Believing or seeing?

[Ginny]

All the evidence is that there was no space or time when the universe came into existence - it started as a very small thing that expanded to the size it is now - so every point in space is the origin in a sense

So it probably couldn't be traced back to one point of origin, but there used to be one, at the moment when time was introduced to space and their life began (although technically time didn't exist either, or at least it wouldn't have been measurable even if it did).

It could be a matter of perspective if we want to call it an origin or not.

 

[John K]

So it probably couldn't be traced back to one point of origin, but there used to be one, at the moment when time was introduced to space and their life began (although technically time didn't exist either, or at least it wouldn't have been measurable even if it did).

It could be a matter of perspective if we want to call it an origin or not.

Well it gets very technical - and it also goes beyond current scientific theory to explain it so there's a lot of arm waving and mumbling among the scientists and they get all theological about string theory and whetever. It's hard to grasp intuitively, but if you could play the universe backwards you would see everything moving closer together until it all got crushed into a soup of raw atoms. The stars and galaxies wouldn't be actually moving - all of space would be contracting like the surface of a balloon when you let the air out. When it was about the size of a grapefruit, it would suddenly seem to just collapse and disappear. Now the tricky bit is that this grapefruit is all that there is - there is no outside of it so you can't do what I just did in imagination and watch it from the outside - there is no outside. When it disappears, all that matter and energy is compressed so small and so energetically that there is no science that can handle it yet - that needs the Theory of Everything which is what the great and the good are trying to produce. Best guess is that the stuff and its space all just disappears - but again you can't stand outside and watch because there is now no space left and no time either. Great stuff to boggle with. When you play it all forward again, it appears that the original speck that started it all off just appeared as a random quantum fluctuation - but I never could grasp how this works when there is no time and space to fluctuate from. I gather there is some plausible maths that can describe it, but like quantum mechanics I bet the equations don't translate easily into visual images. It's not a bad way of looking at it though because at sub-atomic levels particles are appearing and disappearing at random out of vacuum all the time - this is quite observable with the right kit.

Footnote: I meant to add the vital last bit, so I'm adding it later - after walking through this I think you are right - there was a sort of origin point but there are different ways we can look at it.

 

[Fidicen]

There can't be a point of origin before there is space in which such a concept as a point makes sense. And when the universe expands, all the matter that was close together originally just gets farther away, yet still being the centre.

The origin does defy cause and effect, but we can't tell exactly what happened when the universe began. There's no accepted theory for that yet.

Pfffftt, everyone knows the universe is flat.

Is this humour or are you trolling? Flatness of the universe doesn't mean there has to be an edge. I'm baffled because someone who's read enough about cosmology to know what's thought to be the shape of the universe, and is arrogant enough to express disagreement by appealing to what "everyone knows", surely must know what's thought about the edge.

https://www.space.com/33005-where-is-the-universes-edge-op-ed.html

 

[Ginny]

Well it gets very technical - and it also goes beyond current scientific theory to explain it so there's a lot of arm waving and mumbling among the scientists and they get all theological about string theory and whetever. It's hard to grasp intuitively, but if you could play the universe backwards you would see everything moving closer together until it all got crushed into a soup of raw atoms. The stars and galaxies wouldn't be actually moving - all of space would be contracting like the surface of a balloon when you let the air out. When it was about the size of a grapefruit, it would suddenly seem to just collapse and disappear. Now the tricky bit is that this grapefruit is all that there is - there is no outside of it so you can't do what I just did in imagination and watch it from the outside - there is no outside. When it disappears, all that matter and energy is compressed so small and so energetically that there is no science that can handle it yet - that needs the Theory of Everything which is what the great and the good are trying to produce. Best guess is that the stuff and its space all just disappears - but again you can't stand outside and watch because there is now no space left and no time either. Great stuff to boggle with. When you play it all forward again, it appears that the original speck that started it all off just appeared as a random quantum fluctuation - but I never could grasp how this works when there is no time and space to fluctuate from. I gather there is some plausible maths that can describe it, but like quantum mechanics I bet the equations don't translate easily into visual images. It's not a bad way of looking at it though because at sub-atomic levels particles are appearing and disappearing at random out of vacuum all the time - this is quite observable with the right kit.

