The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

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SpheresOfBalance
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

Conde Lucanor wrote:
SpheresOfBalance wrote: That you play word games is nothing new, invalid logic yields nothing. Well nothing of any real value!

By definition, nothingness is nonexistence; not being. So only a fool would say: "...nonexistence cannot exist." Why simply repeat the definition, simply reiterate, as if that actually says something.
Well, it seems obvious then that you're absolutely unaware of the existence of analytic propositions in philosophy and their importance in understanding the type of truths they convey. Kant, Quine and the like, such fools.
Yep, by today's standards, of course!
SpheresOfBalance wrote:Read the topic, it says absolutely nothing about existence.
When it comes down to propositional statements, the original post includes a lot of assertions about something that "is", about "being", which conveys existence. And yet you say it says absolutely nothing. Did you ever read it?
I was referring to the topic title, have you ever read it?
SpheresOfBalance wrote:What was here before the big bang? What banged? Where did that which banged come from?
The absolute impossibility of nothingness implies that there had to be something. That's because "nothing" and "something" are mutually exclusive, they cannot both be true.
No, you just believe them to be mutually exclusive!

SpheresOfBalance wrote:If it expanded that means it had to expand somewhere, and if it expanded into something, then it wasn't our origin, as the something it expanded into had to be here first. Could it have expanded into nothing, the nothing being a void; simply space? Is nothing simply space? The opposite of nothing is forever being, ad infinitum. Really, there has always been something, to infinity? Can you envision infinity?


It may be hard, but it surely makes more sense than envisioning its finite boundaries.
To your finite mind!
Well it's nice to know that all the astrophysicists disagree with you. You know, all those that actually have an education, all those that have a much higher probability of actually knowing. Lets face it, this question can't as of yet be known, it can only ever, at this particular time, be supposition! Humans are far to young to 'know' such things. It would seem that in all your words you fail to understand what 'knowledge' actually is. I seem to be the only one around smart enough to understand that all those dead philosophers ideas are just as antiquated as their bodies. Their all has-been's, only to be referenced by those that have no actual clue, still believing that their age old words were actually clever, meaningful, actually carrying any weight at all. The tell tale state of the minds of those still hanging on their words is quite laughable.
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SpheresOfBalance
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

Greta wrote:
sthitapragya wrote:But what surrounds those stray photons is not true nothingness. There is real space between them which did not exist at the big bang. However, what surrounded all the matter and energy of the universe at the singularity would be true nothingness as there literally was nothing outside of it and no space time inside of it. At least that seems to be the theory.
My old forum pal, Obvious Leo (who, based on the obits, passed away recently :cry: ) would have had apoplexy at the idea of "real space". There is still much debate about the idea of "space", eg. http://www.onlinephilosophyclub.com/for ... 1&start=45

The question is, would this "real space" physically differ from the nothingness of pre BB reality?
It's always sad when someone dies, but that is indeed at the end of all our lives, unfortunately. What did he die of? Though we had our moments, of course I'd rather him be here.

R.I.P. my fellow mind!
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Greta wrote:
sthitapragya wrote:But what surrounds those stray photons is not true nothingness. There is real space between them which did not exist at the big bang. However, what surrounded all the matter and energy of the universe at the singularity would be true nothingness as there literally was nothing outside of it and no space time inside of it. At least that seems to be the theory.
My old forum pal, Obvious Leo (who, based on the obits, passed away recently :cry: ) would have had apoplexy at the idea of "real space". There is still much debate about the idea of "space", eg. http://www.onlinephilosophyclub.com/for ... 1&start=45

The question is, would this "real space" physically differ from the nothingness of pre BB reality?
It's always sad when someone dies, but that is indeed at the end of all our lives, unfortunately. What did he die of? Though we had our moments, of course I'd rather him be here.

R.I.P. my fellow mind!
He was quite young, so probably cancer, like everyone else these days.
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by PoeticUniverse »

I am the one who hosts Leo’s theory on my blog. I’ve been off the grid for awhile in the cracked mud desert and other places in my camper and so only now do I note that Leo has passed away. He had many great ideas.

