/lit/ - Literature

>>14175992
is judaism the most star religion?

>>14175992
>this is PhD-level condescension for the brainlets to understand
FTFY. If you aren't the target audience, why are you reading it?

>>14175992
Why are atheists incapable of not jabbing religion in their writings? Like here, the line about Jesus comes completely out of nowhere.

I'm a physicist and I hate Krauss so much. He barely has 10 citations in the last couple of years and the only time he does have a lot of citations is when he's part of some giant ass collaboration where people have to include every single person that took a breath in some large conference room. He thinks himself smart but his rhetoric is on the level of a 7 year old, except a 7 year old doesn't automatically yell against ideas he doesn't stand for. All but one of his books are pop-sci drivel and trash, out of which one book stands out.
"Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities, from Plato to String Theory (by way of Alice in Wonderland, Einstein, and The Twilight Zone)" - this book might seem like something more serious than his other books; after all, he mentions Plato and String Theory. The thing is, he doesn't know dick bupkis about either of these two. Every segment in this book that isn't about 'pure' astronomy is a short retelling of the appropriate wikipedia page, and a bad one at that. This is most evident when he starts to explain what a matrix is in one of the chapters on String Theory as if it's some sort of esoteric mathematical tool and he's graced us with his simplistic explanation. Then once it comes to the works of, say, Witten and Polchinski, he just paraphrases their introductory Wikipedia paragraphs. The explanation of branes is childlike and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know the difference between a Lagrangian and an Action, or the difference between the Nambu-Goto and Einstein-Hilbert action (if he even knows what those are).
His 'scientific' book "Astronomical Image and Data Analysis" is a- oh wait, he didn't author that, someone on libgen made a mistake, Krauss never wrote a scientific book in his life.
How he amassed the equivalent of a cult following is beyond me because the man has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. No, there IS one - if I see his name in some section of the library, I make sure never to step foot inside of that rancid place

>>14175992
The dumb thing about this is that it doesn't answer the question on the cover. Knowing the atoms in my body vame from nuclear fusion 10 billion years ago doesn't tell anyone anything about why anything exists.

>>14176462
ill have to take your word on it, any thoughts on Carl Sagan?

>>14176652
he's based

>>14175992
Sentimentality is so much more cringe coming from materialists than religious people. Why can’t materialists have the decency to embrace nihilism and just say “fuck it there’s nothing wrong with genocide, etc” since that is the rational conclusion of materialism.

Non-theists have been coping for nearly a hundred years now that the universe was obviously created ("by what" is a fair question). 19th-century and before atheists and "skeptics" staked so much of their unbelief on the idea of an eternal universe that they're still speculating how maybe, in the face of all evidence, that isn't the case.

>>14176010
In all fairness, the book is and was marketed as an atheist accounting of cosmogony. If Aquinas can take swipes at heathen philosophers in his writings it's only fair for atheists to do something similar.

Physicists as a group have such a poor grasp of rhetoric that it's actually kind of impressive. I mean they proved the beginning of the universe and then called it "the big bang".

>>14176652
Sagan is much better both as a person and as a lecturer primarily because of two reasons
- He actually wrote scientific papers, a large amount of those being influential and highly cited. Some of the things people take for granted in Astronomy today are the direct product of his work, i.e. the (hot) surface conditions on Venus.
- He didn't shoehorn his personal beliefs in every piece of popular media he dabbled in; his work is much more focused and restrained, thus more enjoyable to read and/or watch.
For instance, this thread and OP's quote accurately portrays the style which Krauss uses. Now take a look at this quote by Sagan who argues for pretty much the same thing (we are all made of stardust - when asked about spirituality):
>Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.

>>14176742
I'm going to bed so I'll try to be brief, I'll gladly continue tomorrow. We (physicists) didn't prove the beginning of the Universe - we have a theory, called The Big Bang Theory which hypothesizes that, in the scenario of a Universe with a beginning, that beginning was succeeded by a 'Big Bang' (or, in some cases, the two are equivalent). The basic gist, and a vast oversimplification is this - due to certain data, we know now that the Universe is expanding. We know that it expanded a million years ago as well. And we know that it expanded a billion years ago too. Extrapolating this, one theorizes that it's been expanding ever since its inception which inevitably leads to some sort of infinitesimal minuscule volume or, ideally, a dot. I can't stress that this is an oversimplification enough, but as I said, I'm going to bed, but will gladly go into more detail tomorrow if anyone is interested.

