this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
63 points (81.2% liked)
Asklemmy
48391 readers
758 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why someone? Why not something? Physics say a monopole magnet is mathematically possible, something like that would absolutely cause a disturbance because it doesnβt conform to the laws of physics we have defined like every action has an equal and opposite reactionβ¦ I think youβre right, something happened but I donβt know why it would be someone and not simply probability and the natural world conforming to that probability
Nothing in physics say that time has a beginning or end. It says in fact that it doesn't have that.
It does not say anything about time starting, ending, or anything. It is just a set of rules that approximately reproduce results we observe. It is not the rules of the universe. The rules we use in physics actually do not have a direction for time. It works the same in both directions, though clearly time does have a direction. It does not make predictions on if time started or if it will end, only what is the case for what we can observe right here right now.
Um, yeah the interesting part is that while physics itself indicate time as a one dimensional infinite band, (with possibly branching multiverses but I digress) we as humans attribute a beginning and end, as all we know consists of such objects and entities. Our mind is terrible at grasping infinity, it has even broken many curious minds that try to understand it and are a bit too tenacious in their search. In any case that is my proposal here, that it is an unanswerable question how the universe started. We have facts up to big bang. It (as usual with these things) gives us just more questions than actual answers to how the universe came to exist. I argue that it always did and always will.
I think this is faulty logic. How the universe came to exist is fine, and we don't know, but that the universe "always existed" is a bit odd. You can't have anything before space-time exists. In a sense that means yes, it "always" existed, because that's the start of time, but in another sense it did not exist too, just time didn't exist, if that makes sense. It obviously doesn't really make sense because we're unable to hold that concept in our mind, but time did come into existence.
Unless I have missed something huge, time didn't ever not exist. If you refer to big bang, what evidence says time started then? Sounds really fascinating but I have never heard of it
How do you have time without space-time? The big bang is actually not the exact start of the universe. It's pretty close, but not quite. It is the expansion of the universe. Before that it's in a very dense high energy state, but it does exist. It explains how it went from this state to the current state, but not how it came into existence at all.
I don't think it's believed to have sat in this dense high energy state for infinite time before the big bang, so it must have come into existence, not just existed forever. If that's the case that means space-time came into existence. You can't have time without space-time, so there is no time before it exists. At some point space-time exists, and as such there is no before, since there is not time.
It seems odd to consider. How do things happen without space-time? We can't really think about this concept, because we're space-time beings. It doesn't even make sense to consider. However, having an intelligence start things doesn't help. It only then begs the question where they came from. Surely the universe just starting is more likely than an intelligence appearing for some reason, then it deciding to start the universe. That's a vastly more complex set of circumstances.
I just don't think that makes any sense whatsoever. How is it that things can pop into existence from nothing, that is the hypothesis and disproving it is on us? It should be the other way around. Burden of proof should lay on the idea that things can, and did, pop into existence from nothing. That isn't something we see happen all the time. We do observe time and space, and have never observed it not existing. Like gravity. But I'm probably missing something critical. To me it is a bigger leap to assume time and space came into existence from nothing suddenly.
I linked it somewhere, but it wasn't this chain.
https://scienceandnonduality.com/article/quantum-prediction-something-is-created-from-nothing/
It's a bigger leap to consider that space-time came into existence for no reason than that an intelligence that exists outside of that created it? Where did they come from? They must have come from either nothing (which seems more crazy than a random thing like space-time that is not organized), or something created them, which only pushes the question to what created that thing.
It doesn't simplify it. It only makes it more complicated. The universe just starting at some point is incredibly simple, though fairly crazy to consider since we're space-time beings that did not evolve to consider a lack of space-time. We can't imagine four dimensions easily, let alone zero dimensions. (tangent: zero took a long time to develop, because the concept of nothing is so hard to even hold in our minds.)
