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It still boggles my mind, but I honestly believe that there is something beyond our own universe. The other thing that trips me up but I can conceptualize is t

It still boggles my mind, but I honestly believe that there is something beyond our own universe. The other thing that trips me up but I can conceptualize is the idea that there may be things that had no beginning and will have no end. The human mind is very much suited to understand things to have beginnings and ends. Our own universe very clearly had a beginning and will certainly have an end. But that which exists beyond our own universe. Is it necessary that whatever is there did not exist at some point? I think it's entirely possible that whatever exists beyond our own universe may have been there always and will continue to be there forever. No beginning and no end.

deleted 8y ago
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snissn 8y ago
Pascal's mugging is a really cool thought experiment. Similarly is the thought that what if instead of the entire universe being the size of the viewable universe it's 10^N power, so just another exponential leap in size. Then our little corner of the multi-verse becomes such a tiny speck.
- Retric 8y ago
  Pascal's mugging is simple failure to recognize probabilities can be and grow arbitrarily small. If a mugger paying you 4,000 dollars is less than half as likely as them paying you 2,000 dollars and you repeat that as the numbers grow then there is no inflection point.
- deciplex 8y ago
  Multiverse and universe-outside-the-visible-universe are not the same thing.
neolefty 8y ago
Well explained! And I wonder: Does the existence of our universe require that something else "exist" outside of time? People claim it as a proof of "God" or a creator, and I used to be skeptical of that logic (albeit I am a theist, for other reasons) but the way you put it I find pretty convincing.
neolefty 8y ago
> According to Hawking's "no-boundary proposal," before the Big Bang, when the entire universe was compressed into a single, infinitely small point, there was no directional time as we experience it. Time was a closed, boundary-free thing, like a sphere without edges. ... > Scientists later determined that this proposal implied something strange: that the multiverse is infinite, with endless, uncountable parallel universes existing alongside our own.... This is the first time I'd heard of that proposal. It rings true to me (I know—naturalness is another word for the truthiness fallacy) in the sense that the outer reality needs to transcend time and therefore—if our universe is time-bound—contain infinite time-bound sub-universes whose origination and final fate are not externally bound by time. Or perhaps the "no-boundary proposal" is just a succinct way of saying that! > That wild situation presented a number of problems for science, most significantly that it rendered most basic scientific ideas about the multiverse impossible to test. ... > "Hawking was not satisfied with this state of affairs," Hertog told Live Science in March. "'Let's try to tame the multiverse,' he told me a year ago. So, we set out to develop a method to transform the idea of a multiverse into a coherent, testable scientific framework." This reminds me of Einstein's discomfort with true unpredictability—"God does not play dice"—how he helped lay the foundations for quantum mechanics but never fully accepted it himself because it was too weird (as I understand it—I'm a rather poor historian). > Hawking's final paper suggests a framework for understanding the universe that would render the multiverse finite, countable and subject to meaningfully engagement via the tools of science.
smallnamespace 8y ago
> The human mind is very much suited to understand things to have beginnings and ends. Our own universe very clearly had a beginning and will certainly have an end. I think you might be overstating your case a bit. Non-Western cultures don't have as much an emphasis on things having a clear beginning, middle, and end, the cosmological claim that the universe clearly must be temporally bounded is not even the dominant stance for modern day inflation theorists. There are other alternates (eternal inflation [1], 'big bounce' [2], etc.) I think part of the confusion stems also from language. A multiverse where other 'universes' are physically accessible to us in principle (if we're willing to wait long enough or go far enough), should that really be considered another universe? On the other hand, there are even parts of our current space-time that are so remote that we will never see them—so are they other 'universes'? As a counterpoint, Chinese culture certainly focuses more on the inherent cyclicality of things—even beginnings and ends are embedded in a larger cycle that may not have bounds. “话说天下大势，分久必合，合久必分” It is said that in the great scheme of the world, that which is long divided, must unite, and long united, must divide [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce

deleted 8y ago

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snissn 8y ago

Pascal's mugging is a really cool thought experiment. Similarly is the thought that what if instead of the entire universe being the size of the viewable universe it's 10^N power, so just another exponential leap in size. Then our little corner of the multi-verse becomes such a tiny speck.

Retric 8y ago
Pascal's mugging is simple failure to recognize probabilities can be and grow arbitrarily small. If a mugger paying you 4,000 dollars is less than half as likely as them paying you 2,000 dollars and you repeat that as the numbers grow then there is no inflection point.
deciplex 8y ago
Multiverse and universe-outside-the-visible-universe are not the same thing.

neolefty 8y ago

Well explained! And I wonder: Does the existence of our universe require that something else "exist" outside of time? People claim it as a proof of "God" or a creator, and I used to be skeptical of that logic (albeit I am a theist, for other reasons) but the way you put it I find pretty convincing.

neolefty 8y ago

> According to Hawking's "no-boundary proposal," before the Big Bang, when the entire universe was compressed into a single, infinitely small point, there was no directional time as we experience it. Time was a closed, boundary-free thing, like a sphere without edges. ... > Scientists later determined that this proposal implied something strange: that the multiverse is infinite, with endless, uncountable parallel universes existing alongside our own.... This is the first time I'd heard of that proposal. It rings true to me (I know—naturalness is another word for the truthiness fallacy) in the sense that the outer reality needs to transcend time and therefore—if our universe is time-bound—contain infinite time-bound sub-universes whose origination and final fate are not externally bound by time. Or perhaps the "no-boundary proposal" is just a succinct way of saying that! > That wild situation presented a number of problems for science, most significantly that it rendered most basic scientific ideas about the multiverse impossible to test. ... > "Hawking was not satisfied with this state of affairs," Hertog told Live Science in March. "'Let's try to tame the multiverse,' he told me a year ago. So, we set out to develop a method to transform the idea of a multiverse into a coherent, testable scientific framework." This reminds me of Einstein's discomfort with true unpredictability—"God does not play dice"—how he helped lay the foundations for quantum mechanics but never fully accepted it himself because it was too weird (as I understand it—I'm a rather poor historian). > Hawking's final paper suggests a framework for understanding the universe that would render the multiverse finite, countable and subject to meaningfully engagement via the tools of science.

smallnamespace 8y ago

> The human mind is very much suited to understand things to have beginnings and ends. Our own universe very clearly had a beginning and will certainly have an end. I think you might be overstating your case a bit. Non-Western cultures don't have as much an emphasis on things having a clear beginning, middle, and end, the cosmological claim that the universe clearly must be temporally bounded is not even the dominant stance for modern day inflation theorists. There are other alternates (eternal inflation [1], 'big bounce' [2], etc.) I think part of the confusion stems also from language. A multiverse where other 'universes' are physically accessible to us in principle (if we're willing to wait long enough or go far enough), should that really be considered another universe? On the other hand, there are even parts of our current space-time that are so remote that we will never see them—so are they other 'universes'? As a counterpoint, Chinese culture certainly focuses more on the inherent cyclicality of things—even beginnings and ends are embedded in a larger cycle that may not have bounds. “话说天下大势，分久必合，合久必分” It is said that in the great scheme of the world, that which is long divided, must unite, and long united, must divide [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce