Helloo @Benj96 ,nice name

And this begs the question, if it never changes, then did it always exist as such?/quote] Nothing right?[/b] — Benj96

Well, when you say that it "always existed as such" you compare it with time, and how we see time, and how we count time;
I believe:
Short answer: if always is forever, then yes! If always is finite, maybe cyclical or just somehow started.. by.. itself while there beeing nothing in that void to start it all.. Uhh.. Then you would not be able to compare it with time, with something - So it won't be that it "always was" or "It was for this period of time", but that it simply just "was" without any period of time attached to it.
Long answer: Insanity

What can change or influence or act upon the unchanged? — Benj96

Mostly you, persay how one views it; You could change the idea of it.. Orr if you meant for it to be unchangable neighter in the idea (that's a bit harsh) Then no;
But then comes the dylemas of "Hey if we die, then the view of it changes too; So the human species couldn't really die then." and "Hey, if we have a though about the though that we can't really have a though over the unchangable; Then that one must remain the same too as it does change the unchangable through the power of correlation."This will have a matrioska effect, and it could go till the point where we don't really have a choice in what we do based on how interconnected our thoughs are.
So if you really want the worst, and most interesting if you'd ask me situationfrom all of them then: If it does affect all our ideas about it , and our ideas are too very interconnected, the whole world itself would not be able to change - as everything that would affect us (pretty much anything tangable and not tangable) would need to freeze as in a way to continue the unchanging nature of the unchangable - Becoming itself the unchangable!.. If that isn't a change in itself?..I don't really know.
Or hey! We might've not have any free will from the start, moving on;

A curiosity here is that the speed of light is fixed. And yet it is tha fastest rate at which something can "change" location (velocity). Could this mean there's some strange union between that which remains constant and that which changes the most rapidly? — Benj96

I don't have any right to comment onto this, but from what I know:
We strongly believe that the speed of light is a constant, not surely know; And that's kinda it. Hope it helps! And again, I feel we should consult math and science itself with this one.

If we take this to extremes than one would imagine two phenomena or things: on one side is that which is in constant flux, changing so fast that it barely even could be said to assume any state for any given amount of time, it changes at the fastest/maximum rate possible.

A curiosity here is that the speed of light is fixed. And yet it is tha fastest rate at which something can "change" location (velocity). Could this mean there's some strange union between that which remains constant and that which changes the most rapidly? — Benj96

That’s not a curiosity, it’s built into the presuppositions of empiricism that make change subservient to identify. When we posit quantitative changes within a qualitative domain which is assumed as fixed throughout the changes in its components ( such as temperature or motion) , we are not really grappling in a fundamental way with the relation between identity and difference, stasis and change.

True change is qualitative change, a change in the sense of meaning of the category or concept (motion, temperature, mass) that we are using as a basis of measurement. Al” other changes amount to just slot rattling within a static and unchanging substrate. We force these static categories onto a world which is continually qualitatively changing beneath our sight.

And this begs the question, if it never changes, then did it always exist as such? What can change or influence or act upon the unchanged? Nothing right? — Benj96

Wrong! :joke:

Energy is such an unchanging Cause of change. According to the second law of thermodynamics, the total Energy (causal force) content of the universe is fixed, but as it causes physical changes, it can transform into Entropy (negative energy) and back again into Potential : the thermodynamic cycle. From a philosophical perspective, Energy itself is not a physical thing, but it is the metaphysical Potential for change*1 : hence total Energy is unchanged, even as it acts upon (influences) the changeable matter of the universe. Potential energy is the universal static power of position, which metaphorically flows (kinetic) through material objects causing changes in form along the way.

Those form changes are from order to disorder and vice-versa. The degree of order in a material object is measured in terms of structure (en-formed), while the degree of disorder is measured in terms of Entropy (dis-informed). In sum, the total quantity of Energy remains unchanged, even as it Changes (transforms) the material of the universe.

