
Originally Posted by
Bel
Though I feel "we" just don't have enough of the truth yet to make that judgement. IOW, it still seems some of the important pieces of the puzzle are still missing.
…Even though I saw (and could even touch) these things for myself as they happened, I still couldn't believe it was all true. Cause part of the truth was missing....
I think that that is a fantastic point. What I think matters here is whether the remaining pieces of that puzzle are related to the point we are trying to feel confident about. You were rightly skeptical of S&R because the part of the truth you were missing was what was going on behind that curtain or sheet or whatever (whatever was happening while you were misdirected).
I’m not sure the same can be said of our scenario. The parts that are missing are certainly relevant to the overall picture, but they aren’t particularly relevant to the question of “is there a beginning.”
To use a different analogy, its like you’re missing the puzzle piece that completes one of the elves in santa’s workshop. The rest of the puzzle is complete though and you can still answer, with confidence, that santa’s belt is black.

Originally Posted by
Bel
Hmmm. Again, Newtonian physics works pretty well, but it has limitations. GR and QM also work pretty darn good, yet both have limitations, yes?
Yes, the answers predicted by both theories become increasingly different than observations the closer, in scale, you get to other theory’s domain. So as we go from baseball’s flight to bullet’s flight, to grain of sand’s flight, to atom’s flight, to quark’s movement we get a larger and larger error.
But what we were talking about is all the way on the other end of the spectrum, in movement of galaxy territory. That area is quite well within GR’s domain.
And GR is incredibly well tested experimentally. That is why, generally, scientists don’t find the observations of visible matter as particularly persuasive that GR is wrong. It is far more likely that the observations aren’t exhaustive of matter.

Originally Posted by
Bel
Huh? I said nothing like this.
The specific quote I was referring too was:
However, if the earth was "made" for us to live on, you would think we be able to live on more than such a small % of it ??
Even if we expand it to the entire universe, I don’t see how that changes my question much.
1) Why would we use that particular metric?
2) Why would we use our current technological development? Wouldn’t it be relevant what we can do in a thousand years? Why is right now the appropriate measuring time for God?
3) Why does the fact that we currently don’t live on most of the planet (and on a shrinking portion of it) have anything to do with inferring God’s plans? Especially since there are a lot of purposes those areas can and do provide that would suit things more in line with what Genesis is telling us.

Originally Posted by
Bel
You are attempting to show that it is not impossible. Why not try to show it is possible?
I did. By definition everything that is not impossible is possible.

Originally Posted by
Bel
Actually, as we have discussed, the cat is not really in both states. In reality, the cat is one or the other and opening the box is the confirmation of the state.
I’m not sure I remember discussing that. Especially given that it would be an incorrect interpretation of that thought experiment.
This is going to sound ridiculously unintuitive, which is why Schrodinger used it as an example (he was mocking Copenhagen QM before he eventually was converted) of how ridiculous Copenhagen QM is. But no, the cat is both alive and dead simultaneously, in a state known as superposition.
The radioactive decay is a random process, and there is no way to predict when it will happen. Physicists say the atom exists in a state known as a superposition—both decayed and not decayed at the same time.
Until the box is opened, an observer doesn't know whether the cat is alive or dead—because the cat's fate is intrinsically tied to whether or not the atom has decayed and the cat would, as Schrödinger put it, be "living and dead ... in equal parts" until it is observed.
…
"If you put the cat in the box, and if there's no way of saying what the cat is doing, you have to treat it as if it's doing all of the possible things—being living and dead—at the same time," explains Eric Martell, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Millikin University. "If you try to make predictions and you assume you know the status of the cat, you're [probably] going to be wrong. If, on the other hand, you assume it's in a combination of all of the possible states that it can be, you'll be correct."
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/...radox-science/
Which brings us back to the macro examples, pushing against a wall being one. We see relationships in the macro world that happen contemporaneously where cause and effect are not temporally separated.

Originally Posted by
Bel
So there can be interactions between manifold thingy's, but other manifold thingy's can have dramatically different physical laws than our own. How can we predict what form these interactions might take?
I’m not quite sure where the implication that the manifolds can interact comes from, can you specify? One of the definitions of the manifold is that it is causally unconnected to any other manifold.

Originally Posted by
Future
All we observe as existing does so within spacetime - hence the meaning of "existence" being necessarily temporal and physical.
Whoa there. That is quite an intellectual leap. You went from the total of what we’ve observed to the total of things that are possible. Are you claiming that our observations cover the sum total of all logical possibility? If so, that is also a bold claim that would need to be supported.

