Putting aside the term God, would you agree?

[Quintessence]

I really can't understand what it means that something simply becomes.

There's a few different ways to think about this. When considering these, please bear in mind I write in paragraphs for a reason, and taking a single sentence out of context (which it felt like you might have been doing earlier) is probably going to misread what I'm intending to convey with these ideas.

On one level, this is ironically part of the point. There are limits to human experiences and human understanding. Personally, when I run into something that I have trouble understanding, my response isn't to write it off as impossible but to recognize that as symptomatic of my own limitations. On this topic in particular, I'm aware that humans are wired to think in terms of causality. That's going to bias our thought processes to seek causality and find even where there is none. We even have words to describe acausal phenomena - "coincidence." If you want to try and think outside of the causality box - what it means for something to "simply become" - think about phenomena you write off as coincidence as a starting point. The visceral experience of the now, in many respects, transcends causality and simply is. Pardon if this is getting a bit on the mystical wiggity-woo end of things, but I'm not sure how else to put it. If you've ever done any Buddhist-style mindfulness meditations you may have some context for what I'm trying to get at.

On another level, while I certainly perceive things in terms of causality as much as the next human, I've an extensive background in hard science to the point I'm keenly aware of how much causality is oversimplified. My brain twitches inside whenever I hear someone say "a cause" as if such things are ever singular or straightforward. When you study ecology, it's a study of relationships among dozens upon dozens of different variables. You learn to see how all things are interdependent. To put things in another way, you learn to see that everything is both causal and effectual at the same time. As the line gets blurred between cause and effect, you end up seeing cycles, exchanges of energy, and connectedness. Suddenly talking about just "causes" (and especially "cause" singular) stops making a lot of sense to you. It's at odds with how you see the world as you see how this causes that, and that feeds back into this, this here circles around back to that, and on and on.

Don't know if this clarifies or not. Also, I wrote this post yesterday and must have forgotten to post it, so... there's that.

 

[Polymath257]

Krauss is a crackpot in his theory of ex nihilo garbage. I have an hypothesis of a perpetual motion machine i would lile to sell you.

The difference, of course, is that Krauss' version is consistent with the known laws of physics. That is sort of the point.

 

[LuisDantas]

Krauss is a crackpot in his theory of ex nihilo garbage.

Such vitriol for no good reason.

I have an hypothesis of a perpetual motion machine i would lile to sell you.

I realize that.

 

[David T]

The difference, of course, is that Krauss' version is consistent with the known laws of physics. That is sort of the point.

Ex nihilo is garbage its called magic. Based on your logic the tardis is a hypothesis.

 

[Polymath257]

Ex nihilo is garbage its called magic. Based on your logic the tardis is a hypothesis.

is the tardis consistent with known laws of physics? No.

Is Krauss' hypothesis consistent with known laws of physics? Yes.

 

[exchemist]

Once it is propotional, it cannot be random.
Maybe the randomness is which of the particle decays, yet we base our entire "back dating" on this radioactive decay as we know there is ratio by which the decay works. if it was nothing but a random process that has no order, we couldn't have rely on it to back date fossils.
event is not a mechanism.
Gravity exists... The fact we don't know what caused gravity, (or the initial force that gravity emerged from) doesn't mean it just is.

It is weird to me that people think that a stable, ordered process can't be formed without something that made it work as it does.
Maybe i am wrong, obviously. we have no real knowledge about anything. but in my reality, whenever i see something that "acts" in a specific way, regardless of how exactly it operates that way, i assume that something else made it work this way.
When i see something that has no order (which i haven't yet ) i can assume it has nothing but randomness in it and nothing "orders" it into working the way it does.

We already discovered that there is no real randomness in our universe. non, not even one single thing in our existence is considered random.

Agreed

Besides the rate.

This is a different thing. they are treated this way as we don't know the cause.. not because we know they are causeless.
This actually kind of works against the Razor concept as the "Razor philosophy". assuming there is no cause is exactly the same as assuming there is a cause with the exception that until today most of the things we know about the universe suggest there is a cause to everything that happens. the later seems "less assumed" and more connected to our reality.

I'll read about it more

Can you define how science assumes there was a big bang?

Define? I can describe the reasoning. We have observed a number of lines of evidence that are consistent with there having been a Big Bang. The most obvious are the observed expansion of the universe (cosmological red shift) and the CMBR (cosmic background radiation). These both suggest expansion from a small, very hot origin. We can model the physics of what would give rise to this, and from that we have a model - the simplest we can think of, consistent with the evidence.

But like anything in science it is only provisional. So yes it is what we "assume", as you put it, but at the back of our minds we know it might one day be shown to be an inadequate model. Just like Newtonian gravitation or the plum pudding model of the atom.

 

[LuisDantas]

Come to think of it, it seems to me that this is one of those threads where some posters have a hard time resisting their craving to perceive some form of supernatural will "behind it all".

Aesthetical preferences are fair and all, people. But they are still personal preferences as opposed to logical arguments.

 

[David T]

is the tardis consistent with known laws of physics? No.

Is Krauss' hypothesis consistent with known laws of physics? Yes.

Sure bigfoot is real and guess what no laws of physics broken as well.

 

[David T]

Such vitriol for no good reason.


I realize that.

Then stop already with the krauss oroboros snake oil nonsense as being a hypothesis. The there is no such thing as a free lunch except for the cosmos is pure religious garbage dressed in secular science fiction drag. The cosmos is larger than the human brain believe it or not!!!

