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/sci/ - Science & Math

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2820150 No.2820150 [Reply] [Original]

How do I convince my philosophy teacher than "before" the big bang is an invalid question? He keeps saying that he can ask it because he is not talking about physics, but philosophy. Isn't philosophy's base observation of natural phenoma?

Oh right, wanted to ask, what's the basis behind tachyons? I don't get why such a particle has been hypothesised, what is it's need in the standard model?

>> No.2820183

It's like asking "what is south of the south pole" You can ask it, but the question has no meaning.

Tachyons? Hell if I know.

>> No.2820221

What is your teacher trying to ask when he mentions "before" the big bang?

>> No.2820225

>>2820150
you have to show him how the observable part of the universe is the only part that exists, if humans can't measure it, then it doesn't exist


you have to become very anthropomorphic and essentially go fullretard

good luck

>> No.2820222

it's a valid question, faggot. no real scientist hypothesizes the big bang as the beginning of all time, merely as the beginning of time for which we can find information. it's not like south of the south pole, it's a matter of irretrievable information rather than nonexistent information

>> No.2820229

>>2820150

derp physics breaks down at the singularity therefore nothing existed before it

durhhhhhh hurrrrrrr im scientists lol philosophy

>> No.2820237

fight retard philosophy with more retard philosophy

>> No.2820254

>>2820150
Tachyons are not part of the standard model of particle physics. Tachyons are just some crazy idea some theoriest have, but are generally not considered part of physics.

Your teacher is a dumbshit.

>> No.2820255

>>2820222

>no real scientist hypothesizes the big bang as the beginning of all time

Is that true? It was always my understanding that the big band was an expansion of space and time, without which, neither concept had any real meaning. There was no space to move or time to "when"

>> No.2820282

>>2820255
yes, it's true. there is absolutely no physical evidence to suggest that the big bang was the beginning of the universe itself. any postulation beyond "13.7 billion years ago the universe was in a hot dense state which expanded rapidly" is entirely unfounded

>> No.2820289

>>2820255
>Is that true?

Nope, you are being trolled dumbshit. Time-space are one @ the big bang. The concept isolated time/space does not exists pre-big bang.

>> No.2820312

>>2820289

How could I tell that I was trolled? I don't know much about cosmology and and willing to accept that there are people who know more about it than I do.

>> No.2820334

the idea of time beginning at a moment is fullretard

time doesn't exist discretely, we define the length of a moment, a 1second moment contains an infinite amount of time

if you say X "began" then you are already assuming a temporal dimension

if there was no temporal dimension the big bang would never have occurred, it would never find the time to begin

>> No.2820343

>>2820289
what kind of physical evidence could support such a statement? how can a scientist find out whether space and time make sense or not before the big bang?

there is no possible evidence, faggot. everything about the big bang being the supreme beginning of the universe is mere postulation. the only kind of beginning which science can confirm it as is one of access to information

>> No.2820371

>>2820282
They may not be *real* scientists, but they're highly respected professional scientists.

IMHO cosmogenists are worse than string theorists. They make all kinds of kooky, untestable claims, and act like they're virtually proven.

It's fashionable in science now to set up all sorts of hoops of counterintuitivity to jump through in one's theories, even when they're absent from obvious alternatives that are not even experimentally distinguishable. When challenged on this, the theorists appeal to ridiculous distortions of occam's razor.

>> No.2820390

>>2820343
>what kind of physical evidence could support such a statement? how can a scientist find out whether space and time make sense or not before the big bang?

exactly this ^

if you are strictly empirical you can't really talk about "before the big bang" you have no evidence to corroborate your theory...

if you do start talking about it, you are engaging in philosophy--which is fine, but make sure you have logic to support you, because your science wont cut it

>> No.2820402

what's the context of him saying it? Is he teaching you about epistemology or metaphysics? If the main idea in his discussion is what the ultimate nature of the universe is, he's treating philosophy like a liberal art instead of a science which is probably bad (even if it's not a hard science I think it should be used with scientific rigor - same for linguistics, sociology and economics) On the other hand if he's just saying it as a hypothetical to talk about what's knowable than I think its valid for him to do.

>> No.2820405

>>2820390

Couldn't we support it with a sufficiently accurate mathematical model?

>> No.2820430

Einstein claims space and time are the same fabric.
That same fabric is expanding today.
So if that same fabric started at a point, I can assume that time started the same way.

Heck, if you're up for it I'll give you the subject of discussion for next class, it basically is about how "SCIENCE DOESN'T KNOW EVERYTHING, OKAY? GOD CAN EXIST" Which pissed me off because he had no idea of the scientific theories he was talking about.

First problem is "What was before the big bang"

Then, "Where did all matter come from?" I figured that if I talked about energy condensing into matter, and then move on nucleosynthesis is fine. (There still is the antimatter-matter argument, but i hope he doesn't know about it, though it would be cheating, do any of you guys have an idea why there's more matter than antimatter?)