I know this way of thinking about Energy & Change is unconventional. And I'm currently playing with the equally unorthodox notion that Time is simply a measure of physical change due to the actions of Energy*2. One consequence of that way of thinking is to conclude that the expansion of the universe is not due to some mysterious Dark Energy, but merely to the increasing dimension of Time : also a thermodynamic cycle. BTW, Light is simply how we perceive Energy as it transforms into Time (change) at a constant rate (universally, not locally). If you're not too dazed & confused by this nonsense, I can expand on these novel views of the unchanging Cause of Change. :smile:


*1. WHAT IS ENERGY?
It’s not a particular thing, but a transferable (hence not intrinsic or inherent) property, ability, quality, that is quantifiable only in its effects.
“In physics, energy is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy

*2. Time is Progressive Change :
“Our primary conscious experience is one of the ‘progression’ of time; ... Entropy is change and therefore a function of time.”
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-causes-time-to-progress.147073/

what about quantitative change. This also occurs. So it seems that quantitative and qualitative changes occur for most existants. I say most because I don't know what is at the farthest extremes and how they differ from subsets of what they govern.

A curiosity here is that the speed of light is fixed. And yet it is tha fastest rate at which something can "change" location (velocity). Could this mean there's some strange union between that which remains constant and that which changes the most rapidly? — Benj96

Relativity builds in the fact that the “speed of rest” is a reciprocal limit. So a photon experiences no time separating locations as it moves at c, and a mass “at rest” in its reference frame experiences the most time passing possible. It is a yo-yo relationship in which as the mass then appears to accelerate in its reference frame, it experiences time dilation.

So you are right that change vs stasis is a unity of opposites. To be stably at rest is to know you have spent the longest time just sitting there doing nothing. To be the swiftest change is to have the least notion that there was anything other that could have been done except that abrupt something.

The Universe started out so hot that everything moved at the speed of light. But it also started out with so little effective distance that there wasn’t any real space to cross anyway.

It took about half a second for things to start to separate out in ways that made a difference between the maximum and minimum rates of change a thing. You could have more slowly moving masses dropping out of the general flow of radiation and now moving at all relative speeds down to the theoretical minimum of being “at rest”.

Eventually after a few billion years, the universe had grown so large and cold that the right kind of reference frames could exist. We could have the rather extreme separation of c and rest that we experience today.

You could sit as lumps of matter in a vast frigid void with mostly bugger all happening to disturb your peace.

And yet still, as lumps of matter, we have those aspects of our being - such as a gravitational field and a little bit of warm radiation - that do spread out from our sense of unchanging location at c. So the falling out of the general c flow is relative.

On the other end we have that which never changed in its entire existence. — Benj96

I don't know what you mean, Benj. Cite an unchangeable – impossible to change, or necessary (i.e. unconditional) – extant state of affairs (i.e. fact). :chin:

I don't know what you mean, Benj. Cite an unchangeable – impossible to change, or necessary (i.e. unconditional) – extant state of affairs (i.e. fact). :chin: — 180 Proof

This is part of the purpose of the OP. What would such a thing be?

I'm merely following the basic idea that if things can change/transform at a slower or greater rate relative to one another. Then one would imagine that there must be something that is the "greatest constant" of all constants, the same for the longest period of time.

If there is truly a dichotomy of "rates" of transformation, then what is at these extremes and what might that mean? We are already aware of a cosmic speed limit. The "fastest" thing.
But is there a cosmic standstill at the other extreme? Ie not the fastest maximum speed one can go but the slowest speed on can go.

We have a theoretical absolute zero but just as matter cannot reach the speed of light it also cannot reach absolute zero as matter has innate energy and absolute zero is a lack of any kinetic energy. But because physical things cannot reach these limits, does that mean these limits don't exist? What is the nature of their existence?

Eventually after a few billion years, the universe had grown so large and cold that the right kind of reference frames could exist — apokrisis

I find this amusing when I think of how light doesn't "experience" any passage of time at c. As we clarified it is matter that occupies a slower framerate/increased "time" relative to light.

So I imagine the "big bang" as not happening a few billion years ago from the hypothetical perspective of "light" but rather "always happening" - a singular instant. As from lights perspective there is no billions of years separation.

So I imagine the big bang as not being located "ago". But rather being a "speed" or rate. One we are seoarated from by virtue of the fact that we are precipitant energy - ie matter. The tape slowed down, energy buled out into substance and spacetime stretched out into "billions of years and billions of astronomical units of distance".

You could sit as lumps of matter in a vast frigid void with mostly bugger all happening to disturb your peace.

