₦airaland Forum

zyzxx:
parcel and part, I inter-change it.

It wishes not to be interchanged yet you do so caring not a whit for what that lesser being desires; then again why would you?

@DeepSight

Apologies about that misinterpretation then. I mistakenly assumed that you had drawn the same conclusions that most others I've talked to do.
Thanks for clearing that up.

TrishaP:
Zyzxx, be my guest

**what you see is what you get, I hope you'll go back in one piece**

Guest, honoured guest, the equivalent of a deity in some societies, why must you be such a pest?


*Zyzxx thanks, I'm glad I managed to find this thread. It's fun.

theorbiters:
On and on we go, only to be pegged back by our own selfish desires.

Desires: the driving force for us mortal beings, the fount of our greatest inspiration... And yet our greatest foes.

DeepSight:
Hello Crazycaps -

https://www.nairaland.com/570326/linear-chance/1#7369083

Hope that clarifies.

Cheers.

Thanks for sharing, and yes it does clarify your belief about the immutability of anything that is self-existent.

I guess that concludes the primary aim of my post. However, if it's not much of a bother (or a proven hopeless task in your opinion) would you mind taking a gander at the other questions I posed and pass on your own opinion about them?

plaetton:
I disagreed with deepsight on immutability. A god cannot be immutable and at the same time be the active agent in creation.

God is contradiction in terms , because if he is active in creation, then he subject to the laws of universe himself, making him a non god.
If , on the hand, god is not active in creation, then he does not exist in creation.

God, existing in the form of pure electromagnetic energy that pulses and reverberates throughout the universe would be a much more plausible description.
In other words, god would have to be evolving with the universe.

In other words, the separate god does not exist and so this divide between the worlds of science and philosophy is merely in our heads?

If that is what you meant, I guess we're all in agreement, at least till now.

theorbiters:
Understood I the Master's wish; therefore I must to relent

"Relent? Never!" And so bravely they marched on.

DeepSight:
Right.

Following on from this. But before I do, I should make a brief comment on strangeness.

Most people live their lives within a "normalcy" that allows them to be completely oblivious of just how absolutely strange and odd this world, this existence of ours, is. I do not. Although it is a dysfunction of some sort, and troubles me a great deal, I live every day with an acute consciousness of the strangeness of life and of our existence: the strangeness of everything about us. Indeed, the strangeness of our very own lives.

For this is exactly what has happened, as far as we know:

In what appears a stagnant void, existing, for all observable purposes, eternally in the past, a sudden burst of matter and energy occurred. This sudden burst, as far as we know, took place about 14 billion years ago, in terms of our current measurement of time. From a single point of virtually infinite energy, the origin and nature of which is unknown, an expansion of matter and energy proceeded, the size and scale of which is absolutely unfathomable to the human mind. The size of the observable universe (not to speak of the universe, whole) is unbelievable and out of all proportion to that which the human mind can visually grasp or comprehend.

Any person who does not regard this (the sudden blossoming into existence of the universe from the point of a singularity) as a pretty strange thing to occur in a seeming void, will have to be pretty strange himself. But wait, that is only the beginning of the strangeness which I tried to convey in such light words in the intro contained in my OP.

It gets stranger. Within the same universe, there, from chemical interactions, at some point in time, supposedly, something quite special and different emerges. Something different from the dead matter about it - living organisms. These organisms grow and evolve over time. Along the way, plant life emerges, also, conscious, feeling, breathing creatures, animals. Ultimately, mankind come forth - self-conscious, thinking, feeling intelligent beings with a sense of past, present and future, and with such very strange tendencies as art, science, music, philosophy, and even cosmological philosophy, religion, as well as moral and societal codes and laws.

In this interaction, in their societies, they create galaxies of knowledge, of new learning, of ideas without limit. But, as with all other living things about them: notwithstanding the high extent of their minds, the loves and passions of their lives, their extensive pursuits: at some point - they die.

And what does this death mean. That every single man, woman and child walking on this earth, floating around the sun, within the larger universe - will lie motionless in death, and rot away. You, me, everyone.

