The Impossibility of Infinite Time

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devans99
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The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by devans99 »

I’m going to use two axioms, ‘can’t get something from nothing’ and ‘can get something from nothing’ and argue that for both of these inversely related axioms, infinite time is impossible:

'Can get something from nothing'

If matter/energy is naturally created on average (and it must be because we are here) and time is infinite, we would have reached infinite matter/energy density by now. Note that the universe cannot have been expanding forever because if we trace back in time, we would find a point in time when it was not expanding; at best the universe must be oscillating, so infinite density would be reached. So this argument rules out quantum fluctuations as the cause of the universe.

'Can’t get something from nothing'

Matter/energy creation is impossible (by the ‘can’t get something from nothing’ axiom). This implies that cause and effect hold. But if the universe existed forever, it has no cause. So this model is not possible according to the ‘can’t get something from nothing’ axiom.
odysseus
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by odysseus »

You have to think of eternity/infinity to be outside time altogether. Infinity is not time forever, it is atemporal. It is the eternal now.
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by Impenitent »

half the distance

-Imp
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by -1- »

devans99 wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:55 pm
'Can’t get something from nothing'

Matter/energy creation is impossible (by the ‘can’t get something from nothing’ axiom). This implies that cause and effect hold. But if the universe existed forever, it has no cause. So this model is not possible according to the ‘can’t get something from nothing’ axiom.
You don't start with nothing. You don't start at all. You have a world with all the matter in it that has existed forever in the past. There is no need to seek a singular, original cause.

Therefore the model is possible, but only if you divorce yourself from the Christian / Judaic / Muslim theories that the world HAD to start sometime. In fact, I don't know any world religion or any small-god religions that hadn't had the creation part as an integral, irremovable and irrevokable part in the history of matter. Therefore I suspect very strongly, that the OP, devans99, has had a religious upbringing. If not, well, then, I am wrong with the suspicion.

No, time did not have to start at any time. Time can have existed from infinite past going on in an ongoing fashion existing to infinite future.

There is nothing wrong with this model. The wrong thing is to introduce the notion that matter and time had to start sometime, despite matter and time having existed since infinitely long in the past.
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by -1- »

devans99 wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:55 pm I’m going to use two axioms, ‘can’t get something from nothing’ and ‘can get something from nothing’ and argue that for both of these inversely related axioms, infinite time is impossible:

'Can get something from nothing'
{C} =
{A} If matter/energy is naturally created on average ({B}and it must be because we are here)
A does not follow from B and B does not follow from A. Completely arbitrary claim, C has no value.
devans99
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by devans99 »

-1- wrote: Sun Mar 03, 2019 6:23 am You don't start with nothing. You don't start at all. You have a world with all the matter in it that has existed forever in the past. There is no need to seek a singular, original cause.

Therefore the model is possible, but only if you divorce yourself from the Christian / Judaic / Muslim theories that the world HAD to start sometime. In fact, I don't know any world religion or any small-god religions that hadn't had the creation part as an integral, irremovable and irrevokable part in the history of matter. Therefore I suspect very strongly, that the OP, devans99, has had a religious upbringing. If not, well, then, I am wrong with the suspicion.
'All the matter in it that has existed forever in the past' is impossible if cause and effect hold (because the universe must have a cause). And cause and effect holds for the 2nd part of my argument. If cause and effect don't hold then the 1st part of my argument applies and time still has a start.

I am not religious.
devans99
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by devans99 »

-1- wrote: Sun Mar 03, 2019 6:26 am
devans99 wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:55 pm I’m going to use two axioms, ‘can’t get something from nothing’ and ‘can get something from nothing’ and argue that for both of these inversely related axioms, infinite time is impossible:

'Can get something from nothing'
{C} =
{A} If matter/energy is naturally created on average ({B}and it must be because we are here)
A does not follow from B and B does not follow from A. Completely arbitrary claim, C has no value.
A directly follows from 'Can get something from nothing' . It's the quantum fluctuations model for the formation of the universe. Matter is created by quantum fluctuations. B must follow from A else we'd have an empty universe.