And yet still, as lumps of matter, we have those aspects of our being - such as a gravitational field and a little bit of warm radiation - that do spread out from our sense of unchanging location at c. So the falling out of the general c flow is relative. — apokrisis

Yes I see what you mean.
The fact that matter cannot travel at the speed of light means it can interact with light. Because light can close the distance between something material and the source of the light. Whilst if matter could travel at lightspeed, light (energy) couldn't ever reach it. It would be a game of chase where the 2 are running at the same speed and thus no interaction could ever happen. No information could be exchanged. The lump of matter could not be "heated" or illuminated by the light energy as to experience illumination requires that light is reflected off a surface.

All this interaction between things/phenomena requires relativity. Change requires a variance in speeds.

Energy is such an unchanging Cause of change. According to the second law of thermodynamics, the total Energy (causal force) content of the universe is fixed, but as it causes physical changes, it can transform into Entropy (negative energy) and back again into Potential : the thermodynamic cycle — Gnomon

Yes! This makes sense thank you :)

It's quite amazing that energy has this ability to de-potentialise/become "substantial/substantiated" as matter going at a sub maximal speed. And be converted back to the speed of light again. But in essence it's quantity never changes. Just it's quality - what it's doing. The work of action or being acted upon in relative respect.

So I imagine the big bang as not being located "ago". But rather being a "speed" or rate. One we are seoarated from by virtue of the fact that we are precipitant energy - ie matter. The tape slowed down, energy buled out into substance and spacetime stretched out into "billions of years and billions of astronomical units of distance". — Benj96

Pretty much. I would argue time is best measured logarithmically to reflect that rapid slowdown. Everything was happening everywhere all at once, but even after half a second, it was quite transformed.

In those terms, time is telescoped so that it makes more sense. It takes about 40 magnitudes of scale expansion to reach even the "first second" of existence. And the next 50 magnitudes cover the consequent 10^107 seconds to the heat death or practical end of time.

M0 to M7 - Planck scale cohesion forms
M7 to M11 - Inflation epoch
M11 to M31 (with crossover at M21) - Electroweak era
M31 to M38 - Quark-gluon soup era
M38 to M43 - Hadron epoch kicks in
..and the first second has passed...
M43 to M44 - Lepton soup epoch
M44 to M46 - Nucleosynthesis is the next quick step
M46 to M55 - Photon dominated expansion era
M55 to M60 - Switch to matter dominated expansion
M60 to M90 – Dark energy takes over until the Heat Death
...and now the end has arrived after about 1 to the power of 100 years...

So the first second did feel like it moved at light speed. The rest after that has become the longest and slowest crawl.

And I'm currently playing with the equally unorthodox notion that Time is simply a measure of physical change due to the actions of Energy*2. One consequence of that way of thinking is to conclude that the expansion of the universe is not due to some mysterious Dark Energy, but merely to the increasing dimension of Time : — Gnomon

I agree. I never really has much time (excuse the pun) for the idea of dark energy. I think the sharp edge of occams razor can be put to this and as you said reduce it to simply a product of a simpler form of interaction without adding new components or variables (like dark energy) to explain away the misunderstanding.

For me time and space are linked in that at lightspeed neither "exist" in any substantial way. Every location and instant is unison. A singularity.
It is only when energy transforms itself into matter that time and distance even become relevant - they are emergent properties of 3D objects coming into existence. As things and stuff experience duration and occupy space.

Time for me is a product of conscious perception. As at lightspeed everything is "now". Whilst with matter to write down some memories as a relatively static medium and do some processing - comparing stable components of information exchange we can "store a past" and anticipate a future. You can only give chronology to things that don't happen instantaneously: everything, everywhere all at once.

... because physical things cannot reach these limits, does that mean these limits don't exist? What is the nature of their existence? — Benj96

Horizons "exist" as properties of facts (not things). They are both ever approachable and unreachable; encompassing, yet never encompassed. It doesnt makes sense to me to leap to the groundless supposition that 'more (faster) than everything else' and/or 'less (slower) than everything else' might not "exist".