From the first mystery of the big b.ang, what triggered it, what powered it, why it happened at all, to the mystery of first life, and then on to the mystery of self-conscious intelligent life, and on to the mystery of death, it is all a really, really odd thing that has happened, that is happening, and that continues to happen. The existence of the universe, the existence of life, and the existence of us.

Thus people seek meaning in their lives, for otherwise it is perplexing. The sheer futility of compulsory and unavoidable death, the enigma of it all, is enough to compel man to seek meaning in his life: however it is also sufficient to render man renegade, not caring one way or the other. For if all things end in death, why should man seek any ideal higher than to enjoy himself within this brief stay under the sun.

When the atheist thus preaches to the religionist, asking the religionist to forsake the coagulation of ideas which give him purpose and meaningfulness in his otherwise perplexing existence, the atheist should be ready to offer a purpose and a meaningfulness higher and better, in lieu of the purpose and meaning of the life of the religious.

The atheist would do well to understand that few people would choose the seeming perplexing meaninglessness and randomness of "chance" life, in a "chance" universe, over a meaning, a purpose and an order. Such meaning, purpose and order, the atheist should inculcate into his evangelism, before seeking to deconvert the theist.

An unenviable task, given the strangeness of all things about us, as described above. . . .

The irony is that you who understands the strangeness of the universe dismissa off hand all explanation QuantumMech offers as ridiculous or "obviously incorrect/farcical" because of its inherent strangeness with regards to conventional science; as I've gleaned from an earlier thread (where you did not even bother reading the links regarding these possible explanations because it was so "obviously false" to you).

Just because it is strange does not mean it is incorrect. Even the current model of the solar system was strange to comprehend and an alien to conventional wisdom at one point of time. Also, strangness is no guarantee of correctness either, but if what they derive from the equations if the theory result in tangible advances in science, wouldn't you say they are on the right track?

So now all i have to do is wait for quantum computing or some other product derived from these theories to take the world by storm. Perhaps if and when that happens you shall agree that maybe QM isn't all just hogwash and be a little more open to its ideas?

jayriginal:
That shouldnt stop you from contributing. Persons quoted have a chance to reply and by reviving the thread, you bring it to the attention of others who may also have contributions to make.

Let us hope it is so.

Also, @PhysicsQED, am I right in deducing that the so called negative energy required to satisfy the conservation of energy for our is gravity? Or could there also be negative energy matter/particles, perhaps like the enigmatic Exotic Matter found in contemporary science-fiction stories?

And I'm also afraid this is going to be a short thread.

@plaetton @pastoraio @muskeeto

There's no point from the pov of debate tagging you all if you are of the same opinion as me. of course if you aren't, I'd love to hear your answers/arguments, and if yiu are could you, on the off chance that @DeepSight did clarify the immutable part before i appeared on the scene, explain why he believes it must be so?

If course, if he drops by himself it'll be even better.

Thanks and good day to you all.

@ooman @striktlymi

The energy part then pretty much agrees with the scientific stand too, and so I don't quite see a difference there. The problem comes up when people try to explain the existence of this energy.

Quantum mechanics stipulates (as far as i know) that even vacuum is in a constant flux with postive and negative energies cancelling each other out thus leaving a net result of zero energy which we observe as the 'empty' vacuum. And so the universe itself could just br a runaway result of such a reaction (with gravity being the negative energy, i think) and have sprung up from the "nothingness" that is 'empty space'. Hell, it could but be the latest or one of many that sprung up from such fluctuations. This neatly ties up the where did it all come from question, the answer being the pre Bang space.

Again, maybe a little too neatly, but wherein is the problem in this scenario? And do we really then still need an external force? Also, couldn't your Energy be the system instead? A system having observable equal positive and negative (and so a net 0) energy?

Take an analogy of a deity or one power from a fantasy novel which comprises all the good and the bad. Thus being neutral/neither.


Also, all the above physics was paraphrasing of stuff read 4 years ago and what @PhysicsQED posted somewhere earlier. So I may have gotten it wrong to some extent. If in doubt do your own research and reference your sources and let me know where i went wrong.