Apart from the grapefruit those are the exact same pictures that I have in mind. I understand also that the point we observe from doesn't exist anywhere but in our imagination - yet we have to assume this position outside of what we know in order to observe the way we do.

You could say that there is no point, because everything that the point was is what the universe is now, and I understand that position. You could also say that this point is an imaginary structure (just like the observational perspective we take to explain it) which we keep in mind in its original form (or rather size) as the actual universe expands around it. This is all I have meant. And because I can imagine both ways of seeing it, I consider it a thing of personal preference. Someone with a scientific background will probably prefer the former perspective, I don't know.

It still is fascinating to expand your mind by creating theories with the hypotheses that scientists come up with. At the moment they are just that, which is what makes this fun - it's a matter of imagination and a little background knowledge in cosmology. Which I mostly don't have, judging by the lecturing I get for the way that I describe what I see in my mind's eye - I don't mean this judgingly, I like being lectured

 

[John K]

Apart from the grapefruit those are the exact same pictures that I have in mind. I understand also that the point we observe from doesn't exist anywhere but in our imagination - yet we have to assume this position outside of what we know in order to observe the way we do.

You could say that there is no point, because everything that the point was is what the universe is now, and I understand that position. You could also say that this point is an imaginary structure (just like the observational perspective we take to explain it) which we keep in mind in its original form (or rather size) as the actual universe expands around it. This is all I have meant. And because I can imagine both ways of seeing it, I consider it a thing of personal preference. Someone with a scientific background will probably prefer the former perspective, I don't know.

It still is fascinating to expand your mind by creating theories with the hypotheses that scientists come up with. At the moment they are just that, which is what makes this fun - it's a matter of imagination and a little background knowledge in cosmology. Which I mostly don't have, judging by the lecturing I get for the way that I describe what I see in my mind's eye - I don't mean this judgingly, I like being lectured

Sorry - didn't mean to sound like a lecture but it's something that fascinates me so you got me thinking about how I visualise it and wrote down what I thought to try and focus on it in my mind. I should have added at the end that it brought me pretty well to agreeing with what you said - that there was an original point but to some extent it's in the eye of the beholder to choose how they look at it.

 

[Wyote]

how do I know that @Wyote hasn't cast his famous potato spell on me?

 

[Ginny]

Sorry - didn't mean to sound like a lecture but it's something that fascinates me so you got me thinking about how I visualise it and wrote down what I thought to try and focus on it in my mind. I should have added at the end that it brought me pretty well to agreeing with what you said - that there was an original point but to some extent it's in the eye of the beholder to choose how they look at it.

Thank you for understanding. Indeed it did sound like it, but not in a mean way - never that. It's great that you can share your fascination this passionately and in an accessible manner. You too @Fidicen
And you both were so patient with me, taking the time to respond this extensively, I should rather thank you for that.

So thank you for your ideations and your patience

 

[Fidicen]

A haiku:

Aagh! What is this spell?
The moon is a potato,
my peeler too small!

 

[John K]

Thank you for understanding. Indeed it did sound like it, but not in a mean way - never that. It's great that you can share your fascination this passionately and in an accessible manner. You too @Fidicen
And you both were so patient with me, taking the time to respond this extensively, I should rather thank you for that.

So thank you for your ideations and your patience

Thankyou for your patience Ginny - I'm a sucker for cosmology and origins so it sucks me into all that Ni/Ti stuff

 

[Ginny]

Thankyou for your patience Ginny - I'm a sucker for cosmology and origins so it sucks me into all that Ni/Ti stuff

Last summer, I watched all these World Science Festival videos on youtube, most of the talks hosted by Brian Greene on exactly these topics , cosmology and quantum mechanics especially. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have dared utter the things I did .

 

[Ren]

Do you need proof to believe? Like, to believe in true love, soulmates, miracles, magic (not necessarily religion) or are you a believer by nature?

I would say that, if given proof, I know. But sometimes, even in the absence of proof, I still believe.

So believing and seeing overlap to such an extent that I can't make up my mind.

Same.

Is this humour or are you trolling? Flatness of the universe doesn't mean there has to be an edge. I'm baffled because someone who's read enough about cosmology to know what's thought to be the shape of the universe, and is arrogant enough to express disagreement by appealing to what "everyone knows", surely must know what's thought about the edge.

https://www.space.com/33005-where-is-the-universes-edge-op-ed.html

I'm pretty sure Asa was joking ^^ Thanks for the article by the way!