The universe just appearing/starting is the simplest answer. The other two answers I can think of is that it always existed (in which case, how can it exist for infinite time; that's as hard to consider as it just starting at zero) or something created it, which then just begs the question: who created them, ad infinitum. Occam's razor applies and says the most likely (though not necessarily correct) answer is the simplest.
We can't prove any of this obviously. It's, I think, literally impossible to prove, and certainly we're incapable of testing it with existing capabilities. Its a philosophical discussion, not a scientific one.
It's a bigger leap to consider something came into existence from nothing. Your link explicitly explains it for you; "The zero point vacuum of space is proposed to be positive and infinite". Nothing is created from nothing in science (despite the alluring title of the article) especially not any laws of physics, space & time itself, nor extra dimensions or anything else. Laws of physics are fundamentally different from both matter and almost any ontological standpoint.
It is of course not neither easier OR as hard to consider the universe to have been created by a conscious entity or as you propose, just spontaneously. They are both infinitely complex and "philosophical" as you say "impossible to prove". They can be viewed as fundamentally the same metaphysical statement.
Because they are the same leap of logic. You argue in a circle against yourself when you say it is more complicated; if a being exist that created it, as something else creating it. As time starts, what started it? Nothing is required for it to have always existed. It is more elegant to me, but you may feel differently.
It is again the burden of proof of the creation theory and your theory of spontaneous creation that there is a before anything and what that nothingness is. We have no scientific proof of that, and zero dimensions thought experiments are not close to explaining or proving what that is. After that you have to paradoxically prove what any symbols used to describe that proof came from ad nauseum.
If you understand occams razor and even go so far as asking yourself "how can time exist for infinite time?" you need to at that point not instantly give up, refer to the fact I explained in the beginning, that we are beings of space and time that have a hard time grasping infinity. It does not mean it is impossible. It certainly does not mean we can't or shouldn't advance our understanding of physics.
The concept of nothing, the concept of infinity; yes in philosophy impossible to prove and easily landing the philosopher in mind traps. However in science, testing and providing an accurate framework for our environment is instrumental for philosophy. We often discuss, test and make thorough use of n-D systems, infinity, and many of the concepts you bring up without breaking our minds. You give the fantastic too much credit. We learn how to derive four dimensional proofs as kids. Ironically, zero dimensional problems are the easiest.
We are capable of proving physical properties of our world and use that to inform our philosophical choice. It's just that you choose religious philosophy (not to be confused with philosophy of religion) and I chose scientific realism to explore.
Bigger leap than what? That it existed for infinite time? That a god created it?
Infinite time is just as big a leap as coming into existence at some point. It didn't start at all? Why does it exist, and how, and why did it only expand when it did since it had infinite time before and didn't, which doesn't make sense that it took infinite time to do it if it could happen earlier? Infinity is wild, and causes all kinds of issues.
If a god, then where did they come from? Did they come from nothing? If so, why can an intelligent being do this but not the universe? If they were created, then who created them, and them, ad infinitum?
Yes, this is true and part of the article, like you said. However, it was just a starting point to look at. We can't observe anything related to the universe starting, and we can't test anything either. Also, the laws of physics do not apply to that, since it must be outside space and time, since it is space and time, and the laws of physics are built on space and time.
The point was to show how things can seemingly come from nothing (yes, it requires something to be happening to do this) even in space-time. Even the thing we do have the ability to observe, crazy things like this can happen. It makes space-time starting from nothing seem plausible, so why would we expect it to instead be something that only raises more questions?
Fundamentally the same type of metaphysical question. However, one requires much more complexity. Refer above to "If a god...". It doesn't answer any questions and only raises the question of where they came from in its place. One creates a solution, the other creates more questions.
Nothing. Nothing is required to start it. Infinite time seems possibly reasonable but less likely, again because that requires infinite time for nothing to happen, and then suddenly the big bang happens. Why did this take infinite time? Couldn't it have been any time sooner, which could always be sooner, etc. For it to have not happened before for infinite time and then to happen statistically has a probability of 0.
