The Great Nothing-o-tron

Originally posted by twhitehead
Yes, your description of nothingness is an impossibility as it is dimensionless and therefore either 'exists' everywhere or nowhere without a place in time or space and as such the very fact of our existence negates it the possibility of nothingness as we would be a part of said nothingness.

Yes, your description of nothingness is an impossibility as it is dimensionless and therefore either 'exists' everywhere or nowhere without a place in time or space and as such the very fact of our existence negates it the possibility of nothingness as we would be a part of said nothingness wHITEY

Good . Now things are getting interesting...may we use this juncture in the debate as a starting point?

Let's think about what this raises...

1) Firstly the idea of nothingness "existing" every"where" or no"where" is a bit wierd becasue there would be no "where" anyway .A dimensionless nothingness has no "where". But I will let this go for a while because it would be hypocritical of me to be pedantic at this point.

2) I note that you strayed away from thinking about time in your argument regarding dimensions. Nothingness would be dimensionless and it would also be timeless so would non- exist in "non" time or non-temporal non-existence.

3)There seemed little point in saying "and therefore either 'exists' everywhere or nowhere" because nothingness could not exist everywhere because there would be no "where" . It would have to exist nowhere. I wondered why you just didn't say this?

4) I agree that the universe existing could be a fly in the ointment of nothingness and could negate the nothingness. What you seem to imply here is that nothingness has to be absolute and eternally nothing and as such even a fleeting universe that existed for just 1 second would negate it. The difficulty I have is that such a universe would only negate nothingness for 1 second and 1 second only . To negate a timeless nothingness surely the universe would have to be timeless too.

Overall I think you need to say a bit more and I may have misrepresented you. Can you elaborate on your idea here.?

Originally posted by knightmeister
Surely an everything o tron would create itself and start spewing out a universe. PUPIL

...and how would something that doesn't exist create itself?

Of course it wouldn't.

It is just the same as a machine that can turn itself into nothing, impossible by the known laws of physics.

However the universe exists, what was it created from? At least with my ridiculous assumption I have half the evidence!

When has any energy/matter ceased to exist? It just changes form.

Originally posted by petrosianpupil
Of course it wouldn't.

It is just the same as a machine that can turn itself into nothing, impossible by the known laws of physics.

However the universe exists, what was it created from? At least with my ridiculous assumption I have half the evidence!

When has any energy/matter ceased to exist? It just changes form.

Cool , so energy and matter can't be destroyed . The universe will hang around forever. Maybe it has already been around for ever ?

Originally posted by knightmeister
Cool , so energy and matter can't be destroyed . The universe will hang around forever. Maybe it has already been around for ever ?

In which case, why is the entropy so low? We should be sitting at a constant 3K if your logic was right.

Originally posted by petrosianpupil
Of course it wouldn't.

It is just the same as a machine that can turn itself into nothing, impossible by the known laws of physics.

However the universe exists, what was it created from? At least with my ridiculous assumption I have half the evidence!

When has any energy/matter ceased to exist? It just changes form.

However the universe exists, what was it created from? At least with my ridiculous assumption I have half the evidence!


...I agree . So within existence at it's core we could be looking at something that can create itself out of nothing. However , why would such a thing need to create itself? Why not just exist forever without beginning?

Originally posted by knightmeister
However the universe exists, what was it created from? At least with my ridiculous assumption I have half the evidence!


...I agree . So within existence at it's core we could be looking at something that can create itself out of nothing. However , why would such a thing need to create itself? Why not just exist forever without beginning?

scottishnit point is a very good one.

The entropy of the univervse can only go one way. Over time, if the universe is a self enclosed system, we will eventually see the heat death of the universe.

That is that although the amount of energy stays tha same, it will become less and less USEFUL. Eventually the energy will turn to heat energy and it will be spread evenly throughout the universe. Scotty was pointing out that energy is not spread out much at all.

It doesn't make sense that the universe is part of an infinitely old system if their is a finite amount of energy.

Originally posted by knightmeister
READ IT THIS TIME!

