Kevin's Watch

Good post as usual Fist. I had an interesting insight into this discussion yesterday, but unfortunately, I've lost the thread of it...will have to go home and read piece that gave it to me again.

It was something about the real question being whether or not we believe that the universe is founded solely on cause and effect.

--A

Actually, that's an interesting point, Avatar. Can the universe be founded solely on cause and effect? If so, you're left with a paradox - either there's an infinite series of befores, or there is a point at which something came from nothing - which breaks cause and effect! The same applies for god, btw - if god exists, either he was created by something which was created by something, etc; or he exists without a source, in which case why can't the universe exist in the same manner?

I think you've struck to the heart of it there Murrin. That's pretty much the line of reasoning that I was thinking about.

--A

The question I've asked at times is: Can a system that operates entirely under the laws of cause & effect itself be causeless? Naturally, we don't have any way of knowing, since it's sorta impossible to test. But, again, unless we subscribe to the infinite-chain-of-causes idea, something exists/existed without cause. I believe it's the thing that I know exists - the universe.

Depends on what you mean by "causeless" I guess. Something along Murrin's line of an eternal cycle? I don't know...either we have cause and effect, which means the universe was caused by something, or we don't. The only alternative to "caused" is that it's always existed, or at least that something has.

Even something coming to existence just *poof* needs a cause, doesn't it?

*shrug* Have to think about it.

--A

That's what I mean; we don't have any way of knowing. Just because everything within the system operates under the rules of c&e, doesn't mean the system has to have been caused. No way of knowing.

It should be pointed out, however, that the fact that I'm not comfortable with the idea of - don't see the logic of - an infinite chain of causes, doesn't mean it's not the answer. Of course you all know that, but I wanted to make sure you knew I know it. Same goes for a creator. I'm willing to accept the universe's existence as a fact. I'm not willing to accept any cause's existence as a fact. Therefore, for want of any factual alternative, I'm willing to accept the universe as the causeless thing. That might be right, might be wrong, but it's all I currently have that is based in fact.

Certainly agree that we can (mostly ) accept the existence of the universe as fact, but let's take this "causelessness" a bit further.

Does "without cause" mean the same as "always existed"?

--A

I'm going to throw a couple of logs into the fire

So, according to you all, what is the reason why the Universe is as it is? According to physics, the existence of our Universe is, to put it mildly, extremely improbable, due to a simple reason: ALL the cosmological constants (force of gravity, fine structure constant, nuclear force, and so on) have EXACTLY the right values which would allow life to exist. Had any of them been even just slightly different (and by "slight" I mean a change on the order of magnitude of about plus or minus 0.0000001), the Universe would be completely different, and without life.
An example: if the constants for gravity had been even a tiny bit bigger, we would have no stars like the sun, simply small, dead balls of neutrons or black holes. Had the constants been just a tiny bit smaller, we would have no stars because gravity wouldn't have been strong enough to aggregate enough particles and ignite the nuclear reactions within them.

So, how can that be explained? Statistics claims that, in the end, our Universe should not exist - yet here we are

Sorry, I had to throw this log, given the long discussion about the scientific method

Don't be sorry, we like it.

Avatar wrote:I'm happy with the thought that we are infinitely unlikely.

I'd like to ask though, why does there need to be a reason? A reason suggests, as I've said before, a plan, and a plan implies a planner.

I don't think that there is a reason in the end. It, (and we), simply are.

That concatenation of infinitely improbable factors resulted in us. It could even more easily not have done so. It did however, and here we are. Why complicate things?

--A

ALL the cosmological constants (force of gravity, fine structure constant, nuclear force, and so on) have EXACTLY the right values which would allow life to exist. Had any of them been even just slightly different (and by "slight" I mean a change on the order of magnitude of about plus or minus 0.0000001), the Universe would be completely different, and without life.

Please, go back and tack on an 'as we know it' there. We're defining things by our own frame of reference again when we make statements like that. Who's to say that life couldn't have evolved in a universe with different rules to ours? It would be entirely different to ours in just about every way, so, of course, the conditions necessary for life to arise would also be different.

Well, do you think life of any sort would have developed in a homogeneous, Universe-sized sea of hot plasma? Or in a cold, lightless universe full of black holes and super-heavy neutron stars, without any planets or stars?

I'm not talking about wholly different physical laws, simply different constants. Such as, instead of the speed of light being c = 300,000 Km/sec., in another such Universe the speed of light could have been c = 10 Km./h. The equations and laws of physics would be the same - they would simply give different results. As the laws of physics would be the same, the concept of "life" would be similar to ours; as the constants are different, there is no chance for such "life" to appear in situations such as the ones I mentioned above (and which would be our Universe if only gravity had been slightly different).

This is admittedly only a subset of all possible Universes; but even such a subset of an infinite number is infinitely huge, and anyway, any speculation on the "remaining" infinite number of Universes that are too outlandish for us to speculate upon would be obviously moot.

The point is - if out of 10.000.000.000.000 possible Universes with our same physical laws, there is only 1 in which ALL the cosmological constants have exactly the right value for life to exist and mankind to wonder about the existence of a God, then the odds are pretty slim. Sure, it IS possible - a chance of about 1 to 10.000.000.000.000 - but it would require so many coincidences as to stretch the whole "coincidence" or "luck" argument a bit too far.

And the log continues to burn...

But what kind of logic are people working on when they calculate things for universes with different constants? Do they just take our universe then switch the numbers - if so, I wouldn't expect the values to be too reliable as a model for other universes. A lot of the laws of physics depend on what happened in the early stages - the way in which the unified force broke down into it's current incarnations (gravity, electromagnetism, weak, strong), and I'd expect that slight difference in what happened back then wouldn't produce the same laws with different constants - it would, in most cases, produce entirely different laws, ones we couldn't just substitute numbers to predict (or at least, not unless we finally get our physics sorted out enough to determine exactly what happened back then).

Well, I'm no physicist, but I tend to imagine they used as much logic as they could, exploiting the knowledge we have gained thus far. My description of this theory is by necessity (as I'm not a physicist and I'm not a mathematician) very simplified.

Then again, you could be right - our rational minds are so deeply entrenched in the reality we live in, that realities utterly unlike our own cannot be imagined, and we do need at least something which is similar between our reality and the imagined reality, in order to be able to visualize it.

Random chance.

BTW, I think Murrin is talking about the "infinite number of Universes that are too outlandish for us to speculate upon."

Now hold on though, (because when it gets to math I'm a bit out of my depth), but surely any probability that is based on an infinite set has a nearly infinite chance of occuring?

Afterall, infinity divided by anything is still infinity...

--A

Actually, any single probability in an infinite number of possibilities has an infinitely small chance of occurring... because it's not infinite divided by infinite, but 1/infinite

Just like 1 chance in 100 is bigger than 1 chance in 10.000...

Fair enough...but if the chance itself is infinite..aaah, forget it...like I said, this isn't my strong point.

--A

But if there are an infinite number of universes created, no matter how small the chances there would still be an inifinite number of them like ours, as well as an infinite number of any other type.

Well, the theory I mentioned above doesn't describe an infinite number of created Universes, but only an infinite number of possible Universes. Physicists are mostly skeptic about the concept of "alternate universes", so the concept described above is not "all possible Universes exist, and we're in the only one which can support life", but "out of all possible universes, the only one that exists is the one that can support life".

I love your stand on all this Xar, keep burning the log, try it at both ends!

But isn't your supposition based on "all life" as being "organic, carbon based life"? Do you allow the possibility that not all "life" is organic?

Then again anything divided by zero is... Alpha and the Omega? hmmm....