The phenomenon and the explanation

[partinobodycular]

Is there any thing that exists that didn't exist as potential in the first cause? What potential can be in the first cause? Isn't change potential converted to act?

Both Aristotle and Aquinas believed in something called "Prime Matter". Oddly enough Aquinas didn't talk about it very much, except to say that it had to be there. Basically, prime matter is pure potential.

I can understand Aquinas not talking about it very much, because it seems contradictory. Aquinas believed in "Creatio ex nihilo", creation from nothing. But was it creation from nothing, or creation from prime matter? You can't say that God first created prime matter, and then created the universe from it. Because that would mean that prime matter had to have the potential to exist before God created it. You end up with an infinite regress. The potential to exist, first had to have the potential to exist, and so on. Ad infinitum. So Aquinas simply accepts that there had to be prime matter, something with pure potential.

Hence Aquinas begins with two things: God...pure actuality, and Prime Matter...pure potentiality. Then God, by will alone actualizes the prime matter creating the universe. But it seems as though this universe that God created is inherently unstable. It's constantly changing. In fact that seems to be a hallmark of it's existence, it changes.

So the question then is, do we really need God to kick it all off, or do we just accept that existence is inherently unstable, and will constantly change.

Or think of it from a physics standpoint, entropy always increases. Well guess what, if you look around you at trees, and planets, and iphones, and people, they're all the result of increasing entropy.

So I say that we just go with that, existence is inherently unstable, things change, and entropy increases. And out of that process you get absolutely everything that you see around you.

 

[partinobodycular]

Oh yeah? Whatever you mean by the term 'reality', can be shown, via objective testing, as requiring a conscious mind .. so there .. and no need for mentioning 'creating' reality.

I would agree that we're stuck with the egocentric predicament and there's no way around it. But that doesn't mean that solipsism is the rational conclusion. Somewhere in there, between theism, and naturalism, and solipsism we each have to find an answer that we're comfortable with. And we may also have to accept the fact that we're not all gonna agree on what that answer is. So you argue your side, I'll argue my side, and to a lot of people out there we're both gonna look like idiots. And that's fine, so long as neither you, me, nor them get too hung up on being right.

 

[sjastro]

Expanding on my comments on Penrose’s CCC model…..

Mathematically space-time is an example of a Lorentzian manifold where it can be globally curved but locally flat at small scales.
At local scales we can use special relativity to show why a photon doesn’t keep time.
The Lorentz transformation for time dilation for a moving observer is.

dτ = dt√(1-v²/c²)

dτ is the observer’s proper time, v is the velocity of the observer and dt is the observer’s coordinate time relative to another observer in an inertial frame.
Since a photon travels at the speed of light v=c and therefore dτ =0.
Hence the photon does not have a proper time and therefore cannot be used as a clock.

In the Penrose CCC model the very early universe and the universe in the very distant future are devoid of matter and composed only of photons travelling at c.
The universe devoid of matter ‘cannot keep time’ and exists in a spacelike region where photons are spatially but not temporally separated.

This is where the mathematics comes into the picture; the very early universe and the very distant future universe can be treated as 3D space without time and connected by a conformal mapping.
A conformal mapping is a transformation where the scale can change but angles do not such as in the conformal mapping f illustrated.

While the scale has changed, the squares have not and the angles remain at 90 degrees after the mapping.
In the CCC model this conformal mapping rids the universe of a singularity at the Big Bang and the universe is smooth at both ends of the spectrum as there is no matter to cause lumpiness.

This is an example of a mathematical universe which might appear sound but problems arise when adopting it to a physical universe model.
The CCC model requires a positive cosmological constant Λ or dark energy at the start of the Big Bang however observation indicates dark energy became evident around 6 billion years after the Big Bang.
While a conformal mapping can result in a smooth universe it cannot explain why the dark energy density is zero in the early universe and a constant from 6 billion years after the Big Bang into the present.