>>14176793
I have absolute zero knowledge of physics beyond basic highschool stuff so maybe you could explain something to me which has been bothering about the Big Bang theory.

We know that black holes exist and that they create "holes" where nothing can escape. How is it possible that when you multiply this to the scale of all the matter in the current universe into a small point, matter somehow is able to escape the gravity "hole". Even with a explosion/implosion; that much mass on such a small point would instantly "suck" together right? How come there isn't a "center" of the universe where all the matter that couldn't escape the Big Bang is condensed together.

Bonus question: how the hell can the expansion accelerate if it came from a single event? Shrapnel doesn't just speed up after the explosion, even in an explosion. Plus the "hole" caused by all the matter being condensed should slow it down right? As it's being "pulled" back towards the center. Al least this should have made acceleration impossible.

If there is a very complicated theory at play here and me not knowing its existence is causing my confusion, please tell me what it is because I can't stand not getting it.

>>14176938
>Shrapnel doesn't just speed up after the explosion, even in an explosion.
Even in an vacuum*, I'm very tired.

And about the "center" consider ths example: throw a water balloon into a bowl. Most of it will fly out in all directions, but a big (bigger that the escaping droplets going everywhere) clump of water will stay in the bowl. Why can't we seem to find this in the universe? Again, my knowledge is very limited so if there is a theory or observation which explains this please tell me or explain it to me, or both.

I'll check back in tomorrow

>>14176723
>just say “fuck it there’s nothing wrong with genocide, etc” since that is the rational conclusion of materialism.

No, it actually isn't. If animals don't go around slaughtering their own kind in large numbers in a state of nature then why would humans?

People who say that only the fear of God is keeping them from cracking my skull open scare the shit out of me

>>14177089
>If animals don't go around slaughtering their own kind in large numbers in a state of nature then why would humans?

>He doesn't know about the ant wars

>>14177109
>>He doesn't know about the ant wars

They slaughter rival species most of the time. At any rate genocide is hardly typical among animals, and most complex mammals even have some rudimentary sense of morality as expressed in sharing or as outrage at real or perceived unfairness

>>14175992
PhDs can be as immature as 14 year old edgelords - just look at Jordan Peterson. PhDs in general are probably smarter and more mature than the average non-PhD though.

>>14175992
>So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.
Cringe

>>14175992
Materialist psued kosher cringe

http://esotericawakening.com/what-is-reality-the-holofractal-universe

>>14176938
>We know that black holes exist
Wrong first off, this is relativity quackery from the mind of a (((hack)))

this is how it really works >>14177544

>>14177089
Here's a better one "Fuck it, we should colonize the earth in totality and extract all of its resources for our own use until we become one indistinguishable blob. We are the masters of the world, and Mother Earth is the town bicycle."

>>14177555
>some random self-hating jew spewed a lot of bullshit so it must be true
/lit/ intellectuals everyone

>>14177669
IDF shills everyone eye c (((u)))

>>14177555
Thanks for your contribution but with the knowledge of today you need to be sub 80 IQ to not realise that black holes are real, proven events.

>>14176938
There's several things at play here but don't worry, I'll write a somewhat detailed explanation once I sit behind my computer.

>>14175992
the dumbest people are theists, the midwits are atheists, and the greatest geniuses are theists

>/lit/ arguing about popsci
Color me surprised.

>universe from nothing
>has to redefine nothing as something
yikes

>>14178551
Based and correctpilled

>>14176763
But this also reveals Sagan to be a brainlet. Coupling sentimentality with materialism is incoherent and always seems to be grasping at straws. If he was intellectually honest he’d be pessimistic or nihilistic about his beliefs. At least Von Neumann has the decency to accept that materialism is a terrifying prospect and go out in complete fear and agony vs inventing a shallow sense of beauty and wonder in the majestic scale of the cosmos to fill the gaping hole left from atheism.

>>14177089
Nobody says that. You have an extremely juvenile understanding of religious faith which you base your prejudice on. For a board about books, I literally can’t imagine anyone who has consumed literature or philosophy to any significant degree not understanding that religion is quite a bit more than pure dogmatism

>>14175992
At least he btfo Aquinas

>>14175992
Disregarding Jesus but still assigning a Messianic role to the stars just shows how much Christian eschatology already dominates his mind.