The latter part about the possibile uses of negative emergy/mass (exotic particles) I'm quite familiar with. From Alistair Reynolds to Stephen Baxter and Neal Asher, every one of them has some unique, if (understandably) inexplicable, use they are put to.

Also, while i find your conjecture fascinating, could you point me to any scientific texts or sources that could help me understand it better anand/or support it?

I've got a somewhat free December ahead so am all revved up to read stuff.

Thanks.

Haha. Thanks.

I actually am of a similar opinion as you (and if you get notifications of likes on the "Ex Nihilo... " post by LordBabs from two years ago, it was me liking and posting without checking the date stamps).

The entire concept of self-existent things rankled my brain too but I tthought I should seek some clarification before i decide on whether to dismiss it outright or not.

Waiting for DS or cezar or someone else to explain why it can or cannot work with the points I mentioned.

Hi,
I've been wondering about the concept of negative energy, said to be theoretically possible by Quantum Mechanics, and its possible physical manifestation.

I am also curious about how negative energy could have played a role in the Big Bang as from the Boomerang Antarctica experiments data, it was concluded that the universe has a "flat" topography and the net energy of a flat system is zero. So, for our universe to exist means there must exist an equal amount of negative energy in some form.

I know that this may seem like a tall order so I'll be happy even if you merely direct me to the appropriate resources to understand it myself. Also, the lesser the math the better. Something like a Dr Michio Kaku book ought to be easy to digest though i might be able to handle tougher books too.

Thanks

Hi,
I've been wondering about the concept of negative energy, said to be theoretically possible by Quantum Mechanics, and its possible physical manifestation.

I am also curious about how negative energy could have played a role in the Big Bang as from the Boomerang Antarctica experiments data, it was concluded that the universe has a "flat" topography and the net energy of a flat system is zero. So, for our universe to exist means there must exist an equal amount of negative energy in some form.

I know that this may seem like a tall order so I'll be happy even if you merely direct me to the appropriate resources to understand it myself. Also, the lesser the math the better. Something like a Dr Michio Kaku book ought to be easy to digest though i might be able to handle tougher books too.

Thanks

Hi,
I'm new here and haven't been through most of the threads so I don't know if this has been covered before, but about the term self-existent, as quite commonly used by a member DeepSight on the two forums that led me to the path of NL membership:

From where does the conclusion that something that is self-existent must be intangible and immutable come from? Is it just one of those things that "just are" and is this accepted as the philosophical/religious standard definition; which to me would seem rather silly, or do you have arguments supporting it?

My qualm is chiefly with the latter half: Must it be immutable? Say I take a definition of god as one where it is, say energy, then energy can change form and convert to mass and back, theoretically (E=mc^2). So why can't this one energy also be able to change its form? If it's the most powerful or potent being/energy/existence from which all is derived why should there be a restriction on what it can do to itself? Why must it be immutable?

Also, say conservation of energy is perfect, and all the energy of this universe is kept within its bounds and conserved in one form or the other: assuming a cosmic crunch scenario where the universe collapses back on itself, won't this satisfy the condition of 'ssomthing' being eternal though the universe isn't as the enrgy is still conserved? So the enternal clause is met without the need for a separate being standing outside of the universe as the energy that comprises the universe is, in itself, eternal.

And if this point sounds sensible enough to you, and assuming negative energy matter (exotic particles or whatever else it's called) does exist; why is it that the zero net energy system seems ridiculous? If we have the positive matter that makes up our universe and say negative matter in a parallel universe birthed from the same event collapse back on each other, the net sum of their energies would be zero. And from what little i know of quantum mechanics, the creation of such pairings of positive and negative energies from nothingness is possible, as while nothingness has no net energy so does a system of two equal and opposite energies (like the equal and opposite charges in ionic molecules: 1+ve plus 1-ve charge lead to the molecule having zero net charge though the ions do have their own charges).

I realize this last paragraph may not be too clear, and if so kindly ignore this para while i prepare a better way of phrasing my points, and answer the others.

Thank you

P.S. as for the concept of negative energy, I shall be researching upon it now, though if any physicists happen to pass by I'd appreciate any helpful information they could provide.

