On 09 May 2012, at 12:36, R AM wrote:
On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 2:25 AM, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> wrote:
You must have misread me. I am anything but sure nothing must have
come before.
Yes, probably I did.
Indeed, my whole point is that something from nothing - genuine
nothing - is a nonsense. You can't bridge the hgap between existence
and non existence by any causal process. I think that's obvious, and
we must accept that the universe simply 'is'.
I agree.
An empty set is not the absence of a set.
A set is a collection of elements and the empty set is the absence
of elements (nothing).
The empty set is the absence of elements (nothing) in that set. It is
the set { }.
The empty set is not nothing. For example, the set is { { } } is not
empty. It contains as element the empty set.
Just to be precise.
But to take another angle on it: consider what you mean by removing
these objects. It's merely something you're imagining, it does not
correspond to any real process. In reality, energy and matter
transform, they are not created or destroyed.
I agree, it is not a physical process. But I am not proposing this
combinatorics as a way to create something from nothing, but just to
show that there are more ways of being than of non-being. In fact,
it is not that different of saying that the laws of this universe
are "unlikely" (given that many more are possible). But it is all
combinatorics.
You say existence is more "likely" than nonexistence based on this
imaginary subtraction/addition, but think about the meaning of
"likely". What is the set you're sampling from? All possible states
of existence including the absence of anything - the empty set. So
you've already 'created' the universe of universes as it were. Why
is there a set to sample from to allow there to be any likelihood of
one or the other state of being? That is the crux of the issue.
Well, I have not really "created" this set of possibilities, have I?
The possibilities are out there, so to speak. I cannot even imagine
how to make them go away, so to speak. I mean, I can imagine my home
does not exist, but I cannot imagine the absence of the possibility
of my home.
OK, let's try another angle. People in this list have infinite
universes for breakfast. To me, the most important problem of
multiverses is that most universes in them are random (white
rabbits). But it is not usually appreciated that very vew of them
correspond to Newtonian empty space. In fact, the multiverse already
explains why there is something rather than empty space (at the cost
of white rabbits). I agree that Newtonian empty space is not
nothing, but the argument that I have used is very similar, and
classic empty space is what most people mean by "nothing" anyway.
Ricardo.
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