[extropy-chat] Big Bang & "the origin of the Universe"

[Jeff Medina]

Thanks for your thoughts, Russell.

On 2/5/06, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Suppose there is indeed no information about what if anything existed
> before the Big Bang (rather than said information just not being detectable
> with current technology). Then any belief about said prior state is going to
> be philosophical rather than scientific; said prior state is not part of our
> universe; and it is true to say the Big Bang is the origin of the universe.

Now suppose there is indeed no information about whether Something can
come into existence from Nothing. (There is indeed no such
information. And virtual particles don't count because they come into
existence from a background of spacetime, not Nothing.)\

Then any belief about the Universe coming into existence at the Big
Bang is going to be 'philosophical rather than scientific'. Said
process of getting-Something-from-Nothing is _at least as speculative
as_ the proposal that there was Something prior to the Big Bang.

[Aside: When you said "said prior state is not part of our universe",
this might be taken to mean "by definition, the universe is
Big-Bang-and-after, so even if some state existed prior to the Big
Bang, it wasn't 'part-of-the-universe'". So, to clarify, by "the
universe" I mean Everything, All of Existence, Reality. Prior states,
posterior states, concurrent unreachable states, polka dot fairy dust
states, and so forth, are all part of the universe on this definition,
*so long as those states EXIST or EXISTED* in a way conceptually
distinguishable from Nothingness.]

> But in the
> absence of any such today it is reasonable to adopt the view that the Big
> Bang was the origin of the universe _as a working hypothesis until shown
> otherwise_; I don't see any error here.

As I hope the above has made clear, the implicit assumption that
Something can come from Nothing is one of the things that makes the
suggested working hypothesis a worse hypothesis than
"We have no information on what was before the Big Bang, and therefore
should not refer to the Big Bang as the origin of the universe,
because doing so implies that science favors such said claim in a way
similar to the way it favors the theory of gravity, evolution, orbital
mechanics, and conservation of energy, and said implication is false".

>  If someone were to claim it as certain fact, [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
> that would be different of
> course, but I haven't seen anyone do that.

Do you claim the theory of gravity, or any scientific theory for that
matter, is 'certain fact'? I certainly hope not. And if not, I'm not
sure why you think this line [between people claiming it is a certain
fact on one hand, and people claiming it is
uncertain-but-still-the-best-scientific-thing-to-claim on the other]
is one that matters.

Best,
--
Jeff Medina
http://www.painfullyclear.com/

Community Director
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/

Relationships & Community Fellow
Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies
http://www.ieet.org/

School of Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/phil/