Political Philosophy discussion

[Toffer90]

We don't really know there was anything before the Big Bang, and in fact even assuming there was a "before" before the Big Bang is highly controversial.

I find it far more controversial to assume everything came from nothing, how does that comply with the laws of physics?
If the laws of physics is telling us that the laws of physics didn't exist at some point, then I'm sure someone must have made a logical error or that we know too little to draw a conclusion like that.

Because entropy is likelihood, with a few modifications (there are other constraints in place that prevent certain transformations, like conservation of energy, momentum, angular momentum, charge, etc.). If you imagine entropy going down, may I remind you of a case where entropy would drop far less, like a broken cup of coffee suddenly remaking itself with the coffee going back into it and jumping on the table again? Something like this, only with the entire universe, is what you propose should have happened.

Could have happened, nah I don't think that's a fitting analogy though. How is the cup less ordered after it breaks, it just changed, who are we to judge what is order and what is disorder, isn't that subjective by nature.
How do we even calculate entropy for the universe for a point in time that long ago,when we don't even know all that the universe contain today, entropy is considered the arrow of time, so if we assume there was a start point in time then entropy is thereby defined to have been extremely low at the start of time due to our assumption about there being a start, but if reality have existed for an infinite amount of time then the entropy at the big bang was probably extremely high compared to an infinity of time before the big bang... In that sense then there isn't really any point in talking about high or low entropy in absolute terms, it's a relative value, it is never high or low it is only different from one point to the next.
I mean what does the extrapolated entropy of the universe at the time of the big bang tell us at all, that a soup of energy is like a whole cup with warm coffee in it, and that the universe today is just shattered glass on the floor with coffee dried into a rug?

I don't think entropy is all that meaningful, or can be interpreted in the typical way, when trying to understand the edge cases of reality as we know it, like the edge case of the earliest point in time that we have any information about.
Entropy as a value only hold real meaning when we can compare it to an earlier known value of entropy.

 

[raxo2222]

The only rational conclusion from such a view would be that there actually IS some divine creator who set everything up to happen and then pulls a trigger when he's ready for it all to begin, but even such a being would need time to plan and devise and consider, or no thought processes could take place, as a process of thought is a process of change like any other process.

There is theory, that there is perpetually inflating universe.
Big Bang happens when bit of space in that universe separates from it.

This way there is no beginning, and anything improbable but possible will eventually happen.

There is no need for God or anything supernatural, though it could be created by some especially crafty civilization just like in caveman2cosmos.
Also in mod omniverse caused itself to exist - there is Alpha Point tech at end of tech tree

 

[tmv]

For something to happen, it must have had a prompt to happen, a catalyst event.

The laws of physics tell you how to get from A to B, but not how A happened. If you are familiar with the concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_induction , the laws of physics handle the induction step. But to handle the base case, we always need boundary conditions (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_value_problem). These are not explained, only postulated. This could be considered a shortcoming, but there is really no way around it.

What it does not mean is that these boundary values (in this case initial values) are completely unknown. If we had something like a complete picture of the workings of nature, we could theoretically find out which initial values could lead to which "results", that is what the universe should look like today (in strict form I would have to replace the "today" with something a lot more elaborate because we are seeing light that reaches us from the past, but that is fortunately less important here). Of couse, there could still be some ambiguity, but we could still make out what would have been possible. That all of this is beyond us (certainly at this point) goes without saying. But the laws of physics bind the past no less than they bind the future, and the known physical laws don't prefer a direction of time. If the future behaves differently from the past, that's all due to initial values (as I have said before).

Another thing: It is a very popular misconception that the discovery of science is driven by observation. It is not. You have your ideas about what is going on, and you test them by observations. Ideally you have several candidate ideas, so you can test between them. Then you throw out those ideas that didn't make it. Sometimes ideas can be altered to fit, but that's not ideal either (good ideas are very strict in that regard). When you have been doing this "science thing" for a while, you start to get a feeling of how things work. That doesn't replace the method, of course, but it can lead you to new ideas. That is one reason why the progress of science is accelerating (another one is that advanced science can lead us to advanced engineering, which can provide us with new instruments).

that would precede another 'big bang'

That is the weakest point of what you said. Why should we assume that another big bang would happen? Gravity is an attractive force. And that still wouldn't overcome the entropy problem.