Originally Posted by
Future
I'm not claiming that it's possible or impossible for things to exist outside of our spacetime
So are you retracting this claim then?
Existence is by definition necessarily temporal.

Originally Posted by
Future
If you are claiming that the specific papers you linked have been peer reviewed in reputable publications, then please support that. In any case, this doesn't address the other issue I pointed out:
Needless to say, virtually none of the serious physicists from which you offer cherry-picked support for your arguments actually agree with any of your conclusions such that refuting your arguments would mean that they're wrong.
The arXiv reference generally lists the associated journal publication and DOI. Regardless, all of these are widely regarded physicists, so dismissing them on this without a material objection to the work is fallacious.
I know you believe that that is true, but that is a poor reading of the evidence presented. Generally the problem with your objection was that you cherry picked a single quote where the author was referring to a temporal aspect and took that for the whole paper. IE a hasty generalization fallacy. It also rests on your misunderstanding of the word “spacetime” which is a catch phrase for dimensional geometries, they don’t literally require a temporal dimension. But rather than elaborating on that, let’s deal with what the paper says. My comments in italics
Paper 1:
Classical behavior is not a given in a quantum universe. It is a matter of quantum probabilities. A quantum system behaves classically when, in a suitable quantum multiverse of alternative histories, the probabilities are high for those histories exhibiting correlations in time governed by deterministic laws. The relevant probabilities follow from (H, Ψ). Classical spacetime emerges when the probabilities are high for spacetime geometries correlated in time by the Einstein equation…IE, a classical spacetime with a temporal dimension is not a given outcome of a quantum universe, so the “pocket universes” being created in this scenario don’t necessarily need to be temporal.
This section shows how pocket multiverses mentioned in the Introduction arise at various levels of coarse graining from the NBWF (Ψ) and a dynamical theory (H) based on a particular potential V (φ) like the one in Figure 3. This potential has three minima (vacua) — two true vacua A and B and one false vacuum F. We can say that the potential defines a landscape of vacua although there are only three here. As described in Section IV, (H, Ψ) predicts a one parameter ensemble of classical histories labeled by the value at which they start to roll down….We don’t live in the false vacuum devoid of matter. Rather we live in one of the bubbles of true vacuum, either one of type A or of type B. The kind of bubble we live in can be determined from observation…Notice here that Prof. Hartle is saying that the quantum universe the pocket universes is passed on fluctuates along a non-temporal dimension, φ
…
The potential on which this model is based is shown in Figure 6. It has many minima (vacua) K = 1, 2, · · · at values φK near which it is approximately V (φ) ≈ ΛK + 1 2 m2 K(φ − φK) 2 + · · · (7.1) for constants ΛK and mK — defining a landscape of vacuua… Notice here the equation governing the activity of the quantum multiverse contains no temporal component. This is just a slightly different point than above, but the equation is helpful because it explicitly doesn’t include a temporal dimension.
…
At the start of this paper we defined a multiverse as an ensemble of alternative possible situations only one of which is observed by us… a multiverse is a set of possible universes, not necessarily a classical spacetime.
Now importantly, your response to the other five papers seems to have conflated the two objections. You reference them in the same style as the paper above quoting the word spacetime. But these papers were evidence against your unsupported (and still unsupported) claim that the “physical constants of our universe are our conceptualizations of how we've observed our universe to function.”
So, contrary to your quote here, you’ve offered no evidence that any of the five papers presented don’t undermine your unsupported claim.

Originally Posted by
Future
It would be a radical ontology, if that was actually the point I was making, which it wasn't. The issue I pointed out with your wood-chair example was that it's not an example of creatio ex nihilo, which would be required for KCA.
Well no, your point was that it was just “re-arranging matter” that here was no such separate identity as a chair. If you aren’t arguing that then your objection falls short because while the wood is re-arranged, there was no identity re-arrangement. There was nothing in the lumber that had an innate “chairness.” That kind of ontology hasn’t been popular, well really ever, but it is how popular culture imagines the middle ages. There was nothing in the identity of lumber that we re-arranged to make the identity of a chair.
I think what is happening is that you aren’t making a distinction between the identity of the chair and its underlying wood. You are saying that they are the same thing, which is a radical minimalist ontology.

Originally Posted by
Future
Again, virtual particles take place in an existing universe when existing particles interact.
Again, nope. Virtual particles are not formed when particles interact. This comes on the heals of you saying that they are formed by fluctuations in the EM field. I would highly recommend a quick perusal of what virtual particles actually are. You seem to be objecting to them without any understanding of what they actually are. The quoted Gizmodo article is actually not a bad place to start.