>>14177089
1/2
God I hope you're under 20 because that is the only excuse for being this fucking stupid. This is the oldest Reddit-tier, popculture, argument in the book.
>hurr durr if sky daddy makes you do good things you are akshually evil
It's such a dumb fucking argument it's used in True Detective and by Penn Jillette and card carrying atheists love to pull this one out of their sleeve for ebic IRL up-doots.
There's a reason Dostoevsky argued 'without God everything is permitted' it is because Atheist morality ultimately boils down to:
>morality by consensus
>morality by impulse
Let's break both of these down so your dumb-dumb caveman brain can understand.
>morality by consensus
In such a scenario we obey moral codes because we are part of a collective thus there is a persistent dynamic between our actions and the actions of others, in short I am altruistic because I understand that I am affected by others being altruistic so ultimately it's a win-win.
This concept breaks down fairly rapidly when technology becomes sufficiently advanced. It is highly probably in the coming century the technology to bio-mechanically ELIMINATE suffering will exist. So let's imagine we put a microchip in everyone's brains that electrically dampens unhappiness. In this scenario, it is not only ethically justifiable it is ethically NECESSARY to implant everyone with this chip. After all if there is no 'a priori' morally correct state of being for man (such as freedom) then why arbitrarily allow someone to suffer? Even if they initially demand freedom they won't want it once they don't have it, even if we sanctify some concept such as 'consent' then it is logical that going forward all newly created humans be given this chip. Then consider that resources are finite and all humans are happy why have people walking around doing stuff, building shit, using up precious entropy. If you follow this logical, materialist train of thought you end up in what I call 'living morgues'

>>14178889
2/2
A living morgue is a place where you can store humans, have them subsist off some nutrient fluid, with no arms, no legs, no sensory input etc. Since they cannot perceive suffering there is no moral negative. They are happy. To argue that there is some INHERENT value to experiencing life in its totality, implies 'intent', it necessitates a teleological view (we are MEANT to fall in love, experience grief, experience some reality), but if you take a purely rational materialist point of view then chemicals are the source of suffering, chemically eliminate suffering and you are performing the ultimate moral good. The lobotomy was just the 20th century trial run, once our understand of cognition is sufficient then highly technical lobotomies will be the most rational approach to ethics in the next century. The only counter arguments are ass-pulls that require deifying concepts like 'consent' and 'free will' which violates a purely materialist viewpoint.
The other argument, the appeal to nature, is also fallacious. All actions are evaluated (from a materialist point of view) based on cost/benefit analysis, what stops me from raping and murdering everyone I meet is empathy. However if you're a materalist then empathy is a MATERIAL process that causes the 'cost' to outweigh the 'benefit', without God then there would be NO reason to NOT rape and murder if empathy wasn't in the way. But if empathy is the basis of morality than you cannot say the ABSENCE of empathy would be wrong, because you have no framework of morality that extends beyond the scope of biology so an absence of empathy would simply redetermine your moral framework. You cannot have morality in a materialist world because a materialist ultimately sees humans as computers and computers are inherently AMORAL. This is my problem, materialists want it both ways, 'muh magical stardust and good thing we beat those evil nazis' when your entire basis for what is right or wrong can be changed with pills.

>>14178889
That’s assuming suffering is wholly bad. Suffering goes a long way in making a person what they are. Without suffering, life is a shallow and quite hollow experience. Suffering is important to understanding reality and experiencing it, as well as experiencing happiness. I’m not him by the way, but surely atheists can also appreciate that sometimes suffering is “good”

>>14178918
An atheist materialist CANNOT argue that some suffering is good without some handwavey appeal to sentimentality. This is my point. If the basis of good and bad is chemicals it is rational to eliminate the chemicals that cause bad experiences. Life has no INHERENT value, only PERCEIVED value. If all value is perceived then by altering perception you alter values and thus can morally justify any position. Again a materialist needs to assert an A PRIORI value statement which cannot be done without an appeal to nature or some other fallacy.

>>14176462
>How he amassed the equivalent of a cult following
he's a well connected jew.

stop being an idiot and read a little about schisms in religion and science to understand what role outsiders play in reshaping thought and tradition.