 

[billw2015]

How is the cup less ordered after it breaks, it just changed, who are we to judge what is order and what is disorder, isn't that subjective by nature.

Order in entropy can be thought of as the number of configurations that parts of a system can be arranged in while not changing the system as a whole. For a cup there are less configurations of atoms that can make a cup than there are that can make a broken cup.

 

[tmv]

If the laws of physics is telling us that the laws of physics didn't exist at some point, then I'm sure someone must have made a logical error or that we know too little to draw a conclusion like that.

There are many laws of physics with limited validity. If you increase temperature, ice melts, becomes water, and at a later point the water turns to steam. But if air pressure is low enough (far lower than we have on Earth), ice turns to steam directly.

How is the cup less ordered after it breaks, it just changed, who are we to judge what is order and what is disorder, isn't that subjective by nature.

Order and disorder are colloquial but fitting terms for the fact that a solid cup can exist in one way, but the same cup can be broken in many ways. I'm not saying how the pieces look like, for me it's all the same. Which means that there are many ways for nature to give me the result "broken cup". You can look it up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microstate_(statistical_mechanics)

Thermodynamics is a highly statistical concept, at the atomic / molecular level there is no temperature, just energy. But the way an immense number of particles interact with each other results in these concepts. The number of ways these particles can interact with each other is even bigger, by far. But an overwhelming number of these possibilities result in something that looks all the same to us, or to anyone who isn't looking very closely. So these microstates are grouped into macrostates, which are the possibilities we perceive as different. Each microstate is - more or less - equally likely, but it's not true that each macrostate should consist of the same number of microstates. Imagine the globe, and you have a pin with which you try to hit a point on the globe. The microstates are the different points on the globe, but the macrostates are, perhaps, the countries / bodies of water. You can hit each point with the same probability, but if you don't pay close attention, you will not hit an island when you aim for the Pacific Ocean as a whole.

 

[billw2015]

I just found this article in answer to the questions on entropy, and how it can be higher (edit: lower not higher!) at the big bang than now.

Spoiler :

The answer is black holes

 

[tmv]

I just found this article in answer to the questions on entropy, and how it can be higher at the big bang than now.

Spoiler :

The answer is black holes

You meant lower. But that is pretty much what Penrose said in "The Emperor's New Mind". This is also related to likelihood, because black holes could have formed in the beginning very easily - it's not as if there hadn't been enough matter close by, after all. What was missing was some kind of "cloud seed" - matter was distributed very evenly, so it could not contract at some point.

This is really strange, because we are normaly used to even distribution being high entropy (think about a barrier being removed between a low-pressure system and a high-pressure system). The "secret" is gravity. When gravity plays a role, it is the even distribution that becomes less likely, and thus low entropy. And matter was distributed so evenly that black holes didn't form back then. Otherwise (with distances still being small) they could have "swallowed" a lot of matter - perhaps even all of it.

A universe that was high-entropy from the start would have black holes from the beginning, no "Second Law" effects at all (entropy would just be very high all the time, with almost no change), and even white holes from time to time. There would also be no life, because life is a very low-entropy state (and keeping entropy low is a very big part of what we need energy for). It might still have been possible to have low-entropy regions in the universe, and while the necessary barriers are a bit difficult to think of, it should still have been much more likely than our current universe which was obviously low-entropy everywhere (otherwise we should see the other regions out there with our telescopes, and high-entropy regions would be easy to recognize).

I don't know how to explain it, and I don't even know if someone has an idea. This is a big mystery, but I think that many people don't even think about it (even if they know enough about Thermodynamics), because the Second Law is usually only considered in what it says about the future and only rarely in what it says about the past. Perhaps there is an explanation waiting in a future theory, but even then this theory must not violate any of the observations we have made so far.

 

[Toffer90]

I just found this article in answer to the questions on entropy, and how it can be higher at the big bang than now.

Spoiler :

The answer is black holes

I read that article a couple days ago, it explains the opposite though, why the entropy is higher now than at the big bang. It doesn't speculate about what might have been before the big bang though.

Order in entropy can be thought of as the number of configurations that parts of a system can be arranged in while not changing the system as a whole. For a cup there are less configurations of atoms that can make a cup than there are that can make a broken cup.