So at which point in the circle did it 'appear'? WHITEY

So I ask you how your circle could just appear without causation and......your response is "at which point in the circle did the circle appear?" This implies that your circle is contained within itself . Not only the things that exist in time within your circle but the ci ...[text shortened]... s well because a sphere has to join up as well and is really just a 3d circle.

You are forgetting the latitude and longitude analogy I gave.

We already know that time is different for each and every point in spacetime. Two objects traveling through spacetime are experiencing different timelines which may meet up when the two objects interact.

So visualise a sphere with all timelines starting at the south pole and taking various tracks up the sphere but always moving northwards thought they may wander about in the east and west directions.
Although southness (time) has a beginning, the whole thing takes place on a sphere with no 'boundaries' and thus it illogical to talk about 'further' south than the south pole (or before the beginning).

Also at no point is time repeating itself, nor joining up with its own past.

Note also that it may not be a sphere but a sort of cone shape with a rounded bottom and open top end so time could be finite in the past but infinite in the future.

Note that a couple of spacial dimensions get added to map it to reality it is just hard to visualize 4 or 5 dimensions.

Note that it is a known fact that spacetime is not flat and the 4 dimensions we perceive are curved in another dimension. Two parallel lines do meet.

Originally posted by knightmeister
Overall I think you need to say a bit more and I may have misrepresented you. Can you elaborate on your idea here.?

It is hard to put the concept into words that do not do it justice, especially when your audience is convinced that dimensions do not exist while at the same time claiming that dimensions are necessarily infinite.
What I am saying is that within a given dimension, the dimension exists and therefore you cannot have nothing. To conceptualize nothingness therefore you must go off in another dimension but in doing so you are still within that other dimension and therefore you still do not have nothingness. In effect your nothingness is an invalid concept.
It does not however show that a given dimension is infinite in extent or that there are an infinite number of dimensions.

Originally posted by knightmeister
However the universe exists, what was it created from? At least with my ridiculous assumption I have half the evidence!


...I agree . So within existence at it's core we could be looking at something that can create itself out of nothing. However , why would such a thing need to create itself? Why not just exist forever without beginning?

If your contention was true, and the universe existed forever, we'd be sitting in a gas cloud of hydrogen atoms at, or around, 0 degrees Kelvin.

Of course, we wouldn't exist either, but never mind.

Originally posted by twhitehead
It is hard to put the concept into words that do not do it justice, especially when your audience is convinced that dimensions do not exist while at the same time claiming that dimensions are necessarily infinite.
What I am saying is that within a given dimension, the dimension exists and therefore you cannot have nothing. To conceptualize nothingness th ...[text shortened]... that a given dimension is infinite in extent or that there are an infinite number of dimensions.

especially when your audience is convinced that dimensions do not exist while at the same time claiming that dimensions are necessarily infinite. WHITEY

What on earth does this mean? If I think that dimensions don't exist then why on earth would I think that infinite dimensions exist? It's not "dimensions" that are infinite it's existence. To me the word dimension is a descriptive mathematical term. The correct term for infinite existence would be dimension -LESS as you quite rightly alluded to before when describing nothing as dimensionless. Having no dimensions is different from having infinite dimensions.

Originally posted by twhitehead
It is hard to put the concept into words that do not do it justice, especially when your audience is convinced that dimensions do not exist while at the same time claiming that dimensions are necessarily infinite.
What I am saying is that within a given dimension, the dimension exists and therefore you cannot have nothing. To conceptualize nothingness th ...[text shortened]... that a given dimension is infinite in extent or that there are an infinite number of dimensions.

In effect your nothingness is an invalid concept.
It does not however show that a given dimension is infinite in extent or that there are an infinite number of dimensionsWHITEY

I think this is the essence of the problem. Nothingness is invalid to you and therefore absolute nothingness is impossible for you as well. However , you imagine that in order to fill said nothingness a certain dimension of some sort needs to be infinite. However , it's infinite dimensionless existence that is required to fill infinite dimensionless non-existence. Dimensions describe existence but existence does not need dimensions to exist in.

Originally posted by twhitehead
You are forgetting the latitude and longitude analogy I gave.

