No Where

[Zarathustra]

I don't think the "nothingness" described by physicists is the same as the Nothingness we're discussing here. For one thing, they put it in scare quotes. The "nothingness" of the void, from which virtual particles spring, isn't really nothingness. It's void within space-time.

I think that our particular space-time sprang from another kind of space-time, similar to how black holes form in our universe and possibly makes another universe in the process, outside of ours. It is the birth of a new space-time reference frame, but not space-time itself.

This is the kind of "nothingness" that is unstable. Nothingness with a capital "N-" is a more abstract concept, and doesn't exist like the physical void of space-time from which virtual particles spontaneously form and then disappear. That obviously exists.

[Fist and Faith]

Makes sense.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Hashi, is Nothing dark? I say No. Nothing (Not nothing; Nothing) is the absence of light and dark. And the absence of every other dichotomy. And the absence of every other everything else. And that's as much as we can say or understand about it. We can talk about it in that kind of abstract way, but we can't comprehend the absence of everything because that includes the absence of everything that comprehension is based on. We can't describe the hours we spend under general anesthesia. We can't describe the absence of visual data in the blind-spot, even though we can see in all directions around it. It's not dark. Can you describe it?

That is why I said "Nothing is the absence of Everything" but I could just have easily said "Nothing is the absence of Anything". There wouldn't be a volume of space in Nothing for anyone to classify as "dark".

As I noted, the empty space between atoms isn't completely empty because it is still made up of spacetime. The physics "nothing" can indeed turn in to "something" from time to time because it is already something. "Nothing" is a metaphysical concept which we may only approximate but never attain. Even if you did attain Nothingness then you wouldn't exist to share it with anyone.

The blind spot is merely a side-effect of how our retina works and is the point where the cells clump together to form the base of the optic nerve. Since it doesn't contain photo-receptors it process neither light nor dark.

[Vraith]

Makes sense.

No, it doesn't unless you are giving up the entire point you were arguing.

For one thing, z is mistaken in at least a few things, including that physics is talking about things that arise in given spacetimes. Sometimes they are, but on this issue, they aren't...they're talking about the void/nothingness that stuff, INCLUDING spacetime itself, "comes from/into."

Funness: you cannot have the absence of BOTH light AND dark.
Dark is NOT a thing. It is always and ONLY no light.
An absence of light IS dark. An "absence" of dark IS light.

Experience is the START of knowing for us, because of what is/what we are.
But the definitions of intelligence and imagination and abstraction and everything else are beyond that. Those are part of knowledge, not just knowing.
That difference is why we let people perform open-heart surgery that have never HAD open-heart surgery.

Not to mention the bullshit of experience.
Seriously...there are probably a bunch of things you see that are red every day...but some of them are actually red, some of them look red cuz they ignore red, some of them red cuz they reject red. Only "you" think they're all red.

[[but people with knowledge can easily know the difference, whatever your knowing experience]]


You do realize you're making the same argument religions with " no where" to go make about their God's existence, don't you?

[peter]

Tried to post nothing ...... computer didn't like it.

[Zarathustra]

Makes sense.

No, it doesn't unless you are giving up the entire point you were arguing.

For one thing, z is mistaken in at least a few things, including that physics is talking about things that arise in given spacetimes. Sometimes they are, but on this issue, they aren't...they're talking about the void/nothingness that stuff, INCLUDING spacetime itself, "comes from/into."

From the quote on page 1:

One thing they have found is that, when quantum theory is applied to space at the smallest possible scale, space itself becomes unstable. Rather than remaining perfectly smooth and continuous, space and time destabilize, churning and frothing into a foam of space-time bubbles.

...

Quantum mechanics tells us that "nothing" is inherently unstable, so the initial leap from nothing to something may have been inevitable. Then the resulting tiny bubble of space-time could have burgeoned into a massive, busy universe, thanks to inflation. As Krauss puts it, "The laws of physics as we understand them make it eminently plausible that our universe arose from nothing - no space, no time, no particles, nothing that we now know of."

How do we get from quantum properties of space to the quantum properties of nothing? The conclusions about space that are drawn from quantum mechanics should not be applicable to nothing at all, especially the absence of space.

[Fist and Faith]

Makes sense.

No, it doesn't unless you are giving up the entire point you were arguing.

It makes sense if we were talking about two different things.

[Vraith]

It makes sense if we were talking about two different things.

Hah...well that's so.

Z, on this: "The conclusions about space that are drawn from quantum mechanics should not be applicable to nothing at all, especially the absence of space."
The end of that same quote says something different from this. That there is a relationship between no space, no time and spacetime. At the very least that the absence of spacetime "falls apart" to become stuff.
[[[I love the idea that chaos, instability, nothing, isn't destructive but instead that which allows things to be/become.]]]