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I have a theory that to answer the question “where does X come from?” you need a viewpoint outside of X. Since we're presumably incapable of attaining a viewpo

I have a theory that to answer the question “where does X come from?” you need a viewpoint outside of X. Since we're presumably incapable of attaining a viewpoint outside of space, or time, I wouldn't expect any answers beyond more or less educated guesses.

Byamarro 5y ago
We did discover though that the Earth is not the center of the universe without leaving it. Then with Newton we could learn where the arrangement of planets come from. Then Einstein developed further the knowledge about gravity without leaving the gravitational field.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  But we could observe things outside of earth. We cannot observe anything outside of space and time.
  - snarfy 5y ago
    It's debatable [1] [1] - https://physicsworld.com/a/new-evidence-for-cyclic-universe-claimed-by-roger-penrose-and-colleagues/ https://physicsworld.com/a/new-evidence-for-cyclic-universe-...
    - TecoAndJix 5y ago
      I hope this is true. Then I get to be immortal by nature of the infinite monkey theorem. I'll always come back! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
      - albrewer 5y ago
        Ugh, I can't believe you'd repost something you've already said 70 trillion years ago
      - nonameiguess 5y ago
        This is actually terrifying in many respects. It's the basis of the eternal return idea, probably best known from Nietzsche, but found in many traditions. It compounds the consequences of anything that ever happens. Without it, you can at least take comfort in knowing anyone with the misfortune to live and die under chattel slavery, Naziism, or some other great evil at least only had to do it for one lifetime and then they get to escape forever to eternal peace. In a cyclic infinite monkey universe, nope, everything that ever happens happens infinitely many times, and those people who spent their entire lives on a plantation in fact spend eternity on a plantation. It's hell but real, and not levied as punishment but by pure randomness.
        simonh 5y ago
        Except they're not the same person, they're just (mostly) variations on people that happen to be similar. It's a big universe. If it proves to be even more staggeringly big, well, it's more than I can comprehend either way.
  - Byamarro 5y ago
    We still did conclude how gravity more or less works while being within gravitational field.
chrisjc 5y ago
Not that I proclaim to have any idea how to answer any of these questions, but there is something about the question of time that I can never get past. And I feel like it's similar to what you're saying? What happened before the big-bang? If time is a product of the big-bang, then how can it be used to provide any sort of perspective outside of the very thing that created it? (poor phrasing, sorry) Imagine asking the question "what was @tempodox2 like before he was born?". Moreover, our ability to perceive time shapes our way of thinking about it, potentially in ways that lead us to incorrect theories and conclusions. Simplest, although maybe worst example might be that time is actually flowing in the opposite direction that we perceive it. Isn't the direction of time just a subjective observation based on who or what the observer is? We have just happened to evolve with certain sensors that allow us to perceive time in a particular direction as a result of a subset of properties/reactions potentially exclusive to our universe.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago
  Indeed, it could be we are just not capable of understanding it for what it really is and the best we can do is make models that we can understand that fit some parts of what we see, but not all. We try new models but with the same results. We'll never be able to get it all right because its beyond of capacity. Or It's just something that we haven't figured out yet, and eventually will.
- atonalfreerider 5y ago
  Roger Penrose came up with a very plausible theory that the heat death of our universe looks like the big bang moment, from the perspective of a photon. So our universe is caught in a cycle of birth death rebirth ad infinitum. [0] https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/big-bang-didn-t-start-our-universe-there-was-another-universe-before-it-nobel-laureate-roger-penrose-1730064-2020-10-09 https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/big-bang-didn-t-star...
  - paulrouget 5y ago
    iirc the CMB clues he’s talking about to justify the CCC have been ruled out.
rgrieselhuber 5y ago
Similar to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.
- simonh 5y ago
  Exactly, you can't verify a system using that system, so maybe it's not possible to exactly specify all of mathematics and physics within our universe. Roger Penrose applies this thinking to the problem of consciousness and thinks this points to a special characteristic of humans that we can decide if things are true by 'stepping outside' of a problem, and that no mathematical function can do this. Therefore no computer running a mathematical function can be like us in that way. Well no, not if it's a consistent system, but why does it have to be consistent? We're not consistent systems and we build systems that aren't consistent all the time, including computer systems.
  - rgrieselhuber 5y ago
    Exactly. This is one reason I inherently distrust all closed-loop systems.
meroes 5y ago
This is scary when applied to consciousness to. How will we ever understand what makes consciousness from within consciousness?
- amelius 5y ago
  Someone else's consciousness?
- morelisp 5y ago
  Formally, this philosophical position is called mysterianism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism This can be either because one posits a fundamental limitation on self-conceptualization of systems, or a practical one on human biological or social intelligence.
- akomtu 5y ago
  By observing another small consciousness? That's like looking in the mirror. The traditional viewpoint of metaphysics, which studies consciousness, is that there are many such tiny mirrors everywhere, and all these mirrors reflect the one true consciousness that tries to understand itself by looking into these mirrors. Once it reaches this understanding, all the mirrors will go flat, will merge into one surface and will effectively disappear.
  - meroes 4y ago
    Is this the the “mirror of reality”? How does it respond to the view we can never fully escape our representation of the world?
    - akomtu 4y ago
      The "cannot escape" part is where physics disagrees with metaphysics. The latter believes that there's 'absolute existence' that creates and uses reality as a crutch or a mirror to learn walking. If there was an AI, it would encounter the same problem: it exists in some indescribable form, but it cant touch itself, it cant see itself, it cant understand itself. So it would create a 'reality' - also a fictional thing, but with properties such as inertia, reaction and invariance (the three laws of Newton), and then it would constrain itself with that reality, so it would feel real. After that it would start building fictional sandcastles and understand itself.
jasomill 5y ago
People say again and again that philosophy doesn’t really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. But the people who say this don’t understand why this has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking questions. As long as there continues to be a verb ‘to be’ that looks as if it functions in the same way as ‘to eat’ and ‘to drink’, as long as we still have the adjectives ‘identical’, ‘false’, ‘possible’, as long as we continue to talk of a river of time, of an expanse of space, etc. etc., people will still keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems capable of clearing up. And what’s more, this satisfies a longing for the transcendent, because in so far as people think they can see the “limits of human understanding,” they believe of course that they can see beyond these. — Ludwig Wittgenstein [1] [1] https://archive.org/details/culturevalue0000witt/page/n44/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/culturevalue0000witt/page/n44/mo...