Then there's the problem of life, well he's the problem. He said that "in the last 50 years we have tried to recreate life and only got a few amino acids." How do I tell him that 50 years isn't near a few billion years?
Then is

>> No.2820446

>>2820430

I think the prevelance of matter over antimatter has to do with CP symmetry violation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP-symmetry

>> No.2820447

I just smoked a fat j and am feeling..philosophical.

I think all of the universe's matter was stuffed into a small area of space. The rest of the universe (which would be infinite) is dark matter. I don't think we will understand dark matter for some time, but I believe it holds the key to understanding a lot of questions.

Well, the matter instantly began expanding (I would say this is the rule that any given thing will try to go from a state of high concentration to low concentration) and filling the infinite void of dark matter. The observable universe (what we exist in) is always going to be finite but unbounded. So in a way there is an existence beyond our own in the observable dark matter universe.


If that made any sense..

>> No.2820456

>>2820334
I'll explain it for you: imagine that you're setting up a simulated universe. Every time you run it through a cycle, that's one tick of time passing in the simulation. But you don't run it through cycles at a constant rate, but just in the background, and sometimes you stop it for a while and start it again.

So the time in the simulation, "simtime", is not the time we know. Simtime has a beginning. If you ever stop running the simulation permanently, it has an ending. You may even design it so that it has an inherent ending.

Imagine that this simulation is so elaborate that life evolves in it, and intelligence, and science. And the simscientists figure out that simtime has a beginning. The simulation is their universe, and simtime is their time.

They have no way to reach outside of the universe in any way. They can just feel its limits, in space and time.

They could speculate that there is a deeptime or a truetime, in the deepverse/truniverse, but they have no evidence that there is anything more than their own universe, and "well, our universe has to have come from SOMEWHERE" is infinite turtles -- postulating a deepverse, and maybe a creator, to explain this universe, only opens the question of where THAT came from.

So they take up Occam's Razor and they shave off all of the hairy irrelevancies: the universe simply started at its beginning, and there is no reason to postulate that time ticked in any meaningful way before the first simtick, since the initial arrangement was of such unstable character that any ticking would launch the initial events of the simverse.

Whether you think that it applies to this universe or not, a beginning to time is a concept that makes sense.

>> No.2820463

>>2820446
reported for CP violation

>> No.2820464

>>2820447
no, that isn't what happened. dark matter needs space to reside in like everything else. if one small pocket of regular matter expanded, we should be able to find a specific center emanation point - but we can't. the only way to explain what we see is to say that all space is expanding, and if all space was expanding, then matter would never have "caught up" with dark matter

>> No.2820465

>>2820430

If we are going by the model of there being nothing before the big bang and no "before" without a big bang, then you could answer the question of "where did matter come from" thusly:

Asking where matter comes from implies that there was a time where there wasn't matter (or energy in the case of nucleosynthesis). But (according to this model) since there is no such time, matter always existed. It was never created, it always existed, from the time that existence had any meaning.

>> No.2820475

>>2820456
that's fucking retarded, faggot. a beginning to time doesn't make sense if you need to invoke a specific creation point for a synthetic universe. your thought experiment specifically requires it to be the case that the scientists who act like the supposed beginning was the one true beginning must be wrong. you are a dipshit

>> No.2820487

things begin in time

if there is no time, things don't begin

either there was a "before" the big bang, or there was no big bang

>> No.2820501

>>2820487

Things begin in time in the universe. That doesn't say anything about the beginning of the universe.

It's like how your turn comes after my turn in chess. This fact doesn't shed any light on how the game got started.

>> No.2820521

>>2820475
The simscientists aren't wrong. They're talking about simtime, and they know there is no way for there to be a tick before the first tick because by the laws of simphysics, there is no possible prior state which could, after any number of ticks, evolve into the known initial state of the simverse. The simverse can only evolve away from that initial state, not toward it.

They have no way to observe truetime and therefore say nothing about it in their theory of the simverse.

If believing in God and godtime, or the deepverse or whatever, makes your stomach hurt less when you think about this stuff, then go for it. Just shave the scaffold gods out of your theories so people can talk sensibly about the observable universe without all sharing the same religion about what lies outside it.

>> No.2820523

>>2820501
you trick yourself into giving special properties to "the universe" when you treat it as if it's one thing. keep in mind what we're actually saying: we're talking about the total energy/matter/and so on content of a certain (all-encompassing) region of space. the universe is the sum of its parts and nothing more. in your analogy, what we're really asking for when we say "how did the universe begin" is "how did the sum of all the chess moves begin?" which is identical to "what was the first move?"

nothing can happen to "the universe", things can only happen to things within the universe. therefore, things that happen must obey certain rules, on of which (as far as we know) is temporality. what exactly it would mean for time to begin is a very very vague concept that gets tossed around without any backing

>> No.2820532

>>2820521
just because postulating the opposite case is unfounded doesn't mean that postulating that the beginning of the fake universe was the one true beginning is founded. we cannot say anything about it until we have certain kinds of evidence (at least scientifically). occam's razor is not actually a logical rule, and we can't use it to justify unfounded claims

>> No.2820534

tell him its like asking what is north of the north pole

>> No.2820544

>>2820523
>nothing can happen to "the universe", things can only happen to things within the universe.

