I'm jumping off the deep end here, but it's funny that Hinduistic mysticism has come to the same conclusion (the universe iterates through cycles). It says that we're currently in the 84th iteration (if I'm recalling correctly).
Speculation. You could say the same thing about a point on a wheel too.
It might be bad form to nitpick a nitpick, but whether a statement is a speculation depends on how much information it is based on. We don't know how they came up with the number, so we don't know if it's speculation. We can't say it's not speculation for the same reason. Now, if I were to say that this anecdotal data-point is scientifically significant, that would be speculation.
Proof matters. It’s not on the reader to work it out. Everything else is an opinion or speculation
Proof doesn't really matter. Most theories you have in your life are unproven. Scientific hypotheses should be falsifiable which means unproven. There are dozens of comments in this section making unproven claims that you don't seem to have taken issue with. You just don't like this one in particular because its associated with a religion.
They should be falsifiable and they should make predictions under various conditions and be right about them for the hypothesis to be considered a theory. Does this have them? Usually successful hypotheses have a body of work behind them, say like Newton’s principia or Darwin’s origin of species. They usually have corollaries and extensions which extol the same truth in various ways. Rest is opinion/speculation - just because it is religion I won’t give it a free pass.
With the important difference you can actually demonstrate it for the point on a wheel.
Agreed
84 = 42 << 1. Sounds legitimate.
Until any of those can present any math we can check against observations it's off the deep end.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day
If you make thousands of random claims, it's only natural some of them will end up being true. It doesn't mean Hinduism has any predictive power. I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm just saying we cannot determine that from this one data point.
I think it's best to take this stuff as stories, as in something that invites you to suspend disbelief and takes you places. There isn't a need to feel reserved about believing it, because you just explore it and then put it down. I find that mythology stimulates the naive aspect of my mind, which feels good and nourishes creativity.
I’ve also found it very useful to be able to explore the various mysticisms with an open mind of disbelief, because I find useful patterns that lead me to new ways of thinking about the world I do believe.
One of the things I like about metaphysical myths is that when you learn about more of them you realise that you had unconsciously come to believe myths that you got from your environment when growing up. It can be a big deal to, for example, realise that you've been thinking about the universe as something that has a beginning and an end, because then you can consciously evaluate whether you want that belief. What story you tell yourself about existence is a big deal.