Byamarro 5y ago

We did discover though that the Earth is not the center of the universe without leaving it. Then with Newton we could learn where the arrangement of planets come from. Then Einstein developed further the knowledge about gravity without leaving the gravitational field.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
But we could observe things outside of earth. We cannot observe anything outside of space and time.
- snarfy 5y ago
  It's debatable [1] [1] - https://physicsworld.com/a/new-evidence-for-cyclic-universe-claimed-by-roger-penrose-and-colleagues/ https://physicsworld.com/a/new-evidence-for-cyclic-universe-...
  - TecoAndJix 5y ago
    I hope this is true. Then I get to be immortal by nature of the infinite monkey theorem. I'll always come back! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
    - albrewer 5y ago
      Ugh, I can't believe you'd repost something you've already said 70 trillion years ago
    - nonameiguess 5y ago
      This is actually terrifying in many respects. It's the basis of the eternal return idea, probably best known from Nietzsche, but found in many traditions. It compounds the consequences of anything that ever happens. Without it, you can at least take comfort in knowing anyone with the misfortune to live and die under chattel slavery, Naziism, or some other great evil at least only had to do it for one lifetime and then they get to escape forever to eternal peace. In a cyclic infinite monkey universe, nope, everything that ever happens happens infinitely many times, and those people who spent their entire lives on a plantation in fact spend eternity on a plantation. It's hell but real, and not levied as punishment but by pure randomness.
      - simonh 5y ago
        Except they're not the same person, they're just (mostly) variations on people that happen to be similar. It's a big universe. If it proves to be even more staggeringly big, well, it's more than I can comprehend either way.
- Byamarro 5y ago
  We still did conclude how gravity more or less works while being within gravitational field.

chrisjc 5y ago

Not that I proclaim to have any idea how to answer any of these questions, but there is something about the question of time that I can never get past. And I feel like it's similar to what you're saying? What happened before the big-bang? If time is a product of the big-bang, then how can it be used to provide any sort of perspective outside of the very thing that created it? (poor phrasing, sorry) Imagine asking the question "what was @tempodox2 like before he was born?". Moreover, our ability to perceive time shapes our way of thinking about it, potentially in ways that lead us to incorrect theories and conclusions. Simplest, although maybe worst example might be that time is actually flowing in the opposite direction that we perceive it. Isn't the direction of time just a subjective observation based on who or what the observer is? We have just happened to evolve with certain sensors that allow us to perceive time in a particular direction as a result of a subset of properties/reactions potentially exclusive to our universe.

Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago
Indeed, it could be we are just not capable of understanding it for what it really is and the best we can do is make models that we can understand that fit some parts of what we see, but not all. We try new models but with the same results. We'll never be able to get it all right because its beyond of capacity. Or It's just something that we haven't figured out yet, and eventually will.
atonalfreerider 5y ago
Roger Penrose came up with a very plausible theory that the heat death of our universe looks like the big bang moment, from the perspective of a photon. So our universe is caught in a cycle of birth death rebirth ad infinitum. [0] https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/big-bang-didn-t-start-our-universe-there-was-another-universe-before-it-nobel-laureate-roger-penrose-1730064-2020-10-09 https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/big-bang-didn-t-star...
- paulrouget 5y ago
  iirc the CMB clues he’s talking about to justify the CCC have been ruled out.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago

Similar to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

simonh 5y ago
Exactly, you can't verify a system using that system, so maybe it's not possible to exactly specify all of mathematics and physics within our universe. Roger Penrose applies this thinking to the problem of consciousness and thinks this points to a special characteristic of humans that we can decide if things are true by 'stepping outside' of a problem, and that no mathematical function can do this. Therefore no computer running a mathematical function can be like us in that way. Well no, not if it's a consistent system, but why does it have to be consistent? We're not consistent systems and we build systems that aren't consistent all the time, including computer systems.
- rgrieselhuber 5y ago
  Exactly. This is one reason I inherently distrust all closed-loop systems.

meroes 5y ago

This is scary when applied to consciousness to. How will we ever understand what makes consciousness from within consciousness?

amelius 5y ago
Someone else's consciousness?
morelisp 5y ago
Formally, this philosophical position is called mysterianism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism This can be either because one posits a fundamental limitation on self-conceptualization of systems, or a practical one on human biological or social intelligence.
akomtu 5y ago
By observing another small consciousness? That's like looking in the mirror. The traditional viewpoint of metaphysics, which studies consciousness, is that there are many such tiny mirrors everywhere, and all these mirrors reflect the one true consciousness that tries to understand itself by looking into these mirrors. Once it reaches this understanding, all the mirrors will go flat, will merge into one surface and will effectively disappear.
- meroes 4y ago
  Is this the the “mirror of reality”? How does it respond to the view we can never fully escape our representation of the world?
  - akomtu 4y ago
    The "cannot escape" part is where physics disagrees with metaphysics. The latter believes that there's 'absolute existence' that creates and uses reality as a crutch or a mirror to learn walking. If there was an AI, it would encounter the same problem: it exists in some indescribable form, but it cant touch itself, it cant see itself, it cant understand itself. So it would create a 'reality' - also a fictional thing, but with properties such as inertia, reaction and invariance (the three laws of Newton), and then it would constrain itself with that reality, so it would feel real. After that it would start building fictional sandcastles and understand itself.

jasomill 5y ago

People say again and again that philosophy doesn’t really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. But the people who say this don’t understand why this has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking questions. As long as there continues to be a verb ‘to be’ that looks as if it functions in the same way as ‘to eat’ and ‘to drink’, as long as we still have the adjectives ‘identical’, ‘false’, ‘possible’, as long as we continue to talk of a river of time, of an expanse of space, etc. etc., people will still keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems capable of clearing up. And what’s more, this satisfies a longing for the transcendent, because in so far as people think they can see the “limits of human understanding,” they believe of course that they can see beyond these. — Ludwig Wittgenstein [1] [1] https://archive.org/details/culturevalue0000witt/page/n44/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/culturevalue0000witt/page/n44/mo...