The only possible conclusion from the axioms 'can get something from nothing' and 'infinite time' is infinite matter density.

Also if creation events are naturally occurring and time is infinite, we would expect an infinite number of Big Bangs. There is evidence of only one Big Bang. So the 'can get something from nothing' and 'infinite time' model is impossible.
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by Logik »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
In computability theory, the halting problem is the problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running (i.e., halt) or continue to run forever.
Here is a program that will continue to run forever:

for ALL x: x = x

Maybe you recognize it, maybe you don't....
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by attofishpi »

Logik wrote: Sun Mar 03, 2019 1:50 pm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
In computability theory, the halting problem is the problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running (i.e., halt) or continue to run forever.
Here is a program that will continue to run forever:

for ALL x: x = x

Maybe you recognize it, maybe you don't....
Nah. There will be a place in time where there is no x.
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by Speakpigeon »

devans99 wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:55 pm I’m going to use two axioms, ‘can’t get something from nothing’ and ‘can get something from nothing’ and argue that for both of these inversely related axioms, infinite time is impossible:
'Can get something from nothing'
If matter/energy is naturally created on average (and it must be because we are here) and time is infinite, we would have reached infinite matter/energy density by now. Note that the universe cannot have been expanding forever because if we trace back in time, we would find a point in time when it was not expanding; at best the universe must be oscillating, so infinite density would be reached. So this argument rules out quantum fluctuations as the cause of the universe.
There is no logical reason or empirical fact that would contradict the logical possibility that reality exists without a cause. If reality exists without a cause, it doesn't follow that "matter/energy is naturally created on average", whatever that means exactly. It's apparent you are confusing reality and the universe. The idea of something from nothing relate to the question of the existence of reality, not necessarily to that of the universe. That the universe only existed for 13.7 billion years, assuming that's even true to begin with, has nothing to do with the possibility of an infinite past or the existence of reality without a cause.
devans99 wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:55 pm 'Can’t get something from nothing'
Matter/energy creation is impossible (by the ‘can’t get something from nothing’ axiom). This implies that cause and effect hold. But if the universe existed forever, it has no cause. So this model is not possible according to the ‘can’t get something from nothing’ axiom.
Even if we assume that the principle of cause and effect, if it has any reality, applies to all physical events taking place once the universe exists, it doesn't necessarily apply to the existence of the universe. You may have a universe subject to cause and effect that nonetheless exists without a cause and that maybe has existed for an infinite time.
Further, if reality has always existed, there's no necessary notion of "getting something from nothing".
Your reasoning is a non-sequitur.
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by commonsense »

devans99 wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:55 pm
'Can get something from nothing'

...matter/energy is naturally created
Another axiom: anything that can be assembled can be disassembled.
devans99 wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:55 pm
[If] time is infinite, we would have reached infinite matter/energy density by now.
If time is infinite, we would have had an infinite number of creations of energy/matter and an infinite number of destruction. Creations and destructions need not balance each other as long as there is room for the universe to expand over time, which has not been established as infinite/finite thus far.
devans99 wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:55 pm ...if we trace back in [finite] time, we would find a point in time when it was not expanding
But if we go back in infinite time, we will find no start time.
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by Age »

odysseus wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 11:23 pm You have to think of eternity/infinity to be outside time altogether. Infinity is not time forever, it is atemporal. It is the eternal now.
Well said.
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by Logik »

odysseus wrote: Sat Mar 02, 2019 11:23 pm You have to think of eternity/infinity to be outside time altogether. Infinity is not time forever, it is atemporal. It is the eternal now.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

So IF you are OUTSIDE of time then it follows that whatever it is that you call INSIDE (which I presume is "The Universe") must be finite.
Because I would imagine it's kind of difficult to get on the OUTSIDE of infinity.