The Implications of No ‘Nothing’:

In this thread, we/I might as well move onto, first, the immediate insights from ‘Nothing’ not being able to be, for what isn’t there and not of anything cannot be productive, nor can it even be meant in any way, either at large (as what is outside the Cosmos or that which our universe expands into) or in smaller discrete instances (such as a spacer between things; if there isn’t anything between things then would be adjacent, anyway). Besides all that, a lack of anything did not happen, obviously, and if ‘it’ could then there would still ‘be’ a lack of anything now. I can only reference ‘Nothing’ in single quotes since it cannot have being/existence. Nor can outputs be produced from no inputs, that is, from nothing, as called ‘random’.

Thus, all would appear to something like field, as Einstein thought, although ‘field’ need not necessarily be the eternal basis of all, although it is a candidate, as its waves fully qualify as simple, continuous, non composite functions, and are found everywhere we look.

More importantly, the impossibility of Nothing indicates that the something which is the basis has neither beginning nor end, as “ungenerated and deathless”, a la Parmenides, as the Eternal IS (there can be no “was”, for it is ever, having never come into being and never being able to go away. The IS, then had no option, no choice but to be. The existence of the IS/Existence as the Eternal Something thus has no opposite, no contrast class, which we can surely know as a truth.

A Slight Digression About Preaching:

For what we can’t truly know, whether “just said” as philosophers, scientists, new agers, or the religious, we should not state notions as if they were truth and fact, for this is at best deceptive and at worst dishonest. Wishes do not necessarily mean fact, no matter how well meaning and hopeful one might be about them being so.

Horace Before Descartes:

While Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” is close, he might have better said “I experience, therefore I am an experiencer”, for there is no proof that conscious awareness itself can do or think anything on its own, especially since it is the last to know, it arriving a few hundred milliseconds after our mostly subconscious brain analysis has finished its computations.

It is very likely that we indeed have brains and that there is an external reality outside our inner world, since we have senses to take in information from the outside, and do so.

Back to the Eternal:

It’s interesting to try to understand the Eternal Basis as having only itself as a precursor, in that it would then likely seem that everything would already be around, but I’ll leave most of that until later, for these myriad everythings may be other than here, our universe having gone along one of those many paths.

We also wonder if the everything is all at once or gets enacted in sequence.

No Stillness:

It appears that the Eternal Basis can’t stay still and not do anything, since it didn’t and doesn’t, and so we now must go on to banish Stillness, making Movement/Change/Time to be mandatory. Leo and Lee Smolin both try to show that Time is non-emergent.

Some scientists state it such that there is ever some fluctuation of the base energy going on, these disturbances going in and out of their type of existence and usually not leading to a persistence of something higher, but once in a while a universe is born. Perhaps these energy fluctuations are the Eternal Basis or, deeper, the capability for this would be, or the energy itself is.

For those such as Alan Guth, the freezing out of the electroweak forces released such a tremendous amount of energy that it drove the inflation that made for our flat universe. In short, what we surmise about immediately after the Big Bang is a whole lot and has not yet been contradicted. Note that the Big Bang theory is not so much about what gave rise to the Big Bang or even the Bang itself, but about thereafter, albeit only 10*-43 afterward.

To be con’t…
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Complexity and Composites Are Ever From the Simpler and Simpler Basis:

It would not do to have the Eternal Basis to be a composite or complex system that which is First and Fundamental, for the parts would ever have to be more-so toward fundamental, and so the Eternal Basis needs be a simple, continuous function, thus ruling out such as a so-called God-Person-System-of-Mind or even the smallest possible composite from being a candidate. Look to the more complex future for Higher Beings instead of the simpler and simpler past. Leo would love this.

No Point for an Imparted Design:

Getting back to the implications of the Eternal, we note that what has no beginning thus has no point for any certain direction or design to be given to it, and so it depends but on itself, which might then by default be anything and everything or else all that which is possible by some default/necessity, but this avenue seems to take us outside the IS. It is curious that he information content of everything is the same of that of a lack of anything: zero. It appears that we reside in an aisle of the Library of Bable that contains all possible secnerios/books.