Originally Posted by
Future
And you've yet again tried to shift the burden of proof regarding the models involving matter creation at t~0.
I’m not attempting to shift the burden at all, the original claim is yours. Your taxicab fallacy of only going back to my quote not withstanding.
The quote you offer of mine is a response to your earlier claim that there are no examples of matter creation. I pointed out that Prof. Turok discusses quantum tunneling and dimensional creation interchangeably and provided a citation. You asserted that the KCA is incoherent because it invokes creation ex nihlio. I’m simply responding to that by pointing out that then means that Prof. Turok and all models that involve matter creation should likewise be incoherent.
I’m challenging you to support that implication. If you wish to drop it and accept that multiple cosmological models contain matter creation, and that fact doesn’t make them incoherent, we can drop that. But if you are going to insist that the KCA is incoherent for the same reason, you’ll need to offer support for why Prof. Turok is incorrect and, more broadly why quantum tunneling is incoherent.

Originally Posted by
Future
I never said that EM fields were the cause, and it's a fairly common understanding of virtual particles.
Come on future, at least be intellectually honest and admit you misspoke. You said, and I quote here: “fluctuations/disturbances in existing electro-magnetic fields due to particle interaction within an existing universe…” Looking at the link you offered and the quotes you selected I get that you think you stumbled on some other explanation, but what has actually happened is that you just dealt with a method I already discussed. Remember when I discussed the Casmiri effect earlier? That’s the experiment that validated this method of virtual particle creation.
Your quotation of Prof. Strassler is, likewise a bit disingenuous. Especially since it seems to imply that Prof. Strassler doesn’t understand the duality nature of matter which I’m highly confident he does, though you may not if you haven’t taken a QM class. Or that he somehow doesn’t understand that in QM particles (like electrons) are actually probability waves anyway.
Here are the first quote in context:
The best way to approach this concept, I believe, is to forget you ever saw the word “particle” in the term. A virtual particle is not a particle at all. It refers precisely to a disturbance in a field that is not a particle. A particle is a nice, regular ripple in a field, one that can travel smoothly and effortlessly through space, like a clear tone of a bell moving through the air. A “virtual particle”, generally, is a disturbance in a field that will never be found on its own, but instead is something that is caused by the presence of other particles, often of other fields.
You then seem to miss that the rest of his essay is an example of virtual particles being created (primarily through photon exchange) via particle interactions. But nowhere does he state or imply that they are created by the EM field as you imply, or that they must rely on particle interactions. Notice that section I underlined that you conveniently left out? Virtual particles can be created by other fields as well, in fact that is the majority of their creation if QM is accurate. The disturbance he is quoting is not, in those cases, comes from the underlying quantum irregularity of our universe below Planck length. The initial response here discusses the difference between the two methods: https://www.physicsforums.com/thread...rticles.75916/
Both methods have been experimentally confirmed. The exchange method via the Casimiri effect and the quantum probability method (sometimes called quantum foam) via the Muon g-2 experiment. https://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archi...lReadmore.html
Both methods also support my initial assertion of matter creation since neither method represents a “transition of matter” as you initially claimed. Both methods represent a net increase in matter in the universe, even if for just a short period. Your argument that because there is an existing universe this doesn’t count hasn’t been supported. I’m not arguing that the universe began from literally nothing with no existing context. I’m arguing that it had an initial cause. Just as virtual particles have a cause and don’t represent simple transitions between matter.

Originally Posted by
Future
Again, it all takes place within spacetime in an existing universe, dude. Further, the kind of change in net energy covered by the uncertainty principle is a far cry from the kind of permanent and massive net change in energy required for KCA.
So you are retracting your objection to virtual particles based on the First Law of Thermodynamics and replacing it with this odd “it isn’t permanent though” objection? Ok. Well, I’m glad we were able to dismiss that first unwarranted objection, now lets deal with the next one. First, we can note that it is completely irrelevant to the argument. No one is saying that the example is completely identical to what it is supporting, the question is whether the differences are materially relevant. You’ve given us no reason except a bare assertion fallacy to assume that duration is a materially relevant criteria.
What’s more, you missed in the quoted article where they talk about exactly this concept:
A variant of this may also have happened in the very early universe. In the tiny fraction of a second after the big bang, particles pairs were created constantly. But during the period of "Inflation" (which I'd love to talk about in a future column, if only somebody would ask), the universe exploded in size, and particles which were initially near one another quickly became separated by such huge distances that they couldn't possibly recombine.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/5731463/are-...icles-for-real (same link as earlier).
Before you get distressed about whether this is how it actually happened or not, I’ll point out that that isn’t relevant either. The point here is that two physicists are directly countering your objection by pointing out that the quantum foam could create long term matter. That this is physically possible means that virtual particles serve as an example of matter creation in the eyes of actual physicists.