I'm sorry, but this is an outdated Newtonian concept. Newton believed that space and time were static stages upon which the universe played out.

But spacetime is dynamic. It expands with the rest of the universe, actually it IS the universe, and does act differently than the substances inside it. For example, spacetime can expand faster than the speed of light, which is something the matter within it can not do.

The rules that govern how the chess pieces move are different than the rules that govern the board upon which they play out.

>> No.2820556

>>2820544
spacetime is a part of the universe, and its unique properties do not include "ability to violate causality and temporality"

spacetime's wacky properties also only occur in the presence of matter/energy anyway, so your point is astoundingly shitty

>> No.2820612

>>2820556

I'm sorry. I just can't wrap my head around what you said. Which point are you referring to, and how is it shitty?

>> No.2820636

>>2820532
There is no science without Occam's Razor. It is the fundamental value of science to favor the simplest theory that matches all known evidence.

It is indeed not a proper logical principle. It's not true that the simplest explanation is most likely to turn out to be true. However, the simplest explanation for the observed facts offers the best compression of those facts, produces the most useful information tool, is the easiest way to remember those observations.

Science is essentially the faith that intelligence is useful for discerning truths about the physical universe. This is an axiom, not a logical conclusion. The pure logician has no good argument against solipsism, and therefore has no reason to say with any confidence that there is a physical universe. Logic is nothing without axioms.

We need more than logic. Whether you call it "self-evident truth" or faith, it is the same thing. The scientist has faith in the value of intelligence, and therefore works always with Occam's Razor.

By denying that the idea of time having a discernible beginning even makes sense, you are either postulating a godtime other than the physical time of our universe, or making some very big assumptions about what time is and how it works.

A clock may have its first tick, and time may have a beginning. If your mind isn't open to that possibility, you are not capable of science.

>> No.2820659

Tell your teacher exactly what he wants to hear, then when you finish the class, dump it all out one ear and never take another philosophy class again.

>> No.2820665
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2820665

> "before" the big bang is an invalid question

Temporally speaking , yes, it is an invalid question. If my system has nothing called "time", then I cannot speak of "time".

This thread is shit!

\thread

>> No.2820694

>>2820665
oh fuck you physics guy, usually you're pretty cool and go around answering questions. That was boring.

>> No.2820707

>paying attention in lectures.

/sci/ really doesn't get university. You aren't supposed to draw any attention to yourself in a lecture.

>> No.2820718
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2820718

>>2820150
Another problem your prof has is that of "reductionism". Science/nature/the universe can reduced to a "minimal set". But, to seek to use the minimal set to describe itself is fucking retarded.

The "question" of "why" or "what", cannot go ad-infinum! It is bad logic, and your professor should fucking know better!

>> No.2820781

>How do I convince my philosophy teacher than "before" the big bang is an invalid question?
Tell him that it the same as discussing values of A other than 1 in the case that A + 1 = 2.

The Big Bang is an event theorized in a model where time begins at the Big Bang. By framing your question in the context of that model, you are implicitly accepting, for the purpose of the discussion, that there is no "before" the Big Bang. If there is a "before", it's not the Big Bang.

Better yet, just stop expecting a philosophy teacher to make sense or listen to it.

>> No.2820834

What's the plank wall? Could it be used as an argument against

>> No.2820849

What do I see if I am able to travel to the edge of the universe?

>> No.2820855

>>2820781

>Better yet, just stop expecting a philosophy teacher to make sense or listen to it.

Isn't 90% of philosophy just learning formal logic? I'd expect a philosophy professor to understand these concepts more than pretty much anyone else except maybe someone in Mathematics or Physics.

>> No.2821104

>>2820855
>Isn't 90% of philosophy just learning formal logic?
Maybe in the 101 general course.

Logic isn't helpful until you have axioms. Philosophy is 90+% futzing about alogically with the axioms.

It's kind of like what math would be if you learned arithmetic in the first year, and in the second year you learned that all symbols are arbitrary therefore in its own way 1 + 1 = 3 is as valid as 1 + 1 = 2.

>> No.2821664

The simuniverse post was really cool. What about biogenesis though? Molecules colliding, cosmic rays and thunder?

>> No.2822673

How can we truly know how the universe started when we haven't even colonized mars yet?

>> No.2824844

>>2822673
Can someone lend me their trollface.jpg? I don't have one.

>> No.2824959

>>2820150

Hi OP, show this vid to your Teacher:
It's a talk by Lawrence Krauss, explaining how the universe can come from nothing in really easy terms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

>mfw half my degree is Philosophy but i still know Science>Philosophy every time
>>mfw I cba to find a mfw pic

>> No.2825711

>>2824959
I considered it, I think I'll send him a message right now, see if he stills presents the class.