 

[Deleted member 16771]

I'm very much on this wavelength - I came across the concept of positive skepticism some years ago that seems to fit me very well. Nothing is really certain, but I go along with things, suspending judgement a lot of the time, using subjective and objective perception and using an inductive kind of attitude to see where it all goes. In all honesty I see science at its best doing this sort of thing, and so do the great religions when you look behind their formalisms and sterotypes.

THIS

Notably, this is also the most entertaining and interesting position to have.


Synonyms:

Gracious aloofness
Infuriating noncommittalism
Patronising entertainment
Whorish countenancing

 

[just me]

I think some things are implanted in the brain after extensive, accurate repetition. In those cases, I believe because I SAW. I'll leave my strong faith out of the conversation.

 

[Nautilidae]

I didn't vote due to my principles.

My response to the post would be that utility corrects epistemological problems more dependably than it does ontological ones. As a result, I prefer to work in ontological space.

With that in mind, I subscribe to speculative realism's critique of Kant's sweeping, impoverished generalizations and assumptions. And further still, I subscribe to Deleuze and DeLanda's theory of assemblages over the idea of "essences" that will increasingly fail the sciences in the future of access to more and more nuanced data about the universe and all of its contents/phenomena. Process is more important than definition.

 

[jn56uytrx]

This. Definitely this. And not just because she's adorable.

If I HAVE to choose, believing is seeing takes the edge.

 

[Deleted member 16771]

Hi there, Nautilidae. Your post sounds interesting, but I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean here. Do you mind translating your post into layman's terms?

My response to the post would be that utility corrects epistemological problems more dependably than it does ontological ones. As a result, I prefer to work in ontological space.

I'm afraid that I can't work out what this means. Are you using 'utility' here in some technical sense that I'm not aware of? 'Utility' has a lot of technical/jargon senses, and none of them seem to work for your sentence. Also I don't know why it would follow that 'as a result, [you] prefer to work in ontological space'

With that in mind, I subscribe to speculative realism's critique of Kant's sweeping, impoverished generalizations and assumptions.

Again, I would say that you might need to tailor your posts for the audience that might read them. Could you explain, in a short way, what speculative realism is, and why it is relevant to this discussion?

And further still, I subscribe to Deleuze and DeLanda's theory of assemblages over the idea of "essences" that will increasingly fail the sciences in the future of access to more and more nuanced data about the universe and all of its contents/phenomena. Process is more important than definition.

And again, could you provide a brief overview of these notions and why they are relevant to the discussion?

 

[Asa]

s this humour or are you trolling? Flatness of the universe doesn't mean there has to be an edge. I'm baffled because someone who's read enough about cosmology to know what's thought to be the shape of the universe, and is arrogant enough to express disagreement by appealing to what "everyone knows", surely must know what's thought about the edge.

I was being silly and making the joke based on the Flat Earth Society stuff. I don't troll. I usually stay away from hyperbole, like using "everyone knows", too. <3
I almost delayed my joke to accompany it with an image of a cat pushing things off the edge of the universe.

 

[Fidicen]

I was being silly and making the joke based on the Flat Earth Society stuff. I don't troll. I usually stay away from hyperbole, like using "everyone knows", too. <3
I almost delayed my joke to accompany it with an image of a cat pushing things off the edge of the universe.

Thanks for clarifying that. On the internet when you're talking with people you don't know, it may be hard to tell who's joking if emojis aren't used, or even if they are. For example, on this forum holocaust jokes pop up every now and then, and while a lot of the time it's clear that it's a joke, other times the joker might be flippant because of thinking the topic isn't serious or could even think the joke is appropriate because the whole thing is a hoax. Only when you know the person a bit it might be easy to tell. And since I haven't participated with you in jovial banter, it was hard to tell whether the poke was meant to be a caustic test for reactions or a humorous quip.

 

[Asa]

Thanks for clarifying that.

I've had a few of these moments on the forum lately and have learned my lesson that I need to sprinkle joke posts heavily with emojis. I'm glad it's been cleared up.

 

[Stu]

I do not trust my senses, I do not trust my instincts, I do not trust my intellect. There is something deep within that I do trust and follow and it has nothing to do with seeing or believing. It is a little scary.