We already know that time is different for each and every point in spacetime. Two objects traveling through spacetime are experiencing different timelines which may meet up when the two objects interact.

So visualise a sphere with all timelines starting at the south pole and taking variou ...[text shortened]... nd the 4 dimensions we perceive are curved in another dimension. Two parallel lines do meet.

So visualise a sphere with all timelines starting at the south pole and taking various tracks up the sphere but always moving northwards thought they may wander about in the east and west directions. WHITEY

So I did refute the circle of time at least because you have resorted to the sphere now.

Ok I'm visualising. What happens when these timelines reach the north pole , do they carry on or stop and turn back? They can't stop and turn back because time always moves forward in progression and it would be contrary to all our observations of the universe. So they must keep going north at some point (unless time stops) they will have to start going south again and you know what problem you are going to have then don't you?

Your sphere description leaves out the most important part which is how you avoid the inevitable problem of repeating time . You have conveniently "resolved" by leaving the story half finished.

Originally posted by twhitehead
You are forgetting the latitude and longitude analogy I gave.

We already know that time is different for each and every point in spacetime. Two objects traveling through spacetime are experiencing different timelines which may meet up when the two objects interact.

So visualise a sphere with all timelines starting at the south pole and taking variou nd the 4 dimensions we perceive are curved in another dimension. Two parallel lines do meet.

Although southness (time) has a beginning, the whole thing takes place on a sphere with no 'boundaries' and thus it illogical to talk about 'further' south than the south pole (or before the beginning). WHITEY

The problem is here that I would assume your sphere represents space time (if not then what on earth is it?) If it is supposed to represent space/time then space time does join up with itself at the south pole. Your timelines have to stretch around like line of longditude and come back around to the south pole again otherwise it's not a sphere but just a curved flat dimension that is almost a sphere. Thus one could say what is before the beginning because before the beginning would be the end (and then the beginning again ad infinitum). In order to make your sphere of space time the timelines have to kiss their own ass at some point and a clear point of repetition would have been reached.

This is why I think you started to talk about cones half way through. A cone is much more plausible because it doesn't have to curve back in on itself. But notice that with your cone you talk about time having a finite beginning but having an infinite future. This means that your cone is open ended at one end with timelines that never meet up in repetition and don't join with the beginning again. This is fine by me and I think it's quite plausible. The end of the cone is dimensionless as it must be (as infinity cannot be defined ) You must therefore believe some form of dimensionless existence plausible or believe in an infinite dimension.

All you have to do now is imagine existence as an open ended cone at both ends.What would happen is that the point of beginning that defines the cone is gone and the cone itself dissappears. Dimensionless existence. The something from nothing problem is gone and so is the potential for any nothingness....and you could still put another truely finite cone (our universe) "within" it.

Originally posted by knightmeister
What on earth does this mean? If I think that dimensions don't exist then why on earth would I think that infinite dimensions exist? It's not "dimensions" that are infinite it's existence. To me the word dimension is a descriptive mathematical term. The correct term for infinite existence would be dimension -LESS as you quite rightly alluded to before ...[text shortened]... othing as dimensionless. Having no dimensions is different from having infinite dimensions.

At last we have the truth. You believe that eternity is nothing!

So what exactly is infinite if you are not measuring along a dimension?

Originally posted by knightmeister
So I did refute the circle of time at least because you have resorted to the sphere now.

No. You simply have no understanding of dimensions and so cant see that a sphere is a three dimentional circle and what I am actually talking about is 4,5 or more dimentional.

Ok I'm visualising. What happens when these timelines reach the north pole , do they carry on or stop and turn back? They can't stop and turn back because time always moves forward in progression and it would be contrary to all our observations of the universe. So they must keep going north at some point (unless time stops) they will have to start going south again and you know what problem you are going to have then don't you?
Time stops.

Your sphere description leaves out the most important part which is how you avoid the inevitable problem of repeating time . You have conveniently "resolved" by leaving the story half finished.
Where exactly does time get repeated? What on earth do you mean by 'repeating time' anyway. Surely you are now imagining an external timeline in which time can repeat.