You have to remember that the quantum effects I was talking about owe nothing to GUTs or quantum gravity. These big-bang epoch events all took place within a very small volume; quantum effects dominated. And nobody doubts the correctness ofquantum mechanics on small scales - in fact the transistors which make your computer work depend upon them.
I'm well aware that this "something out of nothing" theory is spiritually unsatisfying for those who need to feel that the universe has a "purpose" which can make sense to humans.
Ontological arguments can be logically contructed within both theological and cosmological frameworks, and both require some assumptions to be made. The difference is that the assumptions acceptable to physicists are generally rather more economical than those acceptable to priests.
The whole point of the quantum cosmogony I wrote about is that it achieves consistency with our poor but experimentally verified understanding of quantum physics without actually requiring the intervention of any external agency. Without requiring the pre-existence of anything in fact. It doesn't require our universe to be unique or even objectively real. You can't get much more economical than that.
What plain everyday quantum physics tells us is that it is quite plausible for the Universe to have been formed out of nothing. Given that, by Ockham's razor it seems most likely that this is precisely the case. Why look for any additional cause if there is no evidence for one, and self-consistency can be achieved without it?
On the anthropic principle, Polkinghorne missed the point entirely. If all possible universes exist (as quantum theory demands), then our finding ourselves in a universe like this is hardly a free lunch. Every kind of universe is available but only a universe like this one could have produced us. So naturally this is the kind of universe we perceive as we could exist in this form in no other kind of universe. There is nothing surprising, fortuitous or mystical about it, it is simply inevitable and required.
If you are not convinced by the Anthropic argument then I beseech you to read J.D. Barrow & F.J. Tipler "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" for a compelling and very tightly argued account of the theory.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Ah but as every mathematician knows, there are different sizes of infinity. An asymptotically approached infinity isn't as big as an exponentially approached infinity.
I'm really just arguing for the sake of it.
You may well be right about this, but it seems to me that if the density and expansion energy of the Universe are exactly balanced then KE+PE=0 and a finite separation is approached.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I understand your frustration but it's only because you don't get it. You are assuming, incorrectly, that there is some measure of time which exists independently of the universe. There isn't, anymore than there is space "outside" the universe. Time and space are the universe.
What Hawking is saying with this assertion is that, looking at the shape of the Universe near the singularity, we see that...
In his book Hawking drew a 2D diagram of the universe (one dimension of space, one dimension of time). It is something like a "V" as expected. But there is no tip to the triangle, instead it's rounded off and doesn't actually touch the projected position of the singularity. Hence, near the singularity (in time) the shape of spacetime is curved like a hypersphere. If you follow a geodesic back through time to the earliest point, you