Matter Amounts and Sizes Large and Small:

While there is seemingly massive and even extravagant amounts of our matter and dark matter abounding in our universe, it would seem that any amount could be so, as well as any amount of mass-energy being existent, for again there was no point for some certain, specific amount to be specified in a first place that never was.

In the Middle

Why is the smallest so small? Perhaps because if it were any larger it would have to be composite, and thus not the smallest? Why is the largest so large? Perhaps because the smallest is so small. And here we humans are at exactly the mid/point of the largest and the smallest. What is to be made of that?

A Possible Balance

Many scientists note that the positive kinetic energy of all the stuff in the universe appears to be balanced/canceled by the negative potential energy of gravity. Is this capability the Eternal Basis? I don’t know, but it sure seems to make for one heck of a free lunch, along with inflation serving it, if not an eternal universal feast (it can’t last forever).

The above and any other proposed zero-balance theories are not to say that something becomes from ‘Nothing’, for the capability of such would be something and thus one did not really have Nothing as claimed.

To be con’t…
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Terrapin Station
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by Terrapin Station »

One big problem I see early in your argument is that you're apparently equating nothingness and something with multiple spatial points.
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Terrapin Station wrote:One big problem I see early in your argument is that you're apparently equating nothingness and something with multiple spatial points.
How come?
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

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PoeticUniverse wrote:
Terrapin Station wrote:One big problem I see early in your argument is that you're apparently equating nothingness and something with multiple spatial points.
How come?
You're asking me why he's equating the two? Probably because he isn't being very careful in his thinking about this. He's not realizing that nothingness wouldn't be something with multiple spatial points.
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by Conde Lucanor »

SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Conde Lucanor wrote:Well, it seems obvious then that you're absolutely unaware of the existence of analytic propositions in philosophy and their importance in understanding the type of truths they convey. Kant, Quine and the like, such fools.
Yep, by today's standards, of course!
Analytic statements are basic logic. When I point at their existence, you dismiss them, just a few lines away from the statement protesting "invalid logic". Cute.
SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Conde Lucanor wrote:When it comes down to propositional statements, the original post includes a lot of assertions about something that "is", about "being", which conveys existence. And yet you say it says absolutely nothing. Did you ever read it?
I was referring to the topic title, have you ever read it?
First you said topic, now you said topic title. According to you, the discussion should limit itself only to the title. That's even cuter.
SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Conde Lucanor wrote:The absolute impossibility of nothingness implies that there had to be something. That's because "nothing" and "something" are mutually exclusive, they cannot both be true.
No, you just believe them to be mutually exclusive!
How lazy. It would have been interesting that you dealt with an argument to prove that my belief is wrong, but I can easily guess that would have proven to be a very difficult task for you.
SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Conde Lucanor wrote:It may be hard, but it surely makes more sense than envisioning its finite boundaries.
To your finite mind!
Infinite laziness and incompetence I see.
SpheresOfBalance wrote:Well it's nice to know that all the astrophysicists disagree with you. You know, all those that actually have an education, all those that have a much higher probability of actually knowing.
I think I heard that argument before. Hmm...oh wait, I remember, that's what they said to Copernicus and Galileo. Conventional wisdom, they said.
SpheresOfBalance wrote:Humans are far to young to 'know' such things. It would seem that in all your words you fail to understand what 'knowledge' actually is. I seem to be the only one around smart enough to understand that all those dead philosophers ideas are just as antiquated as their bodies.
Yep. All those already dead philosophers that came after the philosophers that conveyed your very same argument of knowledge being limited only to experience. Try to live another 300 years to see if you finally catch up.
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Infinite Extent Impossible:

While we have admitted the Eternal, which is about duration, it is more difficult to admit the infinite, which is about extent, for how could an infinite extent be extant all at once, for the infinite can never be capped. Both our universe and any greater Cosmos (Universe) would seem to have to be finite in size. ‘Boundless’ is another matter, such as the surface of a sphere on which something can forever go round and round without reaching an end.

