🧵 Long past event chain
Anonymous at Mon, 17 Jun 2024 22:32:15 UTC No. 16240068
Imagine that you take a snapshot of the universe and call it a ”state”. The history of the universe can then be imagined as a sequence of these states akin to how a movie is made up of a sequence of still pictures.
Pick one of these states at random and ask yourself: ”Does this random state have a state that precedes it?”. The answer for the overwhelming majority of states is yes. All states but the very first state has something before it.
This means that the super dense state (the big bang) that existed earlier likely was not the start of the universe. There was likely an even earlier causal chain that gave rise to the big bang. So basically any theory of everything that does not deal with pre-big bang cosmologies can be confirmed to be false with near certainty.
Thoughts? Note that I’m not a christtranny trying to imply god so please don’t derail to that.
Anonymous at Mon, 17 Jun 2024 22:50:18 UTC No. 16240097
>>16240068
I find this snapshot idea interesting as a means to ask another question that I've had for a while.
If you are a materialistic determinist (and you should be since there is no evidence to the contrary) then you would agree that having such a snapshot would mean that (knowing the physical rules of the universe) you can know the state of the universe a second later, or a micro-second before, etc. So that you would know the full history of the universe, beginning and end though this singular snapshot.
What information would the snapshot need to have in order to do this? xyz coordinates of atoms doesn't seem to be enough, so maybe that and also a list of all the forces present at that moment (momentum of moving objects, spin of atoms, etc.)
Or if the premise is faulty from the start, why?
And for my thoughts on the pre-big bang theories, it is my understanding that it's not useful to think of things happening "before" the big bang since it tentatively started time itself. So there's that.
Anonymous at Mon, 17 Jun 2024 23:05:07 UTC No. 16240130
>>16240097
The thing about the big bang starting time or whatever is pure hypothesis that physicists to avoid having to model for pre-big bang cosmologies. Since you can’t probe that far back, the whole field would devolve into guesswork which they want to avoid. Although the current most legit theory does model for pre-big bang (eternal inflation theory).
Anonymous at Tue, 18 Jun 2024 07:41:10 UTC No. 16240685
>>16240068
>The history of the universe can then be imagined as a sequence of these states akin to how a movie is made up of a sequence of still pictures.
The "present" is the collapse, or the summation, of all the "past". When you are looking at the "present", you're looking at all the past, all at once. So there is neither a past, nor a present, there's only an "is"
Anonymous at Tue, 18 Jun 2024 09:15:12 UTC No. 16240762
>>16240685
Yes only the now exists, how does that change anything? The past still happened.
Anonymous at Tue, 18 Jun 2024 09:21:33 UTC No. 16240768
>>16240068
There was no "beginning", this is a common misconception, there is no other possible state besides reality existing, so it does
Anonymous at Tue, 18 Jun 2024 09:32:01 UTC No. 16240771
>>16240068
The snapshot idea presumes an ontology with absolute time. Relativity has shown that time and space are not independent. A global snapshot of the universe is not possible because of this. Going back to the big bang the snapshots would be increasingly fucked up and making a snapshot of the big bang state would be impossible. Also you're mistaking a time sequence for causality and you're making the mistake of assuming the principle of sufficient reason. Nothing dictates that a time series has to be extensible backwards indefinitely.
Anonymous at Tue, 18 Jun 2024 09:48:09 UTC No. 16240783
>>16240097
>If you are a materialistic determinist (and you should be
You are contradicting yourself or being dishonest. Under determinism there is no "should", there is only an "is". Moral obligations become meaningless when you don't have a choice to obey or dismiss them.
>What information would the snapshot need to have in order to do this? xyz coordinates of atoms doesn't seem to be enough
In general relativity you'd be looking for a Cauchy surface, giving the right boundary conditions for a causal structure and thus determining trajectories of particles.
>Or if the premise is faulty from the start, why?
It is faulty because it assumes determinist. The above works fine as long as everything can be modeled with (sufficiently well behaved) partial differential equations. As soon as you enter the quantum realm this approach doesn't work anymore due to the inherent nondeterminism in the state reduction during measurement.
Anonymous at Tue, 18 Jun 2024 11:00:28 UTC No. 16240849
>>16240771
I did say that there’d be a first state with no state before it. So I never described a time series extending backwards indefinitely. The entire point is that the big bang is near guaranteed to not be the first event in our universe.