>>14178918
Like even your statement is full of arbitrary value statements, 'shallow', 'hollow', 'making a person who they are', these have no empirical or quantifiable metric. Pain is quantifiable and has a material basis, pleasure has a quantifiable and material basis. Thus all morality must be evaluated along these axes. Pain and pleasure. If I surgically alter a human to only experience pleasure, and I surgically remove all their limbs, and submerge them in a sensory deprivation chamber I cannot, from a materialist, point of view be seen to have done anything wrong. Chemically they are no suffering. You would need to argue that there is some kind of net value in existence as an experience. This is teleology, this is not materialism, and it is not rational without appeal to a deity.

>>14178930
Oh ok I get you. I mean yeah. Humans are fundamentally irrational (and I don’t use that word with the negative connotations it’s usually assigned). Atheists will always display irrational beliefs and behaviours because life would be a horrible, dehumanising slog without them. It’s literally impossible to escape irrationality from a human standpoint, although we also created the concept of what is irrational to begin with. Lots of atheists like to point out how people get burned at the stake over their beliefs with irrationality goes too far, but they don’t like to talk about what happens when a commitment to rationality goes too far. Genocides are justified for the “greater good”, people lose their identity etc

>>14178952
Yes exactly. My main issue though is Atheists don't accept that and try to formulate extremely flimsy arguments for rationalist morality which is incoherent at best, and a dystopian nightmare at worset.

My problem with materialist idea of morality independent of God is, why do people and even animals have this innate sense of right/wrong? There is absolutely no actual advantage to having a sense of morality, there's a reason why success is so frequently correlated with a major lack of morals and why being moral is so often correlated with being a suffering, exploited, naive martyr. And this is in human society, in the animal kingdom, being even slightly moral often means swift death. It seems to be deliberately implanted in us if you ask me but I have no idea by whom or for what purpose.

>>14176938
Not the guy you asked, but let me try.
1. The term black hole is disingenuous. They're not holes, just very dense objects where the escape velocity is higher than the speed of light,
When talking about the instance of the big bang, not much is known. However, we're not talking about matter moving through space, space its self was forming at the time of the big bang. Initially, there wasn't even matter (most likely), just energy. This spread out relatively evenly.
2. I think that the acceleration in this case means on an absolute level. The expansion comes from the fabric of space expanding, so 1m empty space becomes 2, becomes 4, etc. This is exponential. Current census is that the acceleration is caused by 'dark energy', whatever that may be, but the mechanisms behind it aren't very well understood. Since there is a continuous supply of it, we can just keep going, unlike shrapnel.
I don't know if this is very accurate, so if I said anything that's wrong feel free to correct me

>>14179191
Thanks. Especially
>However, we're not talking about matter moving through space, space its self was forming at the time of the big bang. Initially, there wasn't even matter (most likely), just energy. This spread out relatively evenly.

made me think. I never even thought about space itself being formed, I (unconsciously) just assumed space was already there and matter was just filling it up while space itself was getting bigger after the big bang.

Is there an idea what this "energy" was/is? Something just being pure energy sounds wild.

Thanks for your explanation, if anyone here wants to chip in or give their take feel free to do so.

>>14176652
I don't pay much attention to him but I do know enough to see that he's a dishonest ideologue. He was pro-choice and he understood enough about biology to know when human beings come into existence but when he was asked about it, he goes into this long speal about evolution and how humans are millions of years old. He reminds me of Bill Nye.

>>14175992
You mean pop-sci propaganda writing. Krauss knows what he is.

>>14178854
>If you aren't a nihilist, you aren't smart!

I hope your first year of undergrad studies are going well.

>>14179370
Cringe, didn't even read what he wrote

>>14176742
The universe was not "created" you fucking dunce, you god damn anthropocentric fucking moron, just because something is complex doesnt mean a magic ape made it. Fuck this place lol

>>14179399
Why are we here then psued

>>14179274
There are forces at work in the universe more incomprehensible, more powerful, and more ancient than humans can imagine.

I hope you like Lovecraftian horror stories. You're in one.

Or basically that's the relationship I have with the universe, anyway. Confusion, and a small dose of sincere panicked fear. I'm a bit of a manlet and I was always the overlooked middle child on top of that, as well as a bit of a social wallflower. I've got a bit of a complex about being disregarded, ignored, overlooked, or made to feel small. When I think about the universe I feel very small.

