument and why you think the conclusion follows. You think that there has to be a first commander to get the ball rolling. But that is precisely the place where your argument fails.

Simply because every commander waits until ordered by another does NOT mean that no command is never given. That is *one* stable point of your scenario. But there are others, including one where there is always a command being given from one commander to the next, ordered by the integers. There is no first command. There is always an infinite number of commands already given and also an infinite number yet to be given.

Each commander waits. But there is a wave of commands progressing from -infinity to +infinity.

By the way, there are other scenarios that allow for infinitely many different lines of command, each line of command also being infinite in length and all always going at all times.

Yes, it is a common argument against infinite regress, but it only shows a lack of understanding of how infinite sequences work. It does NOT give a contradiction.

 

[Polymath257]

Salam

It's not a mistake in my scenario. Infinite chain of commanders, none of which are the highest, and each waiting for a command from higher up, would leave no commands in place. Of course, if any given of them were commanding, then the chain that follows it would be in place and all lower commanders would be able to command.

You are assuming that no command is initially in place. That is one possibility.

But there are others, like I said. It is possible that there is a wave of commands that are *always* in place. In that scenario, there is no highest commander and each waits for the order of a higher commander. And yet, there are always commands being given all the way back in an infinite regress.

The point of the commanders was to apply an analogy. If you can see where the analogy fails then show it. Obviously if the whole chain was ever in motion it would be able to continue. The argument by analogy is to show it's not possible with the condition. When analogy applies to time, and the condition in time effect and cause, it shows infinite chain of events preceded by effects and causes of one another are impossible.

If it is *always* in motion, then it will always continue. You are assuming that there is a time when the chain in not in motion. That assumption may be wrong.

The analogy does not fail. In fact, it is perfectly good. But it doesn't give the conclusion you think it does.

 

[Polymath257]

Is there an example of a "causeless effect" in the real world?

yes. The decay of a muon.

 

[Polymath257]

There have been attempts to get rid of quantum indeterminacy - thereby recovering a deterministic universe, of the kind Newton and Einstein would aesthetically prefer - by way of a variety of so-called "hidden variable theories". However none of these has worked. So at this point in human history it really looks as if quantum indeterminacy is a genuine feature of the world.

Much more is true. We know that a very wide range of hidden particle theories (local causes, deterministic) are simply inconsistent with observations. This follows from the observed violations of Bell's inequalities (and others that involve time as well).

So it isn't just that we don't know of a deterministic theory that agrees with observations, we *know* that no deterministic theory with local causes can possibly agree with observations.

Now, if you allow for instantaneous causation between galaxies, you might be able to regain determinism, but you still fail to have predictability.

On the question of examples of uncaused events, the decay at a particular instant of an atom of a radioisotope is another popular example. The radioactivity can be expressed as a probability of decay within a certain time interval, but there is nothing that makes a particular atom decay at a particular moment. (My understanding is you can model it as being induced by vacuum fluctuations, but all that does is push the issue back onto the lack of cause for vacuum fluctuations to fluctuate the way they did, in that place, at that instant. So you still can't get away from quantum indeterminacy.)

There is no difference between a uranium atom that decays today and one that doesn't decay for another billion years.

 

[Link]

Yes that analogy holds. It's probably the most used analogy to explain the absurdity of infinite regression.

Salam

Mine was a color coded version.

 

[leroy]

Who said anything about a computer? The probability of picking a rational number from the collection of real numbers in [0,1] is 0.

Yes which is why it is impossible to pick a random number between 0-1 you cant do it,it´s an impossible task , any number that you pick would be non random and/or limited to an finite amount of options.

Your mistake is thinking that probability 0 implies impossibility

Yes that is exactly what I think, and quite frankly it’s seems trivially true.


Probability zero implies impossibility this is true by definition, and can be shown to be true mathematically.

 

[leroy]

There have been attempts to get rid of quantum indeterminacy - thereby recovering a deterministic universe, of the kind Newton and Einstein would aesthetically prefer - by way of a variety of so-called "hidden variable theories". However none of these has worked. So at this point in human history it really looks as if quantum indeterminacy is a genuine feature of the world.

It would be nice and poetic to see that Einstein was right all along, intellectually I have no idea which interpretation is true, but my heart is with deterministic interpretations (Bohm´s interpretation perhaps)

 

[Polymath257]

Yes which is why it is impossible to pick a random number between 0-1 you cant do it,it´s an impossible task , any number that you pick would be non random and/or limited to an finite amount of options.

Yes that is exactly what I think, and quite frankly it’s seems trivially true.


Probability zero implies impossibility this is true by definition, and can be shown to be true mathematically.

No. In fact, the opposite is shown mathematically. Just pick up any book on probability where they discuss measure theory.

Any countably infinite set has zero measure. In other words, the probability of that event is zero.

Example: Probability Theory One book by M. Loeve

 

[Polymath257]

It would be nice and poetic to see that Einstein was right all along, intellectually I have no idea which interpretation is true, but my heart is with deterministic interpretations (Bohm´s interpretation perhaps)

There are many problems with Bohmian mechanics.

The first is non-local causality. That alone sort of defeats the whole point of causality.

Another is that it doesn't generalize well to relativistic situations.

Another is that it can't handle anti-matter.

Another is that the actual theory is more complicated and harder to use.

While Bohmian ideas seem to be interesting to philosophers, almost no working physicist uses them. And for good reasons.

 

[exchemist]

It would be nice and poetic to see that Einstein was right all along, intellectually I have no idea which interpretation is true, but my heart is with deterministic interpretations (Bohm´s interpretation perhaps)

Lots of people have thought that. But it seems not to be the way the universe works, at least as far as current knowledge of it goes.

Personally, I find quantum indeterminacy quite aesthetically attractive. The idea that there are some things we can't know exactly, not even in principle, seems to fit human experience and to encourage a sobering humility, I find.

 

[Polymath257]

Lots of people have thought that. But it seems not to be the way the universe works, at least as far as current knowledge of it goes.

Personally, I find quantum indeterminacy quite aesthetically attractive. The idea that there are some things we can't know exactly, not even in principle, seems to fit human experience and to encourage a sobering humility, I find.

I find a similar thing in the independence results in mathematics. No matter how good your axiom system, there are statements that can neither be proved nor disproved.