As mentioned in my previous post entropy or the second law of thermodynamics is a problem in the CCC model.
The CCC model tries to explain low entropy in the early universe through gravity which lowers the statistical entropy, an even bigger problem is for the distant future universe.
In between these extremes the entropy increases with time but due to conformal mapping the very distant future universe should also exist in a state of low entropy.

Penrose tries to explain this through black holes which become the dominant objects in the distant future.
Along with objects swallowed by black holes so does the entropy; the problem is when black holes evaporate due to Hawking radiation.
Entropy is a form of information and as has been shown recently information is not permanently lost inside a black hole and escapes in the form of thermal radiation.
In this case it is the statistical entropy of the radiated photons themselves which prevents the universe from achieving low entropy.

 

[partinobodycular]

Expanding on my comments on Penrose’s CCC model…..

I realize that I haven't responded to your posts, but I do appreciate them, and they will give me a list of things to keep in mind as continue to consider CCC.

Thanks

 

[Eloy Craft]

Both Aristotle and Aquinas believed in something called "Prime Matter". Oddly enough Aquinas didn't talk about it very much, except to say that it had to be there. Basically, prime matter is pure potential.

I can understand Aquinas not talking about it very much, because it seems contradictory. Aquinas believed in "Creatio ex nihilo", creation from nothing. But was it creation from nothing, or creation from prime matter? You can't say that God first created prime matter, and then created the universe from it. Because that would mean that prime matter had to have the potential to exist before God created it. You end up with an infinite regress. The potential to exist, first had to have the potential to exist, and so on. Ad infinitum. So Aquinas simply accepts that there had to be prime matter, something with pure potential.

Hence Aquinas begins with two things: God...pure actuality, and Prime Matter...pure potentiality. Then God, by will alone actualizes the prime matter creating the universe. But it seems as though this universe that God created is inherently unstable. It's constantly changing. In fact that seems to be a hallmark of it's existence, it changes.

So the question then is, do we really need God to kick it all off, or do we just accept that existence is inherently unstable, and will constantly change.

Or think of it from a physics standpoint, entropy always increases. Well guess what, if you look around you at trees, and planets, and iphones, and people, they're all the result of increasing entropy.

So I say that we just go with that, existence is inherently unstable, things change, and entropy increases. And out of that process you get absolutely everything that you see around you.

A discussion about what is 'before' creation is a discussion about the theological term eternity. So potential exists in that state of being. It's not God knowing 'beforehand' because pure act requires no prethought.
Us Godlings have a reason for entropy. St Paul taught that futility and decay are part of God's plan. Human life was not subject to entropy in the beginning and that dignity would be revealed when man leads creation out of ...well....entropy.

 

[SelfSim]

I would agree that we're stuck with the egocentric predicament and there's no way around it.

Try on that there's no evidence (or any objective test whatsoever) for seeking things we won't perceive in the first place, other than to satisfy egocentric, belief-based philosophical musings.

But that doesn't mean that solipsism is the rational conclusion.

Who said Solipsism is of any tangible use there? (Its not).

Somewhere in there, between theism, and naturalism, and solipsism we each have to find an answer that we're comfortable with.

Never mind the answer .. what's the question in the first place?
.. There isn't one which doesn't just posit the mere belief that there is.

And we may also have to accept the fact that we're not all gonna agree on what that answer is. So you argue your side, I'll argue my side, and to a lot of people out there we're both gonna look like idiots. And that's fine, so long as neither you, me, nor them get too hung up on being right.

Rather than jumping around every philosophically conceived load of mumbo-jumbo, why not consider the scientific objective process .. and solve some real problems .. instead of imaginary ones?

 

[SelfSim]

A discussion about what is 'before' creation is a discussion about the theological term eternity. So potential exists in that state of being. It's not God knowing 'beforehand' because pure act requires no prethought.

Oh really? And where did your all your pre-thoughts that led to your above claims come from then, eh? Are you even conscious of the role your own mind plays in everything you claim?