>>14176462
One thing I have learned in life is that ever since the internet spread, you can either be an expert, or an expert in self-promotion. Seldom both. That applies in the workplace too.

>>14179439
I get the same but about the exact opposite. When I think about the smallest things like atoms and the like I get really uneasy.

>>14175992
>cringepost
>"I'm an atheist because I don't believe things I can't see but I'll just take Krauss' word that this is true because he's an atheist"

>>14179538
This. I think the fact that popular science is so heavily skewed towards astronomy when there is more complexity and abundance in the opposite direction says a lot about how utterly retarded the typical consumer is, “muh explosions!” “muh black holes and light years!” when the Planck scale is way crazier. I genuinely feel a great deal of fear thinking about how huge I am.

>>14176742
>I mean they proved the beginning of the universe and then called it "the big bang".
iirc it was originally a joke name that people used to make fun of the theory and it stuck

>>14176742
Also btw the guy who developed the Big Bang theory was a Jesuit

>>14179274
Free energy happens all the time. Think about light for example, it's just an 'energy packet' if you will. Since energy and mass are equivalent, you could even argue that mass is a form of energy.
The nature of dark energy is still a matter of discussion, as it's really hard to measure apparently. If you have any other question, you can ask me or go to /sci/

>>14178854
>>>14176763
>But this also reveals Sagan to be a brainlet. Coupling sentimentality with materialism is incoherent and always seems to be grasping at straws. If he was intellectually honest he’d be pessimistic or nihilistic about his beliefs. At least Von Neumann has the decency to accept that materialism is a terrifying prospect and go out in complete fear and agony vs inventing a shallow sense of beauty and wonder in the majestic scale of the cosmos to fill the gaping hole left from atheism.
Are yoy conflating sp;lity w religion?
Spare me the etymlgcl defntn.
I cant tell if youre a intlctly dishnst christcuck or smug nihi, but either way, arrogant.

Sagan was skeptic, non-religious, but wanted to transmit the notion that passion and awe are present both in knowledge and faith, and neither needs to negate the other.

>>14179803
the fact that everything, when zoomed in enough, is made from the same stuff while they all have completely different properties when combined in certain ways is wild as fuck

>>14179803
To conceptualise the smallest you need a certain mental capacity the average consume just doesn't have. They need Bill Nye and greenscreens to show them what they can't think of, but that doesn't work when talking about atoms or even smaller concepts.

They are living in blissful ignorance where they only think about the cool new games that will be able to run on Quantum Computers in 20 years, fuck yeah science!

>>14175992
>dude we all come from literal stardust that's so awesome isn't science amazing!!!

>>14179825
neat. I sucks that I'm so bad at math that studying physics was never an option because the concepts and findings are so interesting.

>>14175992
>every atom in your body came from a star that exploded
No, it came from a nebula. Stars are just the active phase in a nebulaeic life cycle.

>And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a star different than your right
Again, wrong.

>you are all stardust
Garbage term. You are the condensed form of a nebula.

>the stars died
A nebula collapses to form a solar system, and then the sun eats the solar system and becomes a nebula again. It's more like the heartbeat of entropy.

Life is a parasite that is slowly killing the nebula that birthed it. We convert potential energy into thermal radiation, which is then bled into space and leaves the solar system. The nebula that birthed us will probably dissapate much earlier because life exists. That beautiful celestial giant will die earlier because organic life came to be.