Originally Posted by
future
Something "designed" by definition implies it has a designer and purpose: "Design - to do or plan something with a specific purpose."
How is it “snuck in” since it is literally in the term? Would we also say that “chance” sneaks in probability or “necessity” sneaks in physical law? The objection just doesn’t make any sense.
If you came upon a dead body and concluded that it could only have happened by suicide, natural causes, or homicide, you wouldn’t object to homicide being an option because it “sneaks” in a murderer.

Originally Posted by
future
No, something is logically possible if we are "able to imagine the proposal – either in literal images, or in symbolic representation (i.e., math, words, or formal language) – without experiencing any internal contradiction."
This is literally what I said. An idea that can be expressed that isn’t internally incoherent. IE it doesn’t express an internal contradiction. If you want to object to its internal coherence by showing that it is logically incoherent please do; but there is nothing structurally contradictory about a first cause argument.

Originally Posted by
future
In any case, there's nothing about the MECE framework which stipulates that the collectively exhaustive items must be considered as all the "logically possible" explanations in the sense you are attempting to use here.
This statement appears to be a nonsequitor, ie incoherent. How can a list be both “collectively exhaustive” and not contain “all logically possible items?” Those two phrases literally mean the same thing.

Originally Posted by
future
edge.org is the source of the interview. Dr. Neil Turok is the source of the information regarding the model. Questioning edge.org is merely question whether the interview took place, unless you're actually questioning whether edge.org accurately represented Dr. Neil Turok's statements.
As well as the source of the editing and questions right? Surely you aren’t implying that media sources are neutral arbiters of content.

Originally Posted by
future
If you're referring to the findings from BICEP2 and the bet between Hawking and Turok, then I'm afraid you're mistaken, as the BICEP2 results were questionable from the beginning, and have since been overturned by data from the Planck satellite which supports Turok's model.
I wasn’t no, but you are getting closer to modern findings. My last response was based on the findings that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, not decelerating. BICEP2 is about gravitational waves. Those are not the same thing at all.
My response was based on several papers, one here (https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.08244) that show a variety of observations from supernova data to gamma-ray bursts support the acceleration hypothesis well beyond a statistical significance (4.56 sigma in fact, so something like 99.99987 percent certain).
I also added this paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.08972) which details a separate set of evidence and finds: “Analyzing the Joint Light-curve Analysis supernova sample, we find 4.2σ evidence for acceleration with SNe Ia alone, and 11.2σ in a flat universe. With our improved supernova analysis and by not rejecting all other cosmological constraints, we find that acceleration is quite secure.”
As for gravitational waves though, the represent another reason to reject Turok’s cyclical models (well all cyclical models really since they share this feature). BICEP2 was from January 2010 to December 2012. To be accurate, the results were never questioned (Turok mentions that in the video below), it was the interpretation of the results. The problem with the objections to its interpretation was that they were confirmed by several detectors later. Advanced Virgo in Italy and LIGO in the US detected confirming evidence which has been widely accepted in 2016-2017. https://www.sciencealert.com/new-lig...news-sept-2017
LIGO is not a vulnerable to interpretation criticisms like BICEP2 because it was a collaboration of physicists for publication, relying on 1,000 authors, all of whom reviewed the raw data and synthesized the results. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/s...-einstein.html
Turok has since conceded the bet and thus conceded his cyclical model.
Prof Neil Turok, director the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics at Waterloo in Canada, and a former research colleague of Prof Stephen Hawking, called the discovery “the real deal, one of those breakthrough moments in science”…
“Einstein, when he came to write down his theory of gravity, his two heroes were Faraday and Maxwell,” said Turok. “He tried to write down laws of the gravitational field and he wasn’t in the least surprised to discover that his predictions had waves, gravitational waves.”
The Ligo discovery signals a new era in astronomy, he said.
“Just think of radio waves, when radio waves were discovered we learned to communicate with them. Mobile communication is entirely reliant on radio waves. For astronomy, radio observations have probably told us more than anything else about the structure of the universe. Now we have gravitational waves we are going to have a whole new picture of the universe, of the stuff that doesn’t emit light – dark matter, black holes,” he said.
“For me the most exciting thing is we will literally be able to see the big bang. Using electromagnetic waves we cannot see further back than 400,000 years after the big bang. The early universe was opaque to light. It is not opaque to gravitational waves. It is completely transparent.
“So literally, by gathering gravitational waves we will be able to see exactly what happened at the initial singularity. The most weird and wonderful prediction of Einstein’s theory was that everything came out of a single event: the big bang singularity. And we will be able to see what happened.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/...of-the-century
“The LIGO measurement is a spectacular confirmation of not just one, but two of the key predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity: the existence of gravitational waves and black holes,” Turok said.
https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/ne...tronomy-begins
So given the above, and the requirement for there to be no gravitational waves in Turok’s model (see the video where he explicitly says this), I’m assuming we can safely put this one to bed?

