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Comment by philosophyfirst | Hacker News Reader

Yeah this is kind of a laughable position in the article. I don’t mean the conclusion, which might be right, but the method. The laws of physics as we know them are just reflections of … nothing more than what we know. The fact that we have no account of what came before the big bang is not evidence of anything except that we don’t know, especially when a very plausible theory is that what came before is totally different in kind than what came after.

Being a good scientist doesn’t mean you’re a good philosopher.

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It's not laughable at all. Before the existence of our universe, there was no time. Time was created along with the space, matter, and energy when the thing "sprang into existence." It's not valid to extrapolate backward to a time before our universe existed. This is a concept that I've tried to explain to others for years, but it's difficult for most people to grasp.

> Before the existence of our universe, there was no time

We don't know that.

> Time was created along with the space, matter, and energy when the thing "sprang into existence."

These are just speculations. Some theories indeed mention that, but they are not part of our standard models.

For now, we just don't know.

> it's difficult for most people to grasp.

Oh come on…

"We don't know that."

Yes we do: https://www.britannica.com/science/space-time

> it's difficult for most people to grasp.

"Oh come on…"

Q.E.D.

> Yes we do: https://www.britannica.com/science/space-time

I don’t see anything in that article mentioning that time did not exist before the universe existed. Did I miss it?

> Yes we do: https://www.britannica.com/science/space-time

We have an accepted standard model. 2 in fact. QM and Lambda CDM say very little about how things were working very close the t=0, and say absolutely nothing about how the conditions were a t=0 or "before".

As I said in my comment, people suggest ideas of how things could be. But nothing tangible, nothing ever included in ΛCDM, nothing predicted by QM… we are missing data, solid math, and solid physic to postulate anything about t<=0. I mean … we don't even know how gravity works in these conditions. How could we even say anything about time!

> Q.E.D.

I would classify your previous comment as pseudo science, and saying "it's difficult for most people to grasp" as lack of humility.

If you do understand how space and time were structured "before the existence of our universe", you should go claim a Nobel price.

Time, as component of the universe, itself "sprang into existence?"

Despite "sprang" being a fantastical word to use in this context, it at least carries with it one thing for sure: a temporal component. "Springing" on its own indicates some sort of motion, which can only take place in time. Furthermore, "sprang" indicates a past tense, so that this "springing" took place at some (primordial) moment in time. According to your account, time presupposes itself.

You're applying the terms of experience to non-experience. The error is in a sophism of figure of speech.

Unfortunately you haven't explained anything at all. All you've demonstrated is that Kant was justified in writing the Antinomy.

Did you read the article? I put "sprang" in quotes for a reason. Speech (and writing) is how we express ourselves, but our languages are biased by the experience of our forebears, and linear time is a part of that bias.

Forget "sprang." You said this:

> Before the existence of our universe, there was no time.

This is just a logical error. Unless you're using "before" in some novel way that needs clarifying.

To be clear: The author is saying that the universe has no beginning in time (and no outer bound of space). Once you remove your logical error of presupposing time before time, you are saying that the universe has a beginning in time (and presumably is enclosed within spatial bounds).

Is this not what you're saying?

The esteemed author, in saying confidently that there is no "before" the universe because the universe has no beginning, falls into the same trap that you do but lands on the other side of Kant's Antinomy: the author takes the empiricist stance in the dialectic, and you take the dogmatic stance. But even so, at least the author's stance is amenable to the infinite empirical regression of scientific practice; your stance just "puts speculative reason to slumber."

> It's not valid to extrapolate backward to a time before our universe existed.

And yet, you've managed to do just that!

> This is a concept that I've tried to explain to others for years, but it's difficult for most people to grasp.

Not surprising since not all people experience the same reality.

"And yet, you've managed to do just that!"

How?

lol, some people just 'think' different, like the old macintosh adds...

It is true, but whether it is funny, and whether the Macintosh ads are an adequate illustration, are very different matters.

"Before the existence of our universe, there was no time."

It seems almost impossible to avoid this sort of thing (~omniscience), at least when discussing certain topics, but it can be a lot of fun to try. Noticing it in others when reading comments is much easier, and a good form of practice.

Didn't Gödel prove that you can't prove a theory with its' own ruleset?

In physics maths always go haywire durnig phase changes, as gas laws don't apply to liquids, and such.

No, he proved that under existing axiomatic systems, there are some statements which cannot be proven to be true axiomatically, even though they are true; such axiomatic systems are, in his terminology, incomplete. A subtle but important difference.

One thing I've always wondered is if there's any _interesting_ statements that can't be proved or if they're all kind of self-referential nonsense statements.

There's whole _fields_ of inquiry that either take or leave the axiom of choice; so yes, absolutely.

Is that the kind of statement Godel was talking about? Seems to me to be somehow different. It's not really true or false, it's an arbitrary choice, so it's just something you either decide is part of your system or not, not a true statement that's unprovable.

Maybe I'm missing something?

Axiom of choice isn't really relevant to Godel's work, except for the fact that it's part of axiomatic systems. But in response to your comment, I was pointing out that there's lots of interesting math that comes from the results of his work; namely under different axiomatic systems you can find different and interesting results.

Axioms are, by definition, a choice.

On the one hand, I've often understood that it would be nice if we could assemble a list of "all the axioms" and prove it's consistent - at least that's how it was presented to me and roughly my interpretation of what eg. Russell and Whitehead were trying to do before being derailed by Godel proving it's impossible. On more recent reflection, it seems a little silly to want a proof in system X of the consistency of system X, even before we get to Godel, because if system X is inconsistent then it can definitely provide a proof that it is consistent by the principle of explosion.

A while ago there was a result that relates to materials science: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.04135

What a paper!

Sure there are, just choose your axioms that are interesting…

also, that his proof exists within an axiomatic system but IS ONE of its provable statements, is wildly crazy genius weird 'serendipitous' math...?! shows that at least for the boundary beyond the provably meaningful, we can still 'talk' about or 'point' at the unknown and say things like 'hey, over there is something we cannot really know nor talk about

The point is that the theory works -- matches observed reality -- even without a "0 point", analogous to the positive Reals or Rationals.

This is neither here nor there.

Suppose you have a "working theory" about how birds fly, but no theory about other things might hypothetically fly. Does that afford you to claim "Nothing other than birds can fly"?

If there is such a thing as bad or good philosophy...

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