>>14176938
Sorry for the long wait, got caught up in some work. I'll try to go piece-by-piece, hopefully that will make some things clearer. If necessary, I can go into more detail later on.
>We know that black holes exist and that they create "holes" where nothing can escape.
Correct, black holes are regions of space-time wherein the spatial and temporal coordinates exchange places. To make this clearer - in "everyday" scenarios, it seems that time only moves forward or, in other words, constituents of the Universe move forward in time towards its literal or asymptotic end. Inside a black hole, we now "move forward" in space and our destination (so to speak) is what is called the black hole singularity, a point of infinite density, which means that we have not yet unearthed the tools necessary to explain that beast.
>How is it possible that when you multiply this to the scale of all the matter in the current universe into a small point, matter somehow is able to escape the gravity "hole".
This is a very good question, but it's also wrong (unfortunately). The basic gist is this - when we study black holes, we do it by using certain mathematical conditions. For instance, the nature of space-time and the dynamics of the hole - is it static, is it spinning, is it charged? These scenarios, in a broader sense, bring about the "standard" picture of a black hole which I described earlier, a place from which none can escape. When tackling the early universe, the initial conditions are drastically different and we get something that looks like a "white hole" (a term I personally dislike but will do for this short explanation) - an area from which everything erupts. In actuality, the early universe COULD bring about a black hole too, but observational data which is directly correlated with the initial conditions leads to this "white hole"-like solution. A summary would read: even though we still have a singularity, the differences in the initial conditions make it seem like something completely different. (And singularities still denote that we have no clue what exactly happens then and there!)
>How come there isn't a "center" of the universe where all the matter that couldn't escape the Big Bang is condensed together.
Even if there were some Big Bang remnants, they would not represent anything special (as being the center of the universe). As another anon already indicated, during this Big Bang expansion (a much better word than explosion), it's space itself that does the expanding, not its constituents. I'm jumping around a bit but these initial irregularities are important, if everything were perfectly isotropic and homogeneous, there probably wouldn't be a Universe such as the one we're inhabiting right now. To explain this, take a look at the attached picture. The two hills on the left picture represent initial regularities (say, two Big Bang remnants) -> over time, they evolve to larger irregularities and this in turn serves as the birthplace.. 1/2

>>14180052
2/2
..as the birthplace of cosmic structures. But, these irregularities are the product of so called quantum fluctuations, not of matter being trapped by some sort of primordial black hole.
>>14176938
>how the hell can the expansion accelerate if it came from a single event?
Dark energy is the conventional answer given today. The newly attached picture represents the so called Friedmann equation (one of them, actually) which governs the expansion of the Universe. The "dotted a" term tells you how the Universe expands (accelerates or decelerates), the "rho" term represents density, "p" stands for pressure and "Lambda" is the dark energy parameter. When modelling this equation, it turns out that at certain stages of a certain Universe's lifetime one of the terms will dominate, at other stages, something else will take the lead. It just so happens that a Universe filled with matter which we seem to observe gives rise to accelerated expansion at a certain point.
Hope this clears some things up, once again I wrote in a hurry but I'll gladly build upon this once again.

>>14179957
Stroke in progress

>>14176723
>Sentimentality is so much more cringe coming from materialists than religious people
Yeah, it never comes off as anything more than an attempt at cobbling together some quasi-spirituality from vague "cool" reductions. The fact that grown men, most of whom are genuinely bright within their fields, so grossly miss the point of actual spirituality is unnerving but also sadly unsurprising- plenty of "smart" people genuinely think they've trumped two millennia of philosophy because they regurgitate 'gotcha' r/atheism catchphrases.
>whooooooah we're all stardust and part of some eternal cycle maaaan
And?

>>14177089
>People who say that only the fear of God is keeping them from cracking my skull open scare the shit out of me
Not, never has been, never will be an argument

>>14180052
>>14180087
Thanks a lot for you reply. It really cleared some things up.
Do you have some /lit/ recommendations about the black hole singularity? Preferably not too math-heavy (high school level, remember), or would that inevitably lead to reddit-tier Epic Science garbage?

>>14180398
Either Susskind's books on Classical Mechanics and Special Relativity, or something like Greene's and Rovelli's books. All of them are "pop-sci", but Susskind actually goes into some math, I don't think it's overly complicated and it might be the most engaging out of those.

>>14175992

Reminder that one of his peers publicly ridiculed him for claiming that nothingness or zero or whatever would have any potential or something and Krauss got extremely buttmad.

I'm interested in materialist cosmology but the responses in this thread indicate that this book is just popsci garbage. Is there any actually good books about this topic out there?

>>14181481
I’ll save you the effort

“We don’t actually know”

That’s their answer. Which I’m not criticising because it’s true

>>14181481
The Big Bang by Simon Singh is pretty good.

>>14181243
Thanks!

>>14179803
>I genuinely feel a great deal of fear thinking about how huge I am.
mah nigga

>>14181481
If you don't know math you have to stick with popsci like Hawking.

>>14181481
How well versed in mathematics are you?

>>14178917
Nice post, I agree with everything you said.