Qubits (‘It’ from Bit)

What does not engage in the processing of information has no real, persistent existence, which makes for the ever-going noise of the quantum foam to have but a sub-existence that is ever coming and going. The uncertainty principle tells us that this cannot go to Nothing, since that would be certain. The quantum foam is sort of a ‘New Kind of Nothing’.

Qubits emerge from the noise of the quantum foam’s fuzziness and then they can exchange information. Processing has begun.

The qubits of information require separation and from this separation ‘space’ arises/emerges.

Violation of locality through entanglement means that location can be illusive; this seems to imply supremacy of information over space.
Information would seem the be the penultimate basis of all.

Cellular Automatons:

Leo was in favor having the simplest to be a monad with the ability to have various energy levels, similar to qubits. The monads coded/formed the next level up, via some rules such as in Conway’s Game of Life, and then that next level itself coded for the next higher level, by some more rules, and so forth, such as quarks making for protons, and on up to atoms and molecules.

Space, being just a mind generated semblance, is not real for Leo’s theory, which gets rid of Einstein’s space-time. Our experience is that of a kind of slightly-taped delay sequence of just past nows serving for us as a pseudo present series of nows. The past no longer exists and the future doesn’t yet exist in these nows.

No Continuum:

Reality is discrete, limited in the small to the Planck length.

A Wave Theory:

I forget who came up with this, but it attends to a curious symmetry of the three stable particles in free space (and their antiparticles).

The one energy particle, the photon, is neutral, and would consist of an electron and a positron living together in peace because their waves are 180 degrees out of phase with each other. The two matter particles, the electron and the proton, must have opposing charge. The neutron is not considered because it decay in free space in under ten minutes.

The idea is that there are only these three particles (and their anti) because there are only certain ways to make them. As waves pile upon waves unto an impossible infinite density, a long, wide large wavelength Bang ensues, the waves becoming protons and the wave envelopes becoming electrons, with the opposite amplitude waves and wave envelopes becoming anti-protons and positrons.

The amplitudes make for charge polarity, the wavelengths for extension into dimension, and the wave frequency for energy. In short, then, we have only a certain number of stable particles in free space because there are only those number of ways to make them.

It’s a nicely thought-out theory, but the part that I left out so far is that the originator has the first waves of something and an anti-something arising gradually via a cosine function from Nothing.

The Apparently Bad News:

‘Random’ is impossible, since what is there to decide when something random happens and when it doesn’t happen, such as a beep from a Geiger Counter, plus not anything can happen from ‘Nothing’ since Nothing cannot be.

Well, so, what’s so bad about having no Random, for who or what would fare well if it were not for the consistency that inputs unto outputs (cause and effect) provides? It would be a mess going nowhere really fast.

Well, then, cause DETERMINES effect. Whatever will be will be and whatever the Will wills will be. They who wish to be free of their wills will find afterward, if they could, that there is no “they” left.

Consciousness emerges/results from brain processes rather than causing any of them. We become aware of what has already has just been processed.

What, then, is the consolation prize to our conscious awareness having to be as a tourist along for the ride? Perhaps it is experience, as the ride itself, albeit that not all experience is pleasant and that much of it consists of nonsense and it all goes away eventually anyway.

We seem to be as helpless as the Great IS itself, in that there is no option to our existence; we must deal with it; indeed, we are the IS, as there isn’t anything else.