Sure but how does the number of configuration at an initial stage compared to number of configuration at a final stage, tell us anything useful about what the big bang was when we don't know what the initial stage was?

I would think a smooth surfaced spherical black hole consisting of matter tightly packed in a repetitive pattern (possibly) would have few possible molecular configurations compared to what that same amount of matter would have when spread across the universe as billions of separate objects in all shapes and sizes. In that sense if the world was only a black hole before the big bang the cup would have been whole, and big bang was the breaking, and the cup has been slowly rebuilding itself since then.

I don't know much about molecular entropy, but has it been proven without a doubt that black holes are high entropy objects? Perhaps it's the opposite...

 

[Thunderbrd]

Why should we assume that another big bang would happen?

Because no process in nature is not cyclical so far as we have observed.

Furthermore, the gravitational pull of black holes would eventually draw each other into each other and regroup into one, and from that collected state, as Toffer said, at some point you could envision that there would be a critical mass at which point it inverses gravitational pull and everything is released. If space itself appears to be expanding from a central point, then this could easily be the reason that 'big bang' began. Is there a singular point radiating anti-gravitational force from the center of the known universe that was once a supermassive black hole? That could explain a lot about what the big bang actually is.

 

[billw2015]

Because no process in nature is not cyclical so far as we have observed.

That isn't a well defined statement, it isn't clear what you mean by processes, or how you are defining cyclical. If you strictly define both of these so that things can be categorized as one or the other, we could determine if that statement is in fact true.
However it is fairly well accepted what criteria determines if a big crunch is inevitable or not, and that is the "shape" of the universe. Dark energy appears to have thrown a spanner into that from what I understand, actually accelerating the rate of expansion.

Furthermore, the gravitational pull of black holes would eventually draw each other into each other and regroup into one

As per what I said just above, not if the rate of expansion will forever outstrip the gravitational pull between them. I don't know what the latest conclusions on this are though.

If space itself appears to be expanding from a central point

It isn't, there is no central point, it is expanding everywhere equally (not sure if the latest findings make it uniform everywhere).

I don't know much about molecular entropy, but has it been proven without a doubt that black holes are high entropy objects? Perhaps it's the opposite...

It is mathematically provable in the current model. I guess in terms of ordering of a system: as a singularity puts all components of a system in the exact same point in space, their configuration is irrelevant (although I don't know if this is a sensical way to talk about it, it might be better described in other terms when it comes to a singularity). Given that a black hole is ripping everything apart into its component particles before consuming it the default hypothesis would have to be that it is high entropy. You would have to posit some highly unusual behaviour beyond the event horizon for which we don't have, and can probably never have, any observable evidence.

 

[Toffer90]

It is mathematically provable in the current model. I guess in terms of ordering of a system: as a singularity puts all components of a system in the exact same point in space, their configuration is irrelevant (although I don't know if this is a sensical way to talk about it, it might be better described in other terms when it comes to a singularity). Given that a black hole is ripping everything apart into its component particles before consuming it the default hypothesis would have to be that it is high entropy. You would have to posit some highly unusual behaviour beyond the event horizon for which we don't have, and can probably never have, any observable evidence.

Entropy of a system is basically a measurement of the amount of information required to perfectly describe a physical system down to its quantum level.

Thought experiment: If we took the entire universe and simplified it into one single black hole, then perhaps that is the simplest form our universe could take as a physical system, requiring the least total information to perfectly describe it at the quantum level. It's speculation but perhaps the entropy of the entire universe in the form of a black hole is about the same as the entropy of the universe at the beginning of the big bang, referencing back to tmv's argument that entropy was extraordinary low at the big bang time window.

Now if we complicated the first thought experiment by splitting the one envisioned black hole into three differently sized black holes without changing the total mass/energy of the system, then that would represent an immense entropy as the three black holes would interact in ways that require an immense amount of information to describe, making this a huge entropy system, with far more entropy than the system with only a much bigger single black hole.

As per what I said just above, not if the rate of expansion will forever outstrip the gravitational pull between them. I don't know what the latest conclusions on this are though.