So the first second did feel like it moved at light speed. The rest after that has become the longest and slowest crawl. — apokrisis

This amuses me because it gives a sort of satirical credence to "last Thursdayism". Everything happening, emerging and evolving so rapidly in a telescoping effect as you say that the big bang happened basically "very recently" and it is the time component expanding out that projects it backwards to a seemingly infinite temporospatial distance away.

Onto heat death. If energy cannot be destroyed, could we say that "cooling" of the universe is the sublimation of energy back into potential of some form? Perhaps when everything cools down so much that nothing moves anymore then time has effectively ceased and all energy must be pent up once again as a singularity. Otherwise we would have to say that energy is not conserved.

I think perhaps it is instead a constant interplay of matter time and space where the ratios change but the potential that transforms them from one state to another can never be destroyed.

Horizons "exist" as properties of facts (not things). They are both ever approachable and unreachable; encompassing, yet never encompassed. — 180 Proof

Interesting. I will likely be mulling this over several times. A bit like a rainbow then, you can chase it but the faster you chase the faster it escapes to the... Well...horizon. Just there out of reach always.

Onto heat death. If energy cannot be destroyed, could we say that "cooling" of the universe is the sublimation of energy back into potential of some form? — Benj96

Yep. The Big Bang was just going to be a spreading-cooling bath of radiation. So it was an accident that it got caught up in the phase transition turning it into a void full of gravitating dust. The appearance of matter is just one of those things will have to go through to get to where it was originally going.

All the crud will have to either be swept up in black holes and evaporated a return to radiation. Or it will have to flow across the cosmic event horizon and so fall out of communication because it’s effective speed has become supraluminal.

The Heat Death will arrive with out visible corner of the universe about double in size but now filled only by the blackbody radiation of the cosmic event horizon itself. There will be a “glow” of cosmic photons with a wavelength of the size of the visible universe. So the lowest and coldest energy state you could get.

At least this is the current mathematical sketch in its simplest terms.

There will be a “glow” of cosmic photons with a wavelength of the size of the visible universe. So the lowest and coldest energy state you could get. — apokrisis

We should probs wrap up well for that. Sounds chilly. Lol

Yes! This makes sense thank you :)

It's quite amazing that energy has this ability to de-potentialise/become "substantial/substantiated" as matter going at a sub maximal speed. And be converted back to the speed of light again. But in essence it's quantity never changes. Just it's quality - what it's doing. The work of action or being acted upon in relative respect. — Benj96

I'm surprised that unconventional statement made sense to you. From the mundane perspective of Materialism, Energy is imagined to be merely a transient property of elemental matter, and envisioned as a flowing substance of some kind. But from a cosmic viewpoint, Energy seems to be almost magical. Which may be why its role is down-played in the belief system of secular Naturalism.

Since I have been looking at Energy as a form of Universal Information (power to enform/transform)*1, I have discovered many other form/patterns that I never expected. For example, even Time may be a manifestation of multi-morphing Energy. Human societies have called the cause of Causation by many names, such as "Spiritual power" or "transmogrification". However, for my own philosophical purposes, I prefer to look at the power to cause change from the perspective of modern Information theory, since it sounds more secular & scientific, and less threatening.

What you called "the ability to de-potentialize" is what Aristotle defined as the power to Actualize. From Plato's Idealistic perspective, he might think of Energy as "the propensity to Realize" : to convert Ideal possibilities into Real things. Since Energy is understood as the cause of Motion (change in location) it makes sense to define Lightspeed (the speed limit of the world) in terms of Energy. But my comments above were off the top of my head, so not yet fully developed.

Regarding "Quantity" and "Quality", I would say that potential Energy is a subjective Qualia until it transforms/actualizes into objective quantifiable Mass/Matter. That's why my worldview is based on Enformationism instead of Materialism : matter is not fundamental, but contingent on the causal power of Energy/EnFormAction*2. :smile:


*1. Information as Energy :
The literal equivalence of physical energy and mental information is still a fringe notion among scientists. But it has many credentialed champions, including Paul Davies, editor of the book noted above. Energy = Information.
http://blog-glossary/energy.

