[extropy-chat] Nothingness and that Infinite Chain of Causesthingy.

[A B]

Hi gts,
   
  You're right, I should not have tried to assign a "behavior" to Nothingness. ("Behavior" in its common meaning, is not precisely what I meant). A point I should have made in the original post is that: if true Nothingness has ever existed, it certainly doesn't exist now, nor has it existed for a really, really long time. Maybe probabilistically, is another way to look at it. If Nothingness once existed in the remote past, it had no "rules" (eg. of physics or logic) governing it. Nothing at all to prevent *anything* from coming to pass. So from this baseline, there is already a 50/50 chance that "Something" will definitely arise from "Nothing". So, if Nothingness existed, then it had before it literally an infinite number of possible "things" to "become", but it had only *1* thing that it could remain - Nothingness. (and dividing 1 by infinity of course leads to zero - a zero probability perhaps?). My guess (and that's all that it is), is that probability *strongly* favors
 the transition from "Nothing" to "Something" (and this "Something" may have been the first Universe). No doubt someone would quickly point out that "Nothingness" would exclude probability during its existence, however, in this case I mean "probability" in the sense of measurement, not in the sense of a "driving force" of some kind.
   
  Best Wishes,
   
  Jeffrey Herrlich 

gts <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
  On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 02:20:32 -0400, Damien Broderick 
wrote:

> This [Pure Nothingness or The Void] is almost certainly one of those 
> realms where words arenot much use...

Yes, talking about nothingness is something like talking about the sound 
of one hand clapping. Or like talking about the sound of one hand waving. 
Or whatever. It makes no sense! This is why I objected to AB's assertion 
that "nothingness" can in any way "behave".

> so perhaps the salience of this comparison with pure Ur-nothingness is 
> moot. Ho hum.

"Ho hum" is how I also respond, having just finished torturing my feeble 
mind with a slow and thorough reading of Karl Popper's book _Conjectures 
and Refutations_. This book took me almost six months to read. (A good 
sleep aid it was, but I think it also indoctrinated me in an important 
way.)

I'm convinced now more than ever that it makes rational sense to make 
rational sense of things, and that things that make no rational sense 
should be ignored simply because they make no rational sense.

But shoot I already knew that. :)

-gts

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