15 ms·
Can't we say, with nearly as much accuracy, that this life is an epilogue to eternity?
by nwiswell 3y ago
Can't we say, with nearly as much accuracy, that this life is an epilogue to eternity?
- dartos 3y agoI don’t think so. Eternity, by definition, never ends, so this life couldn’t come after the end.
- nwiswell 3y agoMmm. That presupposes infinite linear time. By most accounts, "this life" bookends about 13.7 billion years of linear time, but how do we understand the state of things before that? How could we understand the state of things once the heat death of the universe is a distant cosmic memory, and entropy no longer provides an "arrow of time"?
- ganzuul 3y agoEverything we know about time is total order, but partial order is also possible.
- jareklupinski 3y agoit's a stop along the way from infinity to forever stretch your legs :)
- pdntspa 3y agoEither case sounds like some fancy mental gymnastics to feel good about uncertainty. Much better to embrace it and admit, "I don't know."