*2. EnFormAction : the action of transforming
Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

I think the sharp edge of occams razor can be put to this and as you said reduce it to simply a product of a simpler form of interaction without adding new components or variables (like dark energy) to explain away the misunderstanding. — Benj96

Precisely! Scientists may be on a wild-goose chase as they look for some heretofore unknown particles (equivalent to photons) in order to explain the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Looking at cosmic change in terms of Energy/Time/Causation might avoid such inane questions as "what is the universe expanding into?", with no need to postulate mythical multiverses. :smile:

For me time and space are linked in that at lightspeed neither "exist" in any substantial way. — Benj96

Yes. Space-Time is not an objective thing, but a subjective interpretation of perception of measurable Matter & causal Energy. It's how we think of Being & Change. :nerd:
.

to where it was originally going — apokrisis

...and where it originally came from. Which still leaves the question, is unscientific infinitesimal probability a sufficient ultimate scientific answer to how everything appears from nothing?

Question 1: yes, something unchanging must be eternal. But to come into existence, as does light, is a change. Therefore, neither light, nor the speed of light (a property of light), is eternal. Question 2: if something is unchanging in some respect, than it cannot change in that respect. Light changes with respect to position, not velocity. We may conclude that there is not a union between what changes to an extreme, and what does not change, at least not in the same respect. For if there were unity therein, then what changes would not change and that is a contradiction.

Space-Time is not an objective thing... — Gnomon

:lol:

Which still leaves the question, is unscientific infinitesimal probability a sufficient ultimate scientific answer to how everything appears from nothing? — magritte

But my position is the opposite. Everything is self-cancelling itself towards nothing. The probability of that was so high that it the Big Bang was a story of exponential decay. Almost everything self-cancelled almost immediately. Very little was left in terms of energy density even after the first second. We are now into the asymptotic last flattening of that curve as the average density of the vacuum is a few hydrogen atoms per cubic metre and the temperature is a frigid 2.7 degrees above absolute zero.

Sorry about the slow response, I got COVID after my politicians assured me that there was no such thing anymore.

Everything is self-cancelling itself towards nothing. The probability of that was so high that it the Big Bang was a story of exponential decay. Almost everything self-cancelled almost immediately. Very little was left in terms of energy density even after the first second. We are now into the asymptotic last flattening of that curve as the average density of the vacuum is a few hydrogen atoms per cubic metre and the temperature is a frigid 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. — apokrisis

You are describing what is happening after the singular spark of universal creation. I am comparing before before to after after of the physical world or much more narrowly of the material world. From nothing came everything, and from everything will come nothing, given sufficient time. Matter is mortal.

I'm concerned with the logical impossibility past either end of the sentence. The fault may well be in gap in logic rather than a gap in nature, but either way we're missing something. Once hot inflation starts we're into physical logic, but before that there is no before, no logic, there is nothing. This nothing may be unknown physics but it goes beyond a mere epistemological problem of our not knowing just yet.

we have that which never changed in its entire existence. Completely unperturbed/stable. The most objective phenomenon possible. The most consistent, the most repeatably measured as the exact same [?]regardless of time[?] — Benj96

I am caught up tracing Plato's use of 'same' in the Republic, There are 597 of them I think. For the life of me I can't see how anyone ever could understand what any of them mean, either in ancient times or since. Not even Plato, and certainly not the more logically limited Aristotle.

The second half of the Parmenides dialogue is similarly inexplicable. It was inexplicable to Plato as well, so he let a mature self-assured 'Parmenides' character dogmatically 'explain' it to a young and wide-eyed 'Aristotle' character. After the first public dramatic reading of the original, there was undoubtedly a drunken riot in the courtyard of the Academy.

change vs stasis is a unity of opposites — apokrisis

I just noticed this brilliant post in your archives Thank you! If we could only understand what any of those four words ever mean!

To be the swiftest change is to have the least notion that there was anything other that could have been done except that abrupt something. — apokrisis

Plato referred to that as 'suddenly'. Something in time but outside of time, as a quantum shift. He didn't see how change (for us, as at the smallest scale) can happen any other way.
But in real life we are a heap of complex imperceptibly slow changes that add up to make my beard grow.

From nothing came everything, and from everything will come nothing, given sufficient time. Matter is mortal. I'm concerned with the logical impossibility past either end of the sentence. — magritte

First off, we can only talk about these things the best we can. But indeed, logic can be extended in the way CS Peirce extended with his sketch for a logic of vagueness.

