RE: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?

Tue, 06 Jan 2015 00:54:14 -0800 

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2015 12:00 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to 
dialectics?

 

On 6 January 2015 at 16:21, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 6:50 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote:

 

> Eternal inflation seems to assume there is something because "there has 
> always been something". However if so, it sidesteps the underlying issue - 
> why is there this (eternal) something? The question itself - and any 
> attempted answer - can't be answered causally.

 

Eternal inflation can't explain how nothing became something but it can explain 
how *almost* nothing became something, and that certainly seem like a step in 
the right direction. A scientific explanation shows how simplicity can produce 
complexity, or to put it another way exposes the simplicity underlying 
complexity; and that is why the God theory is such a spectacular failure, the 
explanation is more complex than the thing it explains. 

 

Well put Liz. Like most (or at least many) I suppose on this list, I am drawn 
by the idea of the possibility of an Information Theory of Everything. 
Inflation has made powerful predictions (on the early expected ratios of 
elements in the era of nucleosynthesis); it has solved intractable problems for 
the Big Bang – the smoothness problem. But why stop there? 

You put the why not well.

-Chris

 

 

Yes I've said that myself many times on this forum too. 

 

It's true that the inflation field as proposed by Alan Guth and Andre Linde 
isn't nothing, but it's vastly simpler that the universe it created and 
INFINITELY simpler than a omniscient omnipotent infinitely intelligent 
conscious being. Perhaps some will want to call the inflation field God, but I 
don't have a fetish for that 3 letter English word so I won't.   

 

You seem to be obsessed with God, personally I have no wish to discuss that 
hypothesis. But almost nothing isn't good enough, so a scientific discussion 
would be welcome.

 

 >The question itself - and any attempted answer - can't be answered causally.

 

It either had a cause or it didn't, and if it didn't then it was random.

 

Causal means an antecendent cause, a cause preceding something in time. The 
problem with EI is that it needs an explanation for how the entire temporal 
structure arises, even if it has no beginning, the theory needs to explain why 
this reality and no other?

 

This is a fascinating question, and one in the scientific tradition of digging 
deeper into what's really going on.

 

 

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