Meaning and Purpose:

It is local, relative, and temporary.
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by Dalek Prime »

I would appreciate if the 'nothingness' of matter, and the 'nothingness' of consciousness were kept separate. The nothingness of consciousness is possible. In fact, it's probable.
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by PoeticUniverse »

Conclusion:

The impossibility of Nothing suggests that:

The eternal existence of an ever fluctuating base energy could be the simple, non composite continuous function that is the eternal basis of All forthcoming. Even after a universe forms via a Bang, inflation, and such, the fluctuating base energy remains as that which which is coterminal with everything derived it but not consubstantial. It would be whole, uniform, and complete because of what it is everywhere. It cannot be gotten rid of and ever goes on.
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

PoeticUniverse wrote:Conclusion:

The impossibility of Nothing suggests that:

The eternal existence of an ever fluctuating base energy could be the simple, non composite continuous function that is the eternal basis of All forthcoming. Even after a universe forms via a Bang, inflation, and such, the fluctuating base energy remains as that which which is coterminal with everything derived it but not consubstantial. It would be whole, uniform, and complete because of what it is everywhere. It cannot be gotten rid of and ever goes on.
No, it suggest that there is something. The possible demands something, as there is no possible with nothing, Beyond that is verbal onanism.
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Greta
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by Greta »

Hobbes' Choice wrote:
PoeticUniverse wrote:Conclusion:

The impossibility of Nothing suggests that:

The eternal existence of an ever fluctuating base energy could be the simple, non composite continuous function that is the eternal basis of All forthcoming. Even after a universe forms via a Bang, inflation, and such, the fluctuating base energy remains as that which which is coterminal with everything derived it but not consubstantial. It would be whole, uniform, and complete because of what it is everywhere. It cannot be gotten rid of and ever goes on.
No, it suggest that there is something. The possible demands something, as there is no possible with nothing, Beyond that is verbal onanism.
I assume that, by "nothing" you mean absolute nothingness. I don't pretend to much understand Heisenberg's uncertainty principle but the upshot is that a system can never have absolutely zero energy. Thing is, a system is by definition not, strictly speaking, nothing so, I'm not sure what's going on there. It seems logical that there must have always been something. Every part of space that we know of is occupied by vacuum energy. I suppose the question becomes whether vacuum energy triggered the big bang or was created by it. It's not as thought we can observe beyond the big bang's bounds.

Even if some of string theory's additional dimensions are real, that would throw a different light on the idea of nothing.
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Re: The Absolute Impossibility of Nothingness - ever

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

Conde Lucanor wrote:
SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Conde Lucanor wrote:Well, it seems obvious then that you're absolutely unaware of the existence of analytic propositions in philosophy and their importance in understanding the type of truths they convey. Kant, Quine and the like, such fools.
Yep, by today's standards, of course!
Analytic statements are basic logic. When I point at their existence, you dismiss them, just a few lines away from the statement protesting "invalid logic". Cute.
SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Conde Lucanor wrote:When it comes down to propositional statements, the original post includes a lot of assertions about something that "is", about "being", which conveys existence. And yet you say it says absolutely nothing. Did you ever read it?
I was referring to the topic title, have you ever read it?
First you said topic, now you said topic title. According to you, the discussion should limit itself only to the title. That's even cuter.
SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Conde Lucanor wrote:The absolute impossibility of nothingness implies that there had to be something. That's because "nothing" and "something" are mutually exclusive, they cannot both be true.
No, you just believe them to be mutually exclusive!
How lazy. It would have been interesting that you dealt with an argument to prove that my belief is wrong, but I can easily guess that would have proven to be a very difficult task for you.
SpheresOfBalance wrote:
Conde Lucanor wrote:It may be hard, but it surely makes more sense than envisioning its finite boundaries.
To your finite mind!
Infinite laziness and incompetence I see.
SpheresOfBalance wrote:Well it's nice to know that all the astrophysicists disagree with you. You know, all those that actually have an education, all those that have a much higher probability of actually knowing.
I think I heard that argument before. Hmm...oh wait, I remember, that's what they said to Copernicus and Galileo. Conventional wisdom, they said.
SpheresOfBalance wrote:Humans are far to young to 'know' such things. It would seem that in all your words you fail to understand what 'knowledge' actually is. I seem to be the only one around smart enough to understand that all those dead philosophers ideas are just as antiquated as their bodies.
Yep. All those already dead philosophers that came after the philosophers that conveyed your very same argument of knowledge being limited only to experience. Try to live another 300 years to see if you finally catch up.
Your self centered-ness screams absurdity!
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