Lawrence Krauss

[Anonymous No.11685598]

Someone asks you what life was like in 500 BC on the Taiwanese Island.

You are a person born in the 20th century living in the West. So you gather your data, examining any relic you can find on archaeological sites, looking for clues that might describe their lifestyle, culture, views. You formulate a story and write a history book titles "Prehistoric life on the Island of Taiwan".

Someone leaves the following review:

>You can't KNOW what life was like then because YOU WEREN'T THERE! You're just going by your own limited view and you can't possibly know for sure what data you're missing. What if they developed supercomputers but destroyed them all? What if you're actually living in a simulation that started 5 minutes ago and Taiwan didn't even exist back then?

This is basically what people sound when they criticise Krauss's book. He even ADMITS that the entirety of cosmology is based on our limited view of the universe, but since that's all there is to go on, we assume it to be plausible. He explicitly says that if we were living in another epoch or on another planet, our scientific theories would be different.

Yet he gets a lot of hate. I get it, he's a bit of a dick when it comes to talking about anything that's not science, like philosophy, so philosophers hate him. But his language aside, his refusal to entertain ideas about existence "before" the bing bang, or anything else not falsifiable, are not ridiculous.

Yes, it's possible that supercomputers existed in Taiwan, but how the fuck do you expect a historian to respond to you when you say that?

[Anonymous No.11685606]

what if i punch your face until you admit you are wrong?

[Anonymous No.11685621]

>He even ADMITS that the entirety of cosmology is based on our limited view of the universe,
>but since that's all there is to go on, we assume it to be *plausible*.
This does not follow

[Anonymous No.11685640]

I have not read that book. But I am certain the content does not explain the title and subtitle at all, instead discussing how things (not nothings) come to be "organised" or the big bang or something.

[Anonymous No.11685661]

>>11685606
my fwend, pwease

>>11685621
I understand that there has to be some threshold for "plausibility", but once you pass that threshold, the question is how confident we are. The theory of gravity is plausible with high confidence. Tectonic plate theory is something else plausible to a moderate degree. Accounts of Ancient Greece, still plausible, but not as much.

Is it just that your threshold is so high that you can't accept cosmology in general, or what? I'd be interested in knowing.

[Anonymous No.11685673]

>>11685640
If you have an hour, I highly recommend the lecture on YouTube which covers the main idea. Whether you're religious, a theist, a philosopher, or even hate the guy and reject all his views, still watch it -- all he does is present some very interesting findings in physics regarding the conception of the universe.

[Anonymous No.11687016]

Any thoughts then?

[Anonymous No.11687085]

>>11687016
You won't find those on /lit/

[Anonymous No.11687096]

The nothing Lawrence Krauss talks about is an "empty void".
Also known as Something.

[Anonymous No.11687158]

>>11687085
I go on /lit/ to talk about science books and /sci/ to talk about philosophy, just to avoid circle jerks.

[Anonymous No.11687186]

It's a bit of a meme to call public intellectuals stupid but this guy is legitimately the most retarded motherfucker that puts himself out there. If you're not trained in philosophy or physics I emphatically recommend avoiding him because he will make you dumber, especially if you're already inclined towards his conclusions. He is a very bad thinker but he's good rhetorically and he has credentials so it's easy to look up to him as an authority which can lead to assuming the same dumb unjustified assumptions and mistakes he makes without realizing it.

[Anonymous No.11687228]

>>11687186
he's also rude and crude with knowledge outside his expertise less than the nothing talked about in his book

[Anonymous No.11687288]

>>11687186
He isn't stupid in the sense that he lacks intelligence. He's just dogmatic about ideological scientism, and that dogmatic attitude comes from a misunderstanding of philosophy, a justified hatred of certain brands of academic philosophy (post-structuralism, for instance), and an even deeper hatred of religion. There's definitely a psychological root for this hatred, stemming from whatever experiences he's had with other philosophers in his past, and it must be so ingrained that he just associates any philosophy as a waste of time (he prefers "common sense", which is itself a philosophy) all the while actually doing philosophy himself - but he gets angry if you accuse him of philosophising.