Us Godlings have a reason for entropy. St Paul taught that futility and decay are part of God's plan. Human life was not subject to entropy in the beginning and that dignity would be revealed when man leads creation out of ...well....entropy.

A reason for entropy? I'll give you a reason .. it works for making predictions for what we might observe .. there's your reason, right there! Simple!

 

[partinobodycular]

But those gravitational waves have energy and scale,

I'm gonna get above my pay grade here, but do they really have scale? What are you using to measure them? I realize that some things are scale invariant, and so they'll survive the transition from one aeon to the next. I believe that gravitational waves fall into that category, they're scale invariant.

Why is that a problem?

How would that work? the process Penrose describes is sequential.

If by 'stacking', you mean a multiverse, that's fine, but it's not what Penrose's idea is about.

"Sequential" is a problem when you realize what I meant by "stacking". And yes, I was being intentionally vague. I've always had an affinity for MWI and the simplicity of CCC. CCC has one basic premise, entropy always increases. It's so amazingly simple and yet it explains so much.

But what if we try to put MWI and CCC together. What do we get? Well it depends on how you put them together. I want to stack them. Now when I say "stack", what I really mean is, I want to take the aeons from CCC and put them in superposition to give me MWI.

Consider for example Schrodinger's cat, CCC should produce an infinite number of aeons that are identical to the one in which Schrodinger's cat sits blissfully unaware of its potential fate. Of that infinite number, some of them will be identical only up to the point where we open the box and discover the fate of the cat, then they'll diverge. So this explains the decoherence that MWI theorizes, as opposed to the collapse that other theories propose. It also explains where those other worlds come from. They're simply the result of a perpetual cycle produced by the neverending increase in entropy...CCC.

Now the problem with a sequentially ordered series of aeons is, I can see no logical reason why I should stack them. They have a definite order. This one comes before that one. However, if can't tell which order they should go in, then I have no logical reason to put one before or after another, therefore I can logically treat them as if they occur simultaneously. In other words, I can treat them as if they're in a superposition.

So that's why I don't like the sequentiality of CCC.

 

[partinobodycular]

St Paul taught that futility and decay are part of God's plan.

But why do we need to throw God in there?

Why don't we just accept that change/decay/entropy are a natural part of existence. To me you're simply arguing for an explanation that we don't need.

 

[sjastro]

I realize that I haven't responded to your posts, but I do appreciate them, and they will give me a list of things to keep in mind as continue to consider CCC.

Thanks

I don't share your enthusiasm of CCC as pointed out in my posts.
Apart from the theoretical problems it also fails observationally.

Only photons and gravitational waves which also travel at the speed of light can crossover from the preceding aeon into the present one.
This ability led Penrose to theorize that gravitational waves produced by the decaying orbits of black hole binaries around a centre of gravity from the previous aeon can crossover and produce rings of constant temperature in the cosmic radiation background.
Penrose claimed such rings existed in the data from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), while at the same time claiming he saw no such pattern in (standard) simulations of the CMB that were carried out. Other groups however argued that simulations did indeed contain rings once they had been modified to take into account the distribution of hot and cold spots at various angular scales that are seen in the real CMB and which are predicted by inflationary (mainstream) physics.

Penrose changed his tune and published a different kind of evidence in support of CCC.
Rather than rings of near uniform temperature, he has instead identified patches within the CMB that are much hotter than the surrounding region. The idea is that these hot spots known as Hawking points could be due to the thermal radiation given off during the Hawking evaporation of supermassive black holes in the previous aeon.
Still physicists remained unconvinced finding no evidence for particularly hot spots (although they have identified one anomalous cold patch).

A rather negative view of CCC from a mainstream perspective is this.
No, Roger Penrose, We See No Evidence Of A ‘Universe Before The Big Bang’

 

[SelfSim]

.. Still physicists remained unconvinced finding no evidence for particularly hot spots (although they have identified one anomalous cold patch).