>>14181668
>>14181648
How long would it take to learn this level of mathematics with just a high school education?

>>14183068
Depends how far you want to go into cosmology

>>14179009
Back in the day, morals were necessary for humans to work together and advance as society. Without them, humans wouldn’t rely upon or help each other and we’d have made little progress as a species since the Stone Age. Now that society has been established almost everywhere, a lack of morals allows for one to take advantage of others and advance further. As such, morality is declining; people would rather look out for themselves. It’s because of this that morality, or the refusal to take advantage of people, often leads to personal suffering. Morality was an important evolutionary function in order for humans to expand and prosper, but it’s not as necessary as it used to be. That’s just what I think anyway, I’m not too knowledgeable on this stuff

>>14183068
To understand the CONCEPT of an expanding Universe, no more than a couple of weeks.
To falsely derive the Friedmann equations from Classical Mechanics and then a posteriori define what those would be, no more than a month.
To learn how to solve the Friedmann equations and go from one into the other largely depends on whether or not you learned derivatives and integrals in high school. If you did, I'd guess maybe a month to be able to do it on the fly. If you didn't learn these things in high school, I'd say at least half a year, depending on how fast you'd master it.
To actually derive the Friedmann equations, you need General Relativity. In universitites, half a year or a full year is devoted just to GR, but you need two things to understand GR in full. Special Relativity (which is easy and can be learned in a few weeks somewhat effectively) and Tensor Analysis which isx in my experience, the point where most people who thought they wanted to learn these things, decide that they won't be learning those things. At the very best, it will take you a year. At the very worst, something like 3-4 years (and that's with skipping certain areas like Classical Mechanics).

>>14179274
You ever watch Akira?

>>14179957
>wanted to transmit the notion
The notion is incoherent with his other views. Von Neumann was an actual genius and at the end he desperately hoped there was a god and an afterlife and died in abject fear of the possible absence of one. There are only two coherent positions, materialistic pessimism and religious optimism. Any attempt to construct a materialist system with some transcendent pseudo-spiritual sense of the sublime is preposterous cope promoted either out of an internalised fear of the abyss or out of an understanding that a wholly pessimistic worldview cannot win the court of popular opinion. Incidentally this was also what makes Nietzsche a brainlet, you do not create your own meaning. You don’t get the best of both worlds. It’s God or bust when it comes to ontological peace of mind.

>>14175992
>lol Christianity is so dumb
>lemme explain how you should believe the exact same thing but with stars instead of Jesus and no salvation

>>14183412
Dumb brainlet post. Game theory shows that it is always advantageous to be immoral in any system where everyone is moral, it doesn’t matter the time period. We can even simulate this using a computer program, you can produce automata that choose to “share” or “steal” where you reach an equilibrium if everyone shares but the system completely destabilises if everyone attempts to steal. Thus we can conclude that on larger scales immorality is unsustainable but on smaller scales it increases it increases fitness. The issue is one of communication. A single strip of DNA self replicates most frequently if it’s fitness is maximised however if the actions that maximise the fitness of each individual cause the collapse of the larger system you would reach an impasse. Specifically each individual self replicating organism would continuously act selfishly but due to selfishness (since we are in a state of total selfishness) or act selflessly but perpetuate the replication of it’s selfish competitors and thus outcompete itself. Two resolutions to this exist. The “dynamic equilibrium” hypothesis which simply states that the system tends towards selfish behaviour until it becomes so unstable that altruism becomes beneficial to the self and others, before the scales shift back to altruism and selfishness becomes a bible strategy and so on. This would imply a periodicity to the overall altruism within a given structure.
Second explanation is “complex feedback” which is so fringe its basically a pseudoscience until we get more data, and that basically states that there is an almost teleological “prescience” to any adaptive system in which the components react to the state of the system using “global heuristics” I.e evolution found a litmus test of sorts for the stability of a system and has an adaptive way of producing organisms that counter that systems flaws. They both result in the same process, an equilibrium (demonstrated using computer simulations) but it’s more a question of time scales. Adaptive prescience being immediate and dynamic equilibrium being iterative.

>>14176010

Krauss is a close friend of Dawkins. They are both insufferable when it comes to the religion hate.

>>14183856
Why does everything take so long to learn?

>>14185668
Because you need to learn lots of pretty high level abstract math.