The OUTSIDE fallacy is the same as the "passive observer" fallacy, and the "passive observer" fallacy is the one most philosophers love to commit.
Pretending that they do not participate in that which they are observing.


P.S Say hello to God while you are "out there" looking at the Universe from the "OUTSIDE"
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by odysseus »

Greetings Logic,
You presuppose that time has an inside and outside that are mutually exclusive. One has to ask about the very nature of time to make sense of this. I’m not going to drop names acthis is off putting but we are what we read and what I have read constitute my thoughts.
Time is no more than the movement, the change or flux in the world. But this is not so much about mountains and rivers in geological transformation. It is us. We are not IN time, we are time. It is the inner dynamic of past to future that characterizes our “being here” that is the essence of time, and the time of the physicist can never be extricated from this existential analysis.so we must forget about finitude and infinity as some kind feature of the world apart from our intuitive and cognitive contribution. These terms issue out of an analysis of consciousness’ properties. And to make a long long story short, if time is reducible to events whereby the past “gathers “ and anticiptes a future, if time a dynamic recollection and projection and if it structure reveals nothing beyond this (save the apriority of its presence) then a concept of eternity derived from this is nothing more than an abstraction of eternal events’ “durations” multiplied times infinity. It is just a temporally contrived infinity and nothing more and has nothing of actual infinity at all. But drop the time altogether, which means a termination of events, of movement from past to future, a cessation of thought and recollection, and you approach the eternal present, a qualitatively different world that is not constrained, that is free. This is what freedom is.
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Re: The Impossibility of Infinite Time

Post by Logik »

odysseus wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:20 am You presuppose that time has an inside and outside that are mutually exclusive.
Naturally. If they are not mutually exclusive then you are equivocating.

Inside ⇔ Outside

Distinction without a difference.
odysseus wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:20 am One has to ask about the very nature of time to make sense of this.
To ask ontological questions about time is already an error.
You are trying your hardest to reejct relativism. An impossible task in and of itseif since you, your mind, your brain are temporal entities.

Yet you are pretending AS IF you can exist outside of time.

Alas. I will let you dig your own hole.
odysseus wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:20 am I’m not going to drop names acthis is off putting but we are what we read and what I have read constitute my thoughts.
Fine with me. I am just going to keep translating your words into Logic.
odysseus wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:20 am Time is no more than the movement, , the change or flux in the world.
Time ⇔ Movement ⇔ Change

Still not saying anything. Naturally - that's how ontology works.
odysseus wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:20 am But this is not so much about mountains and rivers in geological transformation. It is us. We are not IN time, we are time.
Time-space actually, but thus the paradox in your own argument.

To step 'outside of time' is to 'step outside of yourself'.

Ok. Show me.


odysseus wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:20 am so we must forget about finitude and infinity as some kind feature of the world apart from our intuitive and cognitive contribution.
That's rather ironic and recursive. Because time is our own, cognitive contribution.

You are desperately striving for mind-independence. Desperatelly trying to put the cookie jar on a shelf where I cannot reach it.
And I just wave my middle finger at you and grab a ladder.

odysseus wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:20 am These terms issue out of an analysis of consciousness’ properties. And to make a long long story short, if time is reducible to events whereby the past “gathers “ and anticiptes a future, if time a dynamic recollection and projection and if it structure reveals nothing beyond this (save the apriority of its presence) then a concept of eternity derived from this is nothing more than an abstraction of eternal events’ “durations” multiplied times infinity. It is just a temporally contrived infinity and nothing more and has nothing of actual infinity at all. But drop the time altogether, which means a termination of events, of movement from past to future, a cessation of thought and recollection, and you approach the eternal present, a qualitatively different world that is not constrained, that is free. This is what freedom is.
And thus we have devolved into philosophical waffle. I can't make sense of this.
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