I never said that. We should obviously study it. However, there's no way to test for either infinite time or non-existence. We should still try to find answers, but this question cannot be solved, at least based on our current capabilities.
Again, untestable. Not the realm of science, which requires the ability to disprove a hypothesis.
Mathematically, yes. Math is a great useful tool. However, as I'm sure you're aware, a mathematical proof does not prove the existence of anything. It just proves a statement fits the rules. The framework of mathematics let's us make proofs of arbitrary dimensions, but that doesn't make them real, and it's notoriously difficult to intuitively understand what's happening in higher dimensions. Just because we can work with them mathematically doesn't mean we can hold them in our mind, and zero is the hardest. It's basically impossible to hold nothing in your mind. It's easy to work with, but hard to intuit.
Lol. We're both choosing scientific realism. Literally both of our comments are about it. However, again, we can't test what we don't have access to. We don't have any information from before the big bag. We don't even have access to information at the beginning, only shortly after it started. You can't use science to come up with an answer, because science requires falsifiability. I choose scientific realism, but I also know that it's limited by this. We can use science to make guesses for things, but we can't use science for the answer to the beginning, at least for the foreseeable future.
I have lots of information. You require that nothing must have happened before big bang for an infinite time. None such requirement exist. It is clear you are riffing on guesses you like, and then blaming ontological philosophy yet still claim scientific realism? Since your standpoint has no scientific evidence, every other must also not. But not so. It's not untested. It isn't impossible to know. You just have to research the topic. You will move the goalpost out of scientific realism forever, yet never understand that infinity itself.
No you don't. It's literally impossible as far as our current understand goes. If you do, why have you avoided providing it. You've just speculated stuff just as I have. Stop pretending you're more knowledgeable, smart, or special than you are.
Our current knowledge points towards heat death of the universe, not a big crunch. If heat death is a possible outcome, and there's infinite time, it should have happened before. The probability that it's an option and it hasn't happened is zero. Other things could happen too, but if anything can happen that prevents it from continuing forever then there's effectively no chance it didn't before. Infinite time means we aren't the first.
Again, you're making a claim to knowledge. Prove it. It doesn't exist. We can't peer past the CMB. That's the earliest information we have, or can have as far as we know right now. Anything else is unknowable and certainly untestable. If not, prove it. You spoke of burden of proof earlier, and that's for claims of knowledge. You're making a claim of knowledge. Provide proof.
I did not move that goalpost. There are limits to scientific knowledge, correct? Or do you think this isn't true? If not, you're not discussing scientific realism. You're talking about some kind of mysticism. I'm not the one moving the goalposts. You did that if you're pushing it beyond the definition.
One proof of time is that it exists now and never didn't. Now provide your proof
That is an assumption that it never didn't, not a proof. What are you even doing here?
You seem to have a problem with my belief, and just generally how science works but it can be remedied
I have a problem with you acting smarter than you are, not your beliefs, and no I don't have a problem with how science works. You're the one who's claiming it's something different than it is. I'm not responding after this comment, but you don't have the information you think you do. I think that's an issue for you for some reason, but it's perfectly fine to not know things.
Ok so burden of proof is on the one telling any story, then reality itself must adhere to, or challenge that or it's just a correct assumption? Also note that nobody else is allowed to have any other belief or facts to challenge the story because "nobody can know anything about anything"? It's like the debating technique of a narcissist
I can't answer every question especially pertaining to evolving science. I wouldn't even try.. I'm not religious either. To have something, someone or something had to create it that's all I can muster on the subject. Can you create anything without touching, moving, manipulating by some outside force?
I don't know how it happened, why, person or thing. All I can figure is if the universe was a blank sheet of paper, something had to add, kickstart, etc a reaction for things to unfold regardless of size, time or scale. I don't really believe the universe at its utmost basic, blank canvas form voided form, simply has energy. It doesnt make sense. Energy requires input from some outside source.