Final thought.
What if there are black holes far away from our universe in all directions that are thousands of times larger than any black hole we know about, could that and their gravitational pull on our universe from every direction perhaps explain the perception of our expanding universe, imagine huge masses on all sides of our universe warping space itself with their immense weight, positioned far away from each other but at all sides of our universe.
Anyhow, thanks for the discussion, it's a fascinating conversation topic, but holds little significance to our insignificant lives regardless of what assumptions, about it being infinite/eternal or finite, may be closest to the truth.

 

[Thunderbrd]

That isn't a well defined statement, it isn't clear what you mean by processes, or how you are defining cyclical. If you strictly define both of these so that things can be categorized as one or the other, we could determine if that statement is in fact true.
However it is fairly well accepted what criteria determines if a big crunch is inevitable or not, and that is the "shape" of the universe. Dark energy appears to have thrown a spanner into that from what I understand, actually accelerating the rate of expansion.

You have a point about how absolute I've stated this being somewhat inapplicable. What I'm trying to say, however, is that when you look at processes spanning from chemical to biochemical to biological to astronomical, cycle seems to be a strongly favored aspect of the universal construct. One could argue this is so that entropic loss is diminished as much as possible so as to extend the use of energy and recycle as much as possible, particularly in the biological applications of cellular energy reuse, but I'm sure if we were able to take a larger macroscopic view of astrophysics, we'd find that there's a lot happening in cycles there as well, not just for the purpose of retaining energy in the system. It's just... how things seem to be arranged. Even the events in our lives seem to follow seasons and repeat processes. Why we would not want to assume that big bangs also take place in cycles seems to be a western though based tendancy to want to believe in defined beginnings and ends rather than accepting the truly infinite nature of time and repetition. I feel it's a psychological crutch that we are falling back on to suggest that nothing was before and basically nothing will be after. That's simply not how anything else works so why would we assume that it's the case in astrophysics?

Reading your links does provide some interesting insights into what some of you are trying to explain. I think, however, we are far too early in our understanding of our observations to be coming to any solid conclusions about anything.

The point that all galaxies seem to be expanding away from each other but are not changing in size due to gravitational pull seems to me to be but one possible conclusion about an expanding space itself and even that itself doesn't seem to fit well for me because perhaps it is not just because of gravity that they stay bound and even if it were, would they not then also have a gravitational pull towards each other? We do see some galactic collisions taking place which suggests that happens and also seems to counter the idea that they are all expanding away from each other - this would not happen, in such a case, would it? hmm...

Perhaps what is really happening, rather than space itself expanding, is that there is a repellent force between galaxies that has something to do with inversing gravitational field effects at enough distance from the source that we only see happening at the kinds of distances galaxies exist from each other (usually).

As for the big bang, I have to just say I don't think we know enough about what's happening yet to draw many conclusions. Everything right now is mostly just a matter of many different theoretical models being considered and we're trying to debate between them when we don't really have enough data to say what applies and what doesn't I think.

 

[Thunderbrd]

it's a fascinating conversation topic, but holds little significance to our insignificant lives regardless of what assumptions, about it being infinite/eternal or finite, may be closest to the truth.

Well this is where it pulls back around to the discussion of the likelihood of ET interference in Earth matters. I'm not sure if it does actually matter enough to differentiate this though as it's observationally big enough to be 99.99% likely that we have other intelligent species out there in all phases of advanced states beyond ours and some of those stages of advancement would clearly include expansive explorations that would certainly cause interactions here, throughout the whole of the history of the planet, not just our species.

 

[Toffer90]

Well this is where it pulls back around to the discussion of the likelihood of ET interference in Earth matters. I'm not sure if it does actually matter enough to differentiate this though as it's observationally big enough to be 99.99% likely that we have other intelligent species out there in all phases of advanced states beyond ours and some of those stages of advancement would clearly include expansive explorations that would certainly cause interactions here, throughout the whole of the history of the planet, not just our species.

I can't resist, I haven't said anything on the subject of alien life yet. ^^

I think it's extremely likely that there's intelligent life in other solar systems, perhaps even in our small insignificant galaxy, but I would think it extremely unlikely for two of them to interact meaningfully before either species go extinct.
Simply due to the extreme distances between solar systems and because there may be a limit to how advanced any species can become technologically in regards to intersolar voyaging.