P.S.S. Also, I know negative energy is just a theoretical concept derived by mathematics, say a conjecture of math, but why must this make its existence any less believable than the existence of intangible, immutable god? The latter being a conjecture arrived at via logical and deductive reasoning. Now, mathematics is no less logical, so why must possibilities suggested by it be any less valid? In fact reasoning can, by intentional or unintentional missteps or farcical assumptions, be used yo arrive at sheer nonsensical deductions. Eg: the greek philosopher who theorised that moving from one place to the other was logically impossible (something along the lines of "to cross x distance between A and B you must first cross x/2 and before that x/4 and before that x/8..." Ad infinitum and hence you are always approaching B but never reach it).

DeepSight:
I posed the question to you, my student, and you are throwing it back at me? Ha.

Ok, here is my own answer: Eternity is the infinite continuum into which events are interpolated.

Now attempt my question on whether eternity exists or not; and whether it is caused or not.

Thank you, ever kind, noble, gracious and majestic sir: Lord of the seven seas, Imperial Regent for Africa, and most exalted Prince of Persia.

Having checked the time stamps, I have realised, to my great mortification that I have and still am posting on an old, and seemingly dead thread. To answer the eternity question, I agree with the way you state it is and then point you to the part about universes being created and collapsing back to nothing before it leads to the birth of another and so on ad infitum. An explanation derived from the tiny understanding I have of Quantum Mechanics. Again, conjecture, but so is god.

DeepSight:
In my view, God is the compound of pure intangible energy and the compound of self existent laws.

This is not to say that I subscribe to God being strictly impersonal: for; as someone once powerfully remarked, creation itself reeks of a personal rather than impersonal act. Nevertheless I do not believe that God itself necessarily directly created this universe. Someday humans will create a universe. That does not mean humans and all of reality, have no ultimate origin - which is what God is.

Funnily enough, I liked that last bit. However, if say it is possible for us to create a universe and we have an origin, what is to say that the god that created us has no origin. It could be that whatever created this universe had a creator too. Our universe beinf the First is but an assumption and it is equally likely this universe is just a creation of some higher universe's beings, hell, we have Sim City now, so a Sim Universe shouldnt be all that tough for a species thousands of years more advanced than ours (assuming similar exponential rates of growth, of course). Then again that is still passing the buck. Assuming we aren't the first, who created our creators?

DeepSight:
Aside from this, there are zillions of everyday pointers to the glaring fact of super-dimensional energy and intelligence, and it is amazing how foolishly the atheist blinds himself to these.

Please share a few. I promise to read up when next I come online.

Do note that I will approach with a sceptic mindset just as you approached (or rather used to justify avoiding) the flat universe scenario.

And about that, flat may not mean "flat" in the conventional sense. Scientific terms shouldnt be dismissed just because of what they sound like, sometimes the term is misleading or leads to presumptions that are overlysimplified.

DeepSight:
Oh LAWD.

There is neither oxymoron nor cop out. Settle down and listen:

1. Something exists.

2. Something cannot come from nothing.

3. As such, the somethings that exist came from something already existing.

4. Since things exist, then there was always a something because if there was nothing, there would always have remained nothing and never any something.

5. Thus, something eternal and permanent exists.

6. Anything which is eternal and permanent is self-existent.

7. Self existent things are not mutable by reason of their self-existent and permanent nature.

8. Matter is mutable and changeable and therefore not self existent.

9. Ergo, matter is not that which is the permanent self-existent something.

10. Ergo, that which precedes all things is a permanent, self-existent, non material essence.

11. This is what is referred to as God.

No cop out, no paradox, simple and clear philosophical logic.

The problem with such reasoning can be seen by the argument by a Greek philosopher which stated it was impossible to move or something along those lines. I don't remember the name but it starts with "to cover a distance x you must first cover x/2 and to cover that you must cover x/4..." ad infinitum and from that he concluded something along the lines of walking from A to B being an impossible task. I'm pretty sure I haven't done any justice to his argument (whimsical as it is) but I hope you see the point. The beauty of language and logic is that you can use them to arrive at whichever conclusion suits you. A friend once showed me a little math trick where you can make a non zero term like 2 equal to zero with just some clever manipulation. Language is easier.