If you can get past this, if you can just think of him as someone with a skewed perception of the humanities, and just focus on his physics (as long as it's within the boundaries of empiricism), he makes sense.

[Anonymous No.11687433]

Did someome say nothing?

[Anonymous No.11688684]

>>11685598
>Uses BC

[Anonymous No.11688958]

>>11688684
This is the sort of thing that makes think autism causes atheism because they care about the dumbest shit.

[Anonymous No.11688964]

>>11687433
>"Hey Lawrence, Parmenides called. He'd like to have a word with you about something."

[Anonymous No.11689498]

>>11688964
Parmenides was either a genius waaay ahead of his time, or a complete troll.

[Anonymous No.11689520]

>>11687288
He is definitely fucking stupid. The mistake he makes in this book is the same mistake that STEMfags make when they say "Nothing came before the Big Bang, because time began at the Big Bang!" without realising that this doesn't actually answer anything metaphysically, let alone necessarily.

This is distinct from the possibility that perhaps everything truly "began" at the Big Bang, and there are no preceding or undergirding "states" or "things" to the local universe. That is potentially an interesting line of argument. But I'm talking about someone who smugly thinks "heh, time 'began' then, so how can anything be 'before' it ;) checkmate atheists" is an interesting thing to say.

[Anonymous No.11689671]

>>11689520
Thanks for making the distinction. I'm struggling, however, to see why you place such importance on that distinction, which largely seems to be one of tone. Please could you elaborate on the following.

Take the general, non-controversial view (held by Krauss, and others) that since we have no access to anything "before" the Big Bang, or "outside" of this universe, then we're restricted to formulating ideas only about our own universe (cf Schopenhauer) -- this doesn't mean you can't theorise about other universes, or God, or anything else, but if you do, these people would be entirely skeptical about entertaining your ideas.

You see, what I said is not controversial at all, and it is precisely what I'm getting from Krauss -- he even says that there is a possibility of something else, but he's not bothered and just wants to fit his model to the available data, because any non-empirical extrapolation would be unjustified.

The argument about time beginning at the Big Bang is that he views time as a "property" of space (simplifying here, but this is the standard view in physics), and therefore if the Big Bang was the initialisation of matter, if there was no matter before, there was also no time. Was there another universe before then? Maybe, but again the point is that if we can't access that universe, then we might as well be talking about reincarnation or other "non-scientific" ideas, which he opposes fundamentally.

>this doesn't actually answer anything metaphysically
Can you give me an example of a philosopher who proposed a metaphysical analysis of the Big Bang theory?

[Anonymous No.11689677]

>>11689671
Not the guy you replied to but
> because any non-empirical extrapolation would be unjustified
is wrong senpai. There are plenty of proofs necessitating something because without it, things wouldn't make sense. This is very common in maths and there is no reason it couldn't be used to prove God aswell

[Anonymous No.11689711]

>>11689671
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-lawrence-krauss-a-physicist-or-just-a-bad-philosopher/

He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle physics, and so on. He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all, or why they should have had the form they did. And he gives no experimental or observational process whereby we could test these vivid speculations of the supposed universe-generation mechanism. How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed? You can’t.

Thus what he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true. Well, you can’t get any evidence about what existed before space and time came into being. Above all he believes that these mathematically based speculations solve thousand year old philosophical conundrums, without seriously engaging those philosophical issues. The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality.

And above all Krauss does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have, or in what kind of manifestation they existed before the universe existed (which he must believe if he believes they brought the universe into existence). Who or what dreamt up symmetry principles, Lagrangians, specific symmetry groups, gauge theories, and so on? He does not begin to answer these questions. It’s very ironic when he says philosophy is bunk and then himself engages in this kind of attempt at philosophy.

[Anonymous No.11689715]

>>11689711
forgot to note: this post is quoting, not me writing

[Anonymous No.11690109]

>>11689711
>He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all, or why they should have had the form they did
>And above all Krauss does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have, or in what kind of manifestation they existed before the universe existed
etc.