A rather negative view of CCC from a mainstream perspective is this.
No, Roger Penrose, We See No Evidence Of A ‘Universe Before The Big Bang’

Thanks for all your posts in this thread .. much appreciated.

I'm not so sure Spiegel's is necessarily a 'negative' view there(?)
According to him, Penrose's predicted (and testable) features are actually absent from the data, so its not really just a matter of Spiegel's opinion vs Penrose's(?):

Yet these tests exist, the critical data is publicly available, and Penrose is not just wrong, it’s trivially easy to demonstrate that the features he claims should be present in the Universe do not exist.

 

[SelfSim]

Consider for example Schrodinger's cat, CCC should produce an infinite number of aeons that are identical to the one in which Schrodinger's cat sits blissfully unaware of its potential fate. Of that infinite number, some of them will be identical only up to the point where we open the box and discover the fate of the cat, then they'll diverge. So this explains the decoherence that MWI theorizes, as opposed to the collapse that other theories propose.

How does that explain the decoherence where there is a demonstrable absence of supporting CCC feature observational data?

You may be just speculating .. but one can still progressively close the loop on each of CCC's successively absent claims on the basis of properly conceived objective tests and their accompanying results.

There are many speculative models, largely based on logical inference, which fall by the wayside when their predictions return results of 'no physical significance'.

It also explains where those other worlds come from. They're simply the result of a perpetual cycle produced by the neverending increase in entropy...CCC.

Noted: that you're just projecting from an assumed truth of Penrose's evidentially absent predictions here.

 

[sjastro]

Thanks for all your posts in this thread .. much appreciated.

I'm not so sure Spiegel's is necessarily a 'negative' view there(?)
According to him, Penrose's predicted (and testable) features are actually absent from the data, so its not really just a matter of Spiegel's opinion vs Penrose's(?):

I don't know about that, the following quote is on the verge of accusing the Nobel prize winner of being a crackpot.

Although, much like Hoyle, Penrose isn’t alone in his assertions, the data is overwhelmingly opposed to what he contends. The predictions that he’s made are refuted by the data, and his claims to see these effects are only reproducible if one analyzes the data in a scientifically unsound and illegitimate fashion. Hundreds of scientists have pointed this out to Penrose — repeatedly and consistently over a period of more than 10 years — who continues to ignore the field and plow ahead with his contentions.

Incidentally Siegel is your typical looking cosmologist.

Here is proof science is the work of the devil with Siegel complete with horns.

 

[SelfSim]

I don't know about, the following quote is on the verge of accusing the Nobel prize winner of being a crackpot.

Point taken .. I guess it depends on how one reads that quote, there ...
Filtering out the more colourful imagery, the message is that CCC hasn't gained much traction because its widely recognised that its predictions aren't supported by the available data (which I think, is all that really matters at the end of the day?)

Incidentally, I suppose I should get Siegel's name right too .. I have no idea how the 'p' intruded into his name spelling in my last post (aka: 'Spiegel')

Incidentally Siegel is your typical looking cosmologist.

Here is proof science is the work of the devil with Siegel complete with horns.

Meh .. he's got a sense of humour ..

Maybe they're both crackpots, so maybe that just cancels out their respective nuances(?)
What remains there though, is the inconsistency between the CCC predictions and the data.

 

[sjastro]

Point taken .. I guess it depends on how one reads that quote, there ...
Filtering out the more colourful imagery, the message is that CCC hasn't gained much traction because its widely recognised that its predictions aren't supported by the available data (which I think, is all that really matters at the end of the day?)

Incidentally, I suppose I should get Siegel's name right too .. I have no idea how the 'p' intruded into his name spelling in my last post (aka: 'Spiegel')
Meh .. he's got a sense of humour ..

Maybe they're both crackpots, so maybe that just cancels out their respective nuances(?)
What remains there though, is the inconsistency between the CCC predictions and the data.

