Nothing is "certain" when discussing "infinity"
Posted by Zero 9 years, 11 months ago to Philosophy
(This post is an obvious response to SOLVER's post a couple of days ago. But as that thread was getting a kinda fat, I decided to post anew rather than reply. Apologies.)
Discussions on "infinity" illustrate what we DON'T understand, not what we do.
Remember ".999... = 1" from Jr. High? The classic example of infinity coalescing into the finite - perhaps the closest we have to an "understandable" discussion of infinity. And yet, though mathematically valid, conceptually it is a nightmare.
I am an OBJ, but if there was ever an example of "A not equaling A", when a thing is both one thing AND another....
Even AR's genius (and Aristotle's) cannot encompass that which cannot be understood.
We exist within our framework. We cannot perceive - nor conceive - beyond it.
Science readily accepts this limitation. (The center of black holes and "time before the Big Bang" are just two examples.)
As for the "certainty" of parallel existence in an "infinite" universe, consider this:
Take a simple helium balloon. You could fill any finite universe with just the permutations of this one balloon - repeated over and over again - each exactly the same - except one atom (of zillions) is moving in a almost imperceptibly different direction.
And that's just one balloon.
Change the balloon to the Observable Universe.
Now your Infinite Universe MUST contain countless OU's each exactly the same as the others except one atom is moving at the slightest variance. Now take that infinitude and copy it over again except now TWO atoms are slightly different. And again with 3 atoms - and so on, and so on, and so on....
And that's just our OBSERVABLE universe - that spherical volume of the Universe bounded by a 13.8 billion light-year radius with Earth at the center. But since the discovery of Inflation there is reason to believe the actual Universe is larger than the OU. You'd have to "infinitely" duplicate this Meta-Universe ad-infinitum each with only one atom in the slightest variance. Then two atoms, then three...;
And, of course, if the Meta-Universe is truly infinite how can you duplicate it at all? How can you have an infinite number of infinite universes, each exactly the same as the other except some atom(s).
Come on now. Seriously. This is just mental masturbation. We may as well be stoners around a campfire.
Don't speak to me of "certainty" as regards Infinity.
This is truly unknown and unknowable.
But don't despair, perhaps it will not always be so.
Three million years ago, "Lucy" possessed the greatest mind on earth but she could never have been taught Chaos Theory.
What will our descendants understand, three million years from now, that we cannot fathom now?
Discussions on "infinity" illustrate what we DON'T understand, not what we do.
Remember ".999... = 1" from Jr. High? The classic example of infinity coalescing into the finite - perhaps the closest we have to an "understandable" discussion of infinity. And yet, though mathematically valid, conceptually it is a nightmare.
I am an OBJ, but if there was ever an example of "A not equaling A", when a thing is both one thing AND another....
Even AR's genius (and Aristotle's) cannot encompass that which cannot be understood.
We exist within our framework. We cannot perceive - nor conceive - beyond it.
Science readily accepts this limitation. (The center of black holes and "time before the Big Bang" are just two examples.)
As for the "certainty" of parallel existence in an "infinite" universe, consider this:
Take a simple helium balloon. You could fill any finite universe with just the permutations of this one balloon - repeated over and over again - each exactly the same - except one atom (of zillions) is moving in a almost imperceptibly different direction.
And that's just one balloon.
Change the balloon to the Observable Universe.
Now your Infinite Universe MUST contain countless OU's each exactly the same as the others except one atom is moving at the slightest variance. Now take that infinitude and copy it over again except now TWO atoms are slightly different. And again with 3 atoms - and so on, and so on, and so on....
And that's just our OBSERVABLE universe - that spherical volume of the Universe bounded by a 13.8 billion light-year radius with Earth at the center. But since the discovery of Inflation there is reason to believe the actual Universe is larger than the OU. You'd have to "infinitely" duplicate this Meta-Universe ad-infinitum each with only one atom in the slightest variance. Then two atoms, then three...;
And, of course, if the Meta-Universe is truly infinite how can you duplicate it at all? How can you have an infinite number of infinite universes, each exactly the same as the other except some atom(s).
Come on now. Seriously. This is just mental masturbation. We may as well be stoners around a campfire.
Don't speak to me of "certainty" as regards Infinity.
This is truly unknown and unknowable.
But don't despair, perhaps it will not always be so.
Three million years ago, "Lucy" possessed the greatest mind on earth but she could never have been taught Chaos Theory.
What will our descendants understand, three million years from now, that we cannot fathom now?
Remember how IMAGINARY numbers are based on "i", the square root of -1. Called Imaginary for good reason, such numbers cannot exist in the real world.
Yet this branch of mathematics is hardly frivolous or trivial. And certainly valid. (Not that I know anything about it, but apparently it is of great importance in electrical engineeering among other things.)
Again, a concept based firmly in the UNREAL, shows us that mathematics can go places reality cannot.
Just like that forever-approaching-never-arriving curve of numbers - that somehow defies all logic and - arrives.
The math is well-founded and is, in-fact, incontrovertable.
And my original point is equally valid.
One needs to be careful applying math to reality.
An infinite series doesn't end, thus you cannot multiply it by a whole number and get a rational number, that is a mathematically illogical.
You can, however, multiply a fraction with a whole number and get a rational number. That does not mean that you can equate the two. Illogical. Proof refuted.
.111111111111111111111... (to infinity) * 9 = .99999999999999... (to infinity)
1/9 * 9 = 1
That was easy.
[Big smile - proffered hand.]
Well met, indeed.
But thankfully, there are many smart people still plugging away at it.
If it CAN be figured out at this stage of our evolution, they will.
So if it's all going backward,
if the cup reassembles before flying off the floor and onto the table,
does that mean that gravity now repels, that dark energy now attracts?
It's always presented like that - but why?
Time doesn't flow backward when I'm backing up the car. Why would it suddenly when the stars reverse their course.
I'm sure I'm missing something.
But I gotta point out that even your example shows a break with reality.
An infinite number of elements, each infinitely thin?
I'm pretty sure the current consensus is that time is not made up of an infinite number of infinitely small elements. That in fact time has a minimum length. Planck Time, the smallest possible unit of time - part of the "graininess" of reality - is roughly 10^-43 seconds.
Of course, it changes nothing - the calculus still works - but it illustrates my point. That math is often an "idealization" of the physical world.
And to my original point - it's easy to "talk" about infinite time & infinite space (and the required infinite mass) it may be quite another for it to be real. Who knows, maybe "infinite mass" is hard to come by.
Maybe the idea that "Everything-that-can-be-imagined-MUST-be-happening-right-now-somewhere!" is just a silly as it sounds.
And y'know, just to have it said,
They're not only saying "everything that can be imagined" but, in fact, "everything possible - in even the remotest possibility - even that which is utterly UN-imaginable - so long as POSSIBLE - MUST be happening somewhere RIGHT NOW. And it will happen again - no matter how improbable - a split-second second later somewhere else.
I said stoners around the campfire and I meant it.
The difficulty for a beginning and an end is to imagine what was, before the beginning and what will be, after the ending. As to a god that creates and ends it all, who or what created god? It's all pure speculation and superstition to me. Nonsense!!
Is it more likely that something infinite exists or that God exists?
That at least helps simplifies the theory. Thanks.
Here's a question,
Is existence and the universe the same container?
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