The author here is basically making the same argument as you, i.e., that Krauss did not explain the "why". For starters, I don't know what you expect; tell me of anyone who's answered this compellingly. Secondly, he never claimed to have answered the "why" questions or denied any other possibilities. He simply said those questions were bad questions in the same sense that "what if we are living in a simulation and are unaware of it?" is a bad question, in that answering "yes" or "no" could not be backed up with any empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and the answer has value or implication either way (his argument - you could argue that it does, but that's beside the point).

> The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy
Again, Krauss didn't say this.

Like I had suspected this is just tribal argumentation from both sides. The arrogant scientist vs the condescending philosopher. Krauss extends his scientific model to say "that's all there is, everything else is worthless speculation" and the critic responds "well you still don't know what the meaning of life is". If you extract the immature bullshit from this it's pretty easy to see that Krauss is just interested in the science, while some philosophers like to speculate more. Nobody is at fault.

[Anonymous No.11690139]

>>11685598
Knowledge requires two main things. Proper justification and it must be true.

If you guessed that the coin will flip heads, and it lands on head, its not knowledge. If you justified that the sun will rise tomorrow because god exist, and then sun rises, that's not knowledge. Its shoddy justification.

If you justified that apple will fall on the ground on the count of theory of gravity, the mass/distance of the objects(apple/earth), and no other influential forces are at play, then when you release the apple from 5 feet high and it falls down, that's knowledge.


When someone says "YOU KANT KNOW YOU WEREN'T THERE," we can simply resort to justifiable belief and a true statement to counter this. A justified belief in this book would be, well we have records/data of the tools used, the architectures in question, some statues, art, remnants of food, etc, then from that data we can conclude they lived xyz. How we find out it is true is if we can compare how a modern equivalent of person would be like. Then compare the two using inductive reasoning.

Someone who argues wild tales about supercomputers or ancient aliens confused knowledge/belief/imagination/dreams/wishes.

[Anonymous No.11690233]

>>11685598
post more pics of your hands they look cute

[Anonymous No.11690370]

>>11690139
Right, I think we all agree on that, but that was just an analogy. What are you saying regarding the criticism of the book that it doesn't answer the metaphysical origin of the universe and is therefore "incomplete" in some way?

[Anonymous No.11690399]

>>11690370
The book isn't about metaphysical origin of the universe. Its about the origins of the universe. The people asking for metaphysical origins of the universe probably just wants to shoehorn in a "God did it" narrative or whatever mumbo jumbo belief they concocted for themselves without any justification.

The origins of this universe is understood fairly well today. Atleast from the big bang onward. Specific details are bit missing but that's just a matter of filling the blanks as we use telescope to discover more. Before the big bang, many physicists are now working with multiverse theories. These are purely mathematical justifications, and testing them is probably impossible for the forseeable future. So it remains a justifiable belief, not a fact. However even then a justifiable belief is > random howash beliefs based on some weed they smoked 2 days ago.

[Anonymous No.11690486]

>>11689671
>time as a "property" of space
>the Big Bang was the initialisation of matter
>no matter before, there was also no time
???
Is time a property of space or matter?

[Anonymous No.11690498]

>>11690399
>The origins of this universe is understood fairly well today.
Fairly well compared to what? Are you an astrophysicist?

[Anonymous No.11690525]

>>11690498
Fairly well compared to a common man's understanding of how to make a bread. We can even replicate parts of the earliest universe matters in LHC and other colliders. Supercomputers can also simulate parts of early universe too. The matter of big bang is mainly a solved issue. The problem now has moved on to pre-big bang conditions.

QFT, string theory, multiverse, etc all give parts of the answers. We will get a working/"common knowledge" pre-big bang/multiverse model probably in the next few decades.

[Anonymous No.11690657]

>>11690525
>We can even replicate parts of the earliest universe matters in LHC and other colliders. Supercomputers can also simulate parts of early universe too
Well, that's what they say, anyway. We can take their word for it.

[Anonymous No.11690673]

>>11690486
Sorry I used space and matter interchangeably. Admittedly, I'm trying to keep the science colloquial because I'm not interested in discussing the physics argument here, rather, the review of the book.

[Anonymous No.11690681]

>>11690657
(((they))) say the earth is round, I don't see it