Originally Posted by
future
Turok's model predicts an end to the acceleration, not that there would not be any acceleration. This is detailed in nearly every published version of his model.
This response seems to confuse velocity and acceleration. The only point of acceleration in Turok’s model is during the collapse. The universe begins collapsing faster and faster until it “bounces” out at the same velocity it had when it collapsed. As it expands it slows until an apogee, where it begins collapsing again and accelerating. Since we know that we aren’t in the collapse phase (red-shifting), we know that any detection that the velocity of the expansion is accelerating would invalidate Turok’s model.

Originally Posted by
future
I'm interested in the statements he made which you think are a concession that his model has failed because of some specific observations. Could you provide the time-stamp?
Sure, though I don’t envy you having to listen to Krauss’ insufferable grandstanding. The discussion begins here: https://yout.be/pcKdA2-W0X0?t=4095 (Roughly 1:09:00). Listen to when Krauss and Turok begin talking about what kind of observations will confirm Turok’s updated model (this is a new kind of cyclical model which I’ll discuss a bit below) at the end and when Turok says that there aren’t any, that it will stand and fall on pure mathematical validation. That means, by definition, his model isn’t observationally relevant. Thus it isn’t empirically verifiable. Thus really isn’t a scientific model.
Interestingly, and they didn’t go into it much, but you’ll notice that he does tell Krauss that his model requires no gravitational waves. Given LIGO and other observations, its hard to argue that Turok’s model is relevant as an applicable model of this universe anymore.
To elaborate a bit more on what Turok is proposing in that video. To save his cyclical model he is proposing something pretty dramatic. Look at the faces of the other physicists on the panel when he starts talking about it. They all greet it with a bemused skepticism. What he says is that he is predicting a scientific revolution that will overturn both relativities and quantum mechanics by showing us that scale isn’t actually a thing in our universe. IE there isn’t really a difference between a meter and a lightyear. I honestly am not familiar enough with what he is proposing to detail other flaws and there isn’t really much out there dealing with it; probably because it was ruled out with LIGO and probably because most physicists don’t see a lot of career advancement arguing about whether the single most empirically accurate model every produced (general relativity) is fundamentally wrong.

Originally Posted by
future
Please leave the scientisting to the scientists.
That you think these are my objections makes me wonder where you are getting your information from. These are widely known objections in the field and come from other published works and in letters from physicists, they aren’t mine by any stretch.
Nor does that blatant appeal to authority fallacy work here. If you don’t have an answer to an objection, please refrain from substituting a personal insult for a material response.
Nor do either of these premises really involve some complex understanding of tensor matrices, spatial geometry, or even differential equations. IE 1) That a finite universe can grow to an infinite universe, which as discussed above violates basic mathematical and logical precepts. 2) That an infinite universe is indistinguishable from a singularity. IE he smuggles in Penrose’s rejected premise that “unknowingly big” is the same thing as “unknowingly small.”
Notice that second one is also the same objection he raised in the video which Krauss impolitely sneers at and which causes the rest of the panel to look at him askance.

Originally Posted by
future
1. They don't support theism.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to define theism in a sense that you meant it in the OP. The arguments presented pretty clearly support a broad based theism as I understand the term, but you seem to be laboring under some other definition.

Originally Posted by
future
Yes, therefore your objection as stated in post #422 is absurd.
Here it is again:
"iterative processes can only produce potential infinites, not actual infinites. It would be like counting to infinity. You can in theory do that, but you will never actually get to infinity."
How? My point in post 422 (http://www.onlinedebate.net/forums/s...l=1#post560185) to Mican was that an iterative process, like counting, cannot produce an actual, completed infinite set. Which is also what I’m saying above:
the process of counting and a complete set of infinity are absurd
IE a process like counting cannot produce an infinite set.
It isn’t really clear what you are arguing here. Are you saying it is possible to use an iterative process to produce an actual infinite set?
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