Anyway, saying I buy into your argument I still want to know WHY that being/thing/energy/source exists and where it came from.

Edit: I think I've begun rambling from here on:

The Vedas (Rig Veda, if I'm not wrong) also postulate the existence of a being which was always present and from which all is deriderived in its verses, but the tale was either confusing because of the errors in translation or because the statements within are so convoluted as to be beyond the comprehension of my meagre mind.

Trying to still seek a scientific explanation, i believe that it was probably the nonsensical sounding nature of it that again put me off the idea of that self-existent entity. An entity that came from the first egg/shell which became this cosmos and the being created life or the elements of it and also it's shell from whence it came. In easier terms, what they seemed to be saying was that the chicken came from the egg but the egg came from the chicken. Which made no sense to me. Meanwhile your argument that it was always therr requires faith that it was always there even at a time -t from the current reference.

Also, I believe that while we take time = 0 at the time of creation of our universe it doesnt mean nothing ever existed at a time t prior to 0, as in, by stating that the net energy of the universe is zero and assuming a "Cosmic Crunch" scenario where expansion retards and then reverses, at a certain time in the future there will again be "nothing" when everything collapses in itself, what is to say that such a scenario hasnt already happened and this is just the next iteration in a series of such universes that keep popping up and collapsing as quantum mechanics says is possible.

Note all the above is conjecture.

DeepSight:
I certainly wish you a speedy return to speed.



Oh really? I don't believe I have done so: I have merely shown the incoherence and inconsistency of the notions you bandied about. I should warn you to try not to be as dogmatic about the writings of any scientist in the same way as I warn religious folk not to be dogmatic about their scripture. The simple fact is that not all postulations by all scientists are always right. And in this matter, most postulations so far are outrightly ridiculous and laughable. Some are even frankly illiterate.

I have read a few of your posts about this forum and you come across as quite intelligent. It therefore shocks me that you could have bandied about some of the nonsense that you did in earlier posts on this thread. You should look for a post by MyJoe earlier in this thread where he wrote nothing but simply posted a smiley under a quote from you. THAT quote was as laughable as it gets, mate.

The sad thing is that many people these days imagine that tailing the ideas of every scientist makes them "modern" and "aware" and "intellectually sophisticated". My friend, the only thing that makes anyone intellectually sophisticated is having the guts, originality, brilliance and simplicity to think for himself. Period.

Now let us think for our selves.



No this is not the case because the very fabric of our reality is hardwired in causality. If you would think about it you would see how terribly irrational what you are suggesting is. The laws of motion are very clear and adamant in this respect. We do not see anything that moves that has no impetus. That is as far as it obtains in this physical reality. The universe is physical. It began to expand from a point. Ergo, there was some impetus for that. To suggest that it began to move without impetus or cause, is not only illogical and unscientific, it is outright voodoo.

It amazes me how people who pander to science are willing to abandon plain and simple science in pursuit of dogma.



I have not dodged the question of who created a creator. I explained in very simple terms that the creator is not said to have a beginning: and as such did not require being created. This is very simple when one follows the reasoning as follows:

1. We know that from nothingness comes nothing

2. We know that things exist

3. As such, for things to exist, something or the other must have always existed.

That is what we refer to as a self-existent thing. In philosophy such are also referred to as necessary as opposed to contingent things. A necessary thing self-exists. I am assuming you are well acquainted with the distinctions here. Necessary or self-existent things are also non-material.

This resolves the problem of the infinite regress which you keep raising. That problem, as far as I am concerned, is only pondered by philosophical babies.



No, as I have explained, there was never any such thing as "nothing". By the very definition of the word, nothing is nothing: it does not exist and has never existed. There has only ever been a permanent self-existent "something."



The overall shape of the universe being flat in no way suggests that its total energy is zero. Nor does the mathematical act of cancelling positive energies against negative negative energies suggest that either. You really even have to ask yourself what negative energy is and see if it has anything whatsoever to do with the precepts at play here.