If one in a 1000 solar system can sustain intelligent life then it's not likely for it to be two systems that are close together and at the same contain intelligent life that is advanced in the same time window.
It's probably far more likely to meet a self sustaining AI robot civilization that is a remnant of an extinct creator species, from a different solar system than it is to meet an organic alien civilization.
Interaction between intelligent life from different planets may be extremely rare in the universe.

It's unlikely that there is advanced intelligent life at our 20 closest solar system as our radio waves are possible to pick up probably as far as the 200 closest solar systems by now. The signal may be very weak at that point though and therefore hard to differentiate from the immense noise interference. If they can pick up ours, we can pick up theirs. May be that there's one that's so advanced as to not need to use non-directed light/photons for fast mass communication, perhaps they only ever use lasers to direct their communication so that only the intended receiver actually receives the communication.
I find that unlikely unless it's an AI robot civilization with infallible discipline and cohesion between possible individuals; else there would have been renegades that didn't care about the secrecy.

 

[tmv]

It's unlikely that there is advanced intelligent life at our 20 closest solar system as our radio waves are possible to pick up probably as far as the 200 closest solar systems by now. The signal may be very weak at that point though and therefore hard to differentiate from the immense noise interference. If they can pick up ours, we can pick up theirs. May be that there's one that's so advanced as to not need to use non-directed light/photons for fast mass communication, perhaps they only ever use lasers to direct their communication so that only the intended receiver actually receives the communication.

We have sent out radio waves decades before people began worrying about aliens being able to receive them and act on them in a hostile manner. Well, the cat is out of the bag. We cannot go back to not revealing ourselves. And I don't know if it is particularly likely that many other civilizations were paranoid enough to restrict the many benefits of using radio waves to protect the secrecy of their existence. Don't forget: This secrecy is only helpful with respect to hostile aliens. With benevolent aliens, you want to reveal yourselves. Not only to benefit from meeting them, but also to prevent accidental tragedies where the solar system was obliterated because no one knew that an entire civilization might be lost.

I find that unlikely unless it's an AI robot civilization with infallible discipline and cohesion between possible individuals; else there would have been renegades that didn't care about the secrecy.

Yes, that is a point I have been trying to make for some time. Conspiracies require few members who are "in the know", unless you have a perfect hive mind (with its own drawbacks).

 

[Thunderbrd]

I think we're going to find that the use of radio waves is going to be so quickly obsoleted that in the span of our existence as humans, we'll have only been revealing ourselves in this way for a very very very small blip in time relatively. We'll find better and probably show that use of them as we are currently doing is probably creating a major health problem that can be resolved by simply stopping such use, and they won't be further necessary after that point anyhow. So while we currently think of their use as a statement of an advanced society, it may well be it's just a statement of a young, advancing society, and one that ultimately will be relatively shortlived.

Yes, that is a point I have been trying to make for some time. Conspiracies require few members who are "in the know", unless you have a perfect hive mind (with its own drawbacks).

I don't think many are 'IN' the actual know. Thus you have a lot of governmental internal disagreements over whether these things are being observed or not. A lot of pilots, and I mean a LOT of pilots have witnessed things being done by objects in our atmosphere that are far more advanced than anything our own tech can accomplish, and only perhaps a handful of real shot callers in any given government would be allowed to 'know' the truth, some of whom might be held tightly to keeping that secrecy against their will by extremely strong tactics by the few that do know the truth. There are lots of public whistleblowers as it is, but they are summarily ignored as attention grabbers.

We currently think of the distances we must travel to reach other star systems as being vast, but that's only if we assume light speed is un-breachable, or that wormholes do not exist and/or cannot be created. I don't think it's unlikely that there's a WHOLE lot more technology for us, and any other species, to unlock that will make these distances quite trivial. 100 years ago, traveling at 70 mph across land being accessible by a common citizen would've been thought to be a total fantasy that would NEVER happen. Our entire history shows us we continue to advance on every front as we go and should not deign to think there are any such thing as unbreachable limitations. Might take a while for us to get to that point... might have taken other species a long time too and maybe a lot of those that tried were destroyed along the way, but I think when we are finally shown what's really happening regarding ET interactions here, we'll be bewildered with an unimaginable flood of new information on how many other species are actually wanting to establish open diplomacy with us.