 

[LuisDantas]

Sure bigfoot is real and guess what no laws of physics broken as well.

I don't know if you realize how much of an impression you give that you may feel angry simply because it is possible to conceive an existence with no God.

 

[LuisDantas]

Then stop already with the krauss oroboros snake oil nonsense as being a hypothesis.

Come on. You sure don't perceive in yourself anywhere near such a degree of authority. And you ought go notice that you are grossly (and rudely) misrepresenting Krauss' hypothesis.

It is not too late to make the exchanges more productive. But for that you will have to show a willingness to actually listen to what is told you.

 

[GoodbyeDave]

Now explain to me how that homely analogy helps to account for radioactive decay.

Are you saying that radioactive decay has no cause? The fact that a process cannot be predicted doesn't mean that it's not caused.

 

[GoodbyeDave]

On this topic in particular, I'm aware that humans are wired to think in terms of causality.

Which is in itself significant. Humans are part of the cosmos, so our though processes are also part of the cosmos and constitute evidence of its nature.

 

[exchemist]

Are you saying that radioactive decay has no cause? The fact that a process cannot be predicted doesn't mean that it's not caused.

I am saying it has no known cause and is therefore treated in physics as uncaused.(Ockham's Razor)

There is no axiom in science that says everything MUST have a cause and in fact - as Polymath observes elsewhere on the thread - quantum mechanics explains observations very well on the basis that some things (e.g. exactly where a wave-particle is observed to be) are indeed uncaused and thus impossible to predict, just as we cannot predict when an atom of a radioisotope will decay. So there are good reasons in science for NOT treating everything as necessarily having a cause.

I readily admit that some people hate this. Einstein, famously, hated it: "God does not play dice.". He was a determinist, like Newton, in that regard. And some people like to work on "hidden variable" theories by which there are in fact causes behind the scenes. But nobody has got anywhere with any of these, yet. So for now, the idea that there are some things that are uncaused, and thus impossible to predict, is the prevailing one. (Personally I find this rather attractive, aesthetically. I find the idea of total determinism in the universe a bit ugly and limiting. But this is now metaphysics, not science.)

P.S. Re your point about inability to predict not implying lack of cause, that of course is true. However in the QM example, the theory is expressed in terms of probabilities of a wave-particle entity being found to have properties with particular values, so the inability to predict is intrinsic to nature itself in this model.

 

[LuisDantas]

Which is in itself significant. Humans are part of the cosmos, so our though processes are also part of the cosmos and constitute evidence of its nature.

In the sense that the cosmos "allows" the existence of beings such as us that are known to exist, sure.

From there to the conclusion that our nature somehow hints of more general qualities is, however, a rather huge leap of faith by any measure.

 

[Skwim]

Okay as agreed? or okay as whatever you say?

I was just relabeling your "initiator."

It seems that if i say God created, you'll say i have no reason to believe so and if i say the universe just popped into existence it sounds logical. weird?

Weird or not, at the moment we can't reasonably assert much more.

The thing is a dot of everything we know.
A single dot in the nothingness of our universe in the size of no more than one proton.
This one proton holds within it the entire energy that forms ALL our universe. all the starts, all the systems, the galaxies, the nebula.. all of it, condensed in one tiny dot.
this is what i mean by "thing" as i have now name to call it. some call it
singularity, so i guess it can be called the "singularity".

I know you're using "proton" in a metaphorical sense, but science doesn't see anything in the universe before it was created, and I have to go along with science on this. In your scenario the "proton"---a singularity---would be the entire universe. So, when you say, "We can also have the understanding that this thing,[your singularity] contained within it all our reality, meaning the universe as we know it emerged from that same initiator [again, the singularity] causing our reality to become what it is." I have to agree.

.

 

[Polymath257]

Then stop already with the krauss oroboros snake oil nonsense as being a hypothesis. The there is no such thing as a free lunch except for the cosmos is pure religious garbage dressed in secular science fiction drag. The cosmos is larger than the human brain believe it or not!!!

It isn't just Krauss. This has a fairly long history within physics at this point. The basic ideas have been vetted and are consistent with what we know.

So your ridicule only shows your lack of knowledge of the physics here.

And yes, the cosmos is larger than the human brain and there is a great deal we do not understand. That is why, when we *do* understand some things, it is strange to reject our understanding because that understanding goes against your intuitions.

 

[Polymath257]

Sure bigfoot is real and guess what no laws of physics broken as well.

I'm sorry you are unable to see the differences.

 

[David T]

It isn't just Krauss. This has a fairly long history within physics at this point. The basic ideas have been vetted and are consistent with what we know.

So your ridicule only shows your lack of knowledge of the physics here.

And yes, the cosmos is larger than the human brain and there is a great deal we do not understand. That is why, when we *do* understand some things, it is strange to reject our understanding because that understanding goes against your intuitions.

Even longer in religion!!! So apparently the literal resurrection is literally true congrats.

 

[David T]

Come on. You sure don't perceive in yourself anywhere near such a degree of authority. And you ought go notice that you are grossly (and rudely) misrepresenting Krauss' hypothesis.

It is not too late to make the exchanges more productive. But for that you will have to show a willingness to actually listen to what is told you.

Perpetual motion machine prove it build one you cant, never have, never will. Since it cant be built krauss is a nut job. With a phd big deal.