Not only are the CCC predictions not supported by observation but the theory itself is full of holes.
In essence the conditions around the Planck time (10⁻⁴³ s after Big Bang) mirror the universe in the very distant future.
One obvious difference is temperature; at the Planck time the temperature of the universe is around 10³² K, in the very distant future it is barely above 0 K.
A temperature of 10³² K is favourable for Penrose's idea of the universe being spacelike and not able to keep time as at this extraordinarily high temperature particles with mass cannot exist; they are massless travelling at the speed of light since the Higgs field cannot impart mass.

The problem is when the universe is barely above absolute zero in the very distant future.
Grand unified theories predict protons might have a half life of at least 1.67 x 10³⁴ years however electrons are considered to be eternal (or at least 66,000 yottayears if you believe the fringe theories.)

The best measurement yet of the lifetime of the electron suggests that a particle present today will probably still be around in 66,000 yottayears (6.6 × 10²⁸ yrs), which is about five-quintillion times the current age of the universe. That is the conclusion of physicists working on the Borexino experiment in Italy, who have been searching for evidence that the electron decays to a photon and a neutrino; a process that would violate the conservation of electrical charge and point towards undiscovered physics beyond the Standard Model.

If electrons existed in the very distant future of a spacelike universe they will travel faster than the speed of light.
This leads to all sorts of paradoxes such as an effect preceding a cause as there is no ordering of events when the universe is spacelike.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The consciousness conceiving the 'external' reality is unaware of its own capacity of conceiving its own models. (Who said 'self aware' is absolute anyway?)
What we have is a conscious mind exploring itself .. nothing more. (Which isn't so 'tricky' after all).
There is no objective test for the existence of some 'external' conscious-mind independent reality.

OK.

The consistencies we perceive and share amongst ourselves (via language) are consistent with us all sharing a common mind type and thus share in-common meanings within those descriptions for describing reality.

If I accept your previous paragraph, then the 'we' you mention here must also be a product of my own mind, so there is no common mind type or in-common meaning, "What we have is a conscious mind exploring itself .. nothing more".

To argue that the noted consistencies of so-called 'external' reality as being evidence for the existence of a conscious-mind independent reality, is tantamount to denying the evidence of different instances of human minds perceiving things differently, and amounts to exclusionism on the basis that those who don't see things the way you'd hoped for, aren't human.

To argue that all we have is "a conscious mind exploring itself", is tantamount to denying the existence of different instances of human minds perceiving things differently...

IOW accepting the existence of different instances of human minds perceiving things differently is accepting an external reality.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... the question is...is it possible that I'm right?

That's impossible to say because you're dispensing with the framework by which we judge what is and is not possible. But IMO, being able to conceive of something doesn't necessarily mean it's possible (not all philosophers agree on this).

Any ideas?

No. You make up whatever unfalsifiable solipsistic or Berkeleyite construction of reality you like, but what's the point? Where's the utility? I take a more pragmatic view that, until I have some indication otherwise, I'll take traffic as real and I won't be walking out in front of a bus if I can help it.

I don't think that consciousness can actively create reality. I think that while consciousness and its accompanying illusion are inseparable, the former can't "create" the latter. The latter is simply a self evolvng illusion...

Illusions don't exist independent of minds. An illusion is something that we create, it's an incorrect perception or interpretation of something. If it evolves it's because our perception or interpretation of that something evolves.

Again, the illusion of an external reality would be governed by the exact same rules that govern an actual external reality. Thus they will inevitably look the same. (Well maybe)

In that case, there's no coherent sense in which it's an illusion, and no clear sense in which it isn't an actual external reality - i.e. it raises the question of what you mean by an 'actual external reality' if your 'illusion' concept is indistinguishable from it.

... consciousness doesn't create reality. Reality is simply a self evolving illusion. But that illusion must adhere to certain rules. Basically, it must remain coherent and consistent, because if it doesn't then it violates the anthropic principle and consciousness couldn't exist. So just as consciousness isn't in charge of creating the illusion, it's not in charge of keeping it coherent either. What consciousness expects to see doesn't matter, because it's not in charge.