I mean, speaking of rogue aliens and so on, how long did the US go without suffering any attacks from foreign entities on home soil? These arguments are like saying since there are billions of people on the planet, surely some foreigner out there would've come in and attacked us by now just for kicks. There is likely some kind of serious security protecting our planet from all the outside intrusions that would want to attempt such an act. If we found an advancing species on another planet, isn't that pretty much the policy we'd be likely to adopt? Cordone them off and let them do their thing until they start advancing too far to keep them in the dark?

One thing we have noticed about humanity is that as we have advanced, so too has our awareness of human rights and respect for others and for nature. Some like to live in the past and ignore that we've improved our understanding on these subjects but my point is, as we have learned, we have also grown as a species and matured some. This then suggests that many, perhaps not all but at least many, species that reach interstellar travel stages of technology, would have also advanced and matured significantly as well, and may not be so quick to aggression as we would assume other factions would be. They may in fact have our best interests at heart, and want to allow us to somewhat determine what those actually are for ourselves before they do anything to 'help' us, other than to give us the room to grow and develop ourselves without their intrusion.

 

[raxo2222]

We'll find better and probably show that use of them as we are currently doing is probably creating a major health problem that can be resolved by simply stopping such use, and they won't be further necessary after that point anyhow.

Radio waves as normally used aren't long term health hazard - all they could do is heating up something when being way more intense that normally are.
That is anything at frequencies lower than UV can only burn you and nothing else.

Being in full sun where UV radiation is strongest is actual health hazard.
Not only that radiation is much more intense, it also has much higher frequency.

Also what if some politicians are actual aliens?
This is what you can pull of in Stellaris.
Since they are at least in late Galactic era (unless someone took more promitive passangers to Earth) they would be indistinguishable from normal humans (something like in Avatar movie).

 

[Thunderbrd]

Radio waves as normally used aren't long term health hazard - all they could do is heating up something.
That is anything at frequencies lower than UV can only burn you and nothing else.

Being in full sun where UV radiation is strongest is actual health hazard.
Not only that radiation is much more intense, it also has much higher frequency.

You realize that our understanding of what is and what is NOT a health hazard changes dramatically every 10 years or so right? Exactly what was said to be terrible for you 20 years ago is not uncommon to be found healthy today, in the right measure at least, and vice versa. I know we don't currently believe there's a health problem with radio waves now but who knows in 50 yrs what we might think. It was a point about possibilities. It's quite possible that our use of radiowaves would be obsolete almost as overnight as we began using them and that the date of that obsoletion may be approaching faster than we know. Which would make our assumption that they are a sign of an advanced society's existence very inaccurate.

 

[raxo2222]

You realize that our understanding of what is and what is NOT a health hazard changes dramatically every 10 years or so right? Exactly what was said to be terrible for you 20 years ago is not uncommon to be found healthy today, in the right measure at least, and vice versa. I know we don't currently believe there's a health problem with radio waves now but who knows in 50 yrs what we might think.

You should realize, that anything related to health is extremely prone to sensationalism, misinformation and propaganda.
Media (including bloggers) very often have trouble with genuinely showing what scientists are saying/doing.

In my opinion no aliens are interfering with Earth, and everything you say has more mundane explanation.
We have to make aliens and magic after surviving Information and Nanotech lol (what if those aliens are time travelling human descendants)?

 

[Thunderbrd]

You should realize, that anything related to health is extremely prone to sensationalism, misinformation and propaganda.
Media (including bloggers) very often have trouble with genuinely showing what scientists are saying/doing.

Well yeah, but that doesn't mean that the doctors are any more unified in what they believe either. Differing research teams disagree on lots of things. And new information comes up all the time. Also big $ interests do all they can to diminish the release of some information that would impact their profits. Clearly IF radio waves were in some way damaging (and maybe not damaging to functions we are thinking to see if they do cause damage to or not - it could be some kind of psychological effect that is found to be problematic for people, not being carcinogenic or anything) then the powerful special interests relying on the massive use of this technology everywhere would do all it can to keep people from realizing what harm it's causing. Again, not making claims here... just suppositioning. It might even be that everything we use radio frequencies for may be found to be accomplished better by different means. Might not even be that it hurts US... but maybe wildlife. If I'm not mistaken, some frequency usage is found to be causing damage to whales and their senses, leading to massive beaching events? Could just be sonar weapons testing as well but you get my point right? It's not about specifics but about potentials we must consider.