So the "before" of both something and nothing is the third category that is simply a "vagueness" as logically defined. Peirce flipped the principle of noncontradiction to show this.

The PNC says it cannot be true both that "p is the case" and "p is not the case". Peirce says vagueness is the indeterminate state out of which such counterfactual definiteness can arise. Vagueness is that to which the PNC fails to apply in any definite fashion.

This concept of vagueness gives us a new ground for the emergence of a system of "time, space and matter". For the Universe to swim into concrete being out of nothing is already positing a too concrete kind of ground. Nothing is a very definite and determined kind of state when contrasted to the alternative of their being instead a something.

But vagueness sits easier with a notion of everythingness. If everything is happening, then that amounts to nothing happening effectively. If you imagine the Big Bang as infinite hot fluctuation, that is a pretty featureless or formless initial conditions. Nothing can really happen because everything happening is the most violent kind of disruption.

So if we want to do metaphysics and make a logical argument, Peirce's logic of vagueness takes us a step past the usual "something out of nothing" ontology. We have the deeper thing of the indeterminacy that must be the ground of any consequent acts of determination.

Vagueness doesn't clear everything up of course. But it does give logical rigour to a way of thinking that has been around ever since Anaximander's cosmology of the Apeiron. And it fits the needs of cosmology today by allowing the Universe to have the kind of quantum origin where the beginning is just a "state of indeterminacy" – the vagueness of the "quantum realm" before spacetime and material content emerged as the two determinately opposed aspects of a system of cosmic being.

if we want to do metaphysics and make a logical argument, Peirce's logic of vagueness takes us a step past the usual "something out of nothing" ontology. — apokrisis

I agree that logic is not limited to this or that logic.

The most restricted logic I can think of is Parmenides' of the purely formal unique part-less featureless simple continuous motionless timeless One. With or without extent in space, It either is (logically exists) or not, end-of-logic. The advantage of this logic is its clarity simplicity wide-ranging applicability and rigorousness.

Plato extended this pure binary logic of a One fairly successfully to the more complex logical world of the many, the Forms. Then he attempts to extend binary logic to special classes of Platonic particulars through their theorized logical participation in the Forms.

Here come binary relations of many different types of objects. The pairs range in type from related objects, to related properties along some dimension, to two completely unrelated objects. These pairs are in 'opposition' (of sorts).

But as one would suspect they are not at all alike in their logical relation. This is looser binary logic, the application has become vague and ambiguous. Apples and oranges are both same and not-same depending on their basket. Simmias is both short and tall. Short/not-short are not the same as short/shorter or not-tall/tall.

Even worse, they leave room in the middle for some silent majority of the average, and for none-of-the-above. That's an implicitly 4-valued logic masquerading as binary.

This makes all ancient logic difficult to read unless additional logical assumption are publicly made in interpretation that are both clear and acceptable to other readers.

CS Peirce extended with his sketch for a logic of vagueness.
So the "before" of both something and nothing is the third category that is simply a "vagueness" as logically defined. Peirce flipped the principle of noncontradiction to show this.

The PNC says it cannot be true both that "p is the case" and "p is not the case". Peirce says vagueness is the indeterminate state out of which such counterfactual definiteness can arise. Vagueness is that to which the PNC fails to apply in any definite fashion. — apokrisis

Aristotle simplified logic to manage his material objects. By Pierce's time logic was removed from the ancient complications, but closer to Parmenides' original implicit PNC, this time expressed with mathematical rigor. Now the problem was seen in the opposite direction -- how can logic be expanded in scope (power) to meet the needs physicists, yet remain analytically rigorous enough to be reliable. Suggestions for 3- 4- and other valued logic have always been made but mathematicians are not easily moved away from what works.

Light changes with respect to position — NotAristotle

However light is massless. So where exactly is "it" in the sense of being a thing with a position in space.

I think this is relative. In the sense that light only appears to change position relative to that whuhc does have a position (that which has mass and thus occupies a point in space).

I believe that change can be constant. Which seems like a contradiction but is not. Because whilst change does lead to new forms, the act of change itself is constant.
The forms realised change, the act of realisation does not change as it is a constant process

Okay, but why does something need to be an "it" to have a position in space? Why do only things with mass get a position in space? Surely even something with no mass can occupy a "point in space."