If it's an illusion, a mind creates it, albeit unconsciously - that's what an illusion is.

It's simply the anthropic principle that guarantees that the illusion will always remain coherent.

I can't make sense of that - why should the fact that we exist guarantee coherence if what we think of as reality is an illusion?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Entropy is a form of information and as has been shown recently information is not permanently lost inside a black hole and escapes in the form of thermal radiation.

But doesn't the BH information paradox entail the puzzle that thermal radiation has a characteristically random distribution, i.e. there is no information in thermal radiation beyond that it's a thermal distribution?

ISTR some attempts to suggest that quantum entanglement was a potential answer, but no details.

 

[partinobodycular]

In essence the conditions around the Planck time (10⁻⁴³ s after Big Bang) mirror the universe in the very distant future.
One obvious difference is temperature; at the Planck time the temperature of the universe is around 10³² K, in the very distant future it is barely above 0 K.
A temperature of 10³² K is favourable for Penrose's idea of the universe being spacelike and not able to keep time as at this extraordinarily high temperature particles with mass cannot exist; they are massless travelling at the speed of light since the Higgs field cannot impart mass.

The problem is when the universe is barely above absolute zero in the very distant future.
Grand unified theories predict protons might have a half life of at least 1.67 x 10³⁴ years however electrons are considered to be eternal (or at least 66,000 yottayears if you believe the fringe theories.)

Awesome stuff.

It's been puzzling me for some time now that after the universe loses its mass, it somehow goes from massive, empty, and cold, to tiny, dense, and hot. How in the heck does it do that? I'm not buying Penrose's magical re-scaling trick. Neither do I think that the loss of clocks is all that important. It definitely makes it difficult to measure things, but it doesn't actually cause anything to change.

Now if Penrose is right and his aeons are connected, then we lose our clocks in the distant future of one aeon, and we don't get them back until after the inflationary period of the next aeon, depending upon where you choose to draw the line between one aeon and the next. So you can put the inflationary period in whichever aeon you want to, but the question remains, in this clockless interval between aeons how does the universe go from empty and cold, to dense and hot?

You have to keep in mind that you haven't just lost your clocks, somehow you've lost all your fundamental forces too. So there's a huge difference between the end of one aeon and the start of the next. However, invoking a massive number of years for this to happen, doesn't mean that it didn't happen. The time that it takes is irrelevant.

I would imagine, that one thing this loss of clocks does though, is make it very difficult to tell if your universe is expanding or contracting. Penrose gets the universe to contract by simply re-scaling it, but I would suspect that it actually does contract, it's not just a mathematical trick. Why it contracts though, I have no idea. I simply don't have enough information. I don't know what dark matter is. I don't know why the expansion of the universe is accelerating. And I don't know what's gonna happen 66,000 yottayears from now. However, if the universe really does contract then you're gonna lose all those gravitational waves.

So I think that Penrose is glossing over a whole lot of stuff with his re-scaling, but that being said, here's what I like about CCC. I like it's fundamental simplicity. You begin with one simple premise, entropy always increases.

But this leads to some really Nutjob 101 ideas. I don't think that entropy can be infinite, no matter how one defines it. Therefore it would seem as if entropy can't always increase. So the premise doesn't hold up. Unless... entropy is conserved, and an increase of entropy in one area leads to a loss of entropy in another. In other words, our universe and its entropy is part of a set of conjugate variables, and entropy oscillates back and forth between them.

Oi vey, sometimes I just need to shut my brain off for a while, otherwise it goes nuts, and this is one of those times.

I'll be back. Thanks for all the fish.

 

[partinobodycular]

I can't make sense of that - why should the fact that we exist guarantee coherence if what we think of as reality is an illusion?

I'll be back, but at the moment my brain is fried.