You and your friends are toying around with nonsensical voodoo. It is nonsensical to suggest that the total energy of the universe is zero: at least not in the dictionary meaning of the word "zero". Used as a specially defined mathematical concept (which has nothing to do with true zero), you can have a field day for all I care: but you must be aware that this has nothing to do with the true meaning of the word zero. The true meaning of the word zero is nothing - and so long as the universe is something, its total energy can never be said to equate true zero.

In fact, as I explained earlier, true zero, being the equivalent of nothingness, does not exist.

So there is no such thing as true zero, ab initio,

Therefore you cannot equate the universe's energy with true zero, because no such thing exists. Zero is nothing.

Just before I leave this point let me just give you food for thought on the idea of the universe being flat. What is flatness really?

Consider these two against one another: Is a sheet of paper flat? Is a mattress flat? When you reflect carefully on these two, you will revise your idea of flatness - especially as regards the idea of flatness as against zero energy.



My dear, no such thing has ever been proven anywhere. There are idle and frankly id.oitic speculations by some people intent on proving the nonsensical: and these have NEVER been proven anywhere: nor will ever.

As such, people went to the nonsensical extreme of stating that virtual particles emerge from nothingness in a quantum vacuum. I am a lawyer, and not a physicist, and yet, it took me only the slightest reading to see how nonsensically false that is for it is established that there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum anywhere; these quantum vacuums we speak of actually contain low gaseous pressure, and as such the particles observed do NOT emerge from "nothing".

I advise you to be rigorous if you seek to use these ideas in your discourses. You might impress the feeble, but you certainly won't impress me with less.




Please don't tell outright lies. Where is the hard evidence for the universe popping into existence from nothingness?

It's depressing that you cannot see what a silly statement that even is. Nothingness is nothingness: it does not exist ab initio. And yet YOU then claim that the people who make the more sensible claim founded on commonsensical causality - are the ones who are deluded? Whereas you are here advocating pure voodooistic fantasy.



Really. Don't lie again. Why on earth did you bring it up then?



I will be careful not to go to a quack lawyer or mechanic, just as you should be wary of unscientific and dogmatic "scientists".



I have not bothered to look. The premises themselves, even if true, do not bear out any of the illogical conclusions you have tried to arrive at.



Take it easy man.

You advise LordBabs against having "a little knowledge" while yourself refusing to read links to articles which you dismiss as voodoo and nonsense WITHOUT reading through all that he's shared. Now, you said you are a lawyer and so I ask you this: does your profession require or promote arguing without bothering to hear the other side? I think not, but if I'm wrong, do listen to the other side to at least here if you wish to have a discussion that moves forward instead of us merely running around in circles, each chasing the other's or one's own tail.

The zero net energy part that they have been talking about is not just scientific voodoo as far as I know. Now, not being a physicist myself, i can't give an appropriate example... and even as I sat here typing an easier, if not accurate example certain loopholes appeared to me and so I'll refrain from posting clearly invalid examples in the hopes someone else will or has posted an example that can explain the zero net energy system (which frankly has me a little perplexed as while anti matter and matter do cancel out upon collision, this results in energy so wherefore comes negative energy? Somebody (preferably a quantum physicist if there are any around) please explain or point me to the post that does.)

Thanks in advance.

P.S. Do pardon any typos. I am typing on the phone and hence am having a bit of a tough time ensuring proper spelling and grammar.

wiegraf:
Do they always release energy? The way I understand it, they usually cancel out. The little bit of matter that is excess is what makes up most of the observable universe, yes? No one really knows what dark matter/energy is, but is it related to antimatter?

These are all technicalities anyways. Bottom line is "nothing" in this universe is not really "nothing". Before big bang, nobody knows. I suppose if you tele-jazzed yourself to a place where big bangs spacetime expansion has not reached you may find true nothing, or do you create spacetime by simply being there? Pointless question, I know

There's actually a fascinating little short story by Stephen Baxter (i think) where doing so leads to a new Big Bang of sorts. Also, don't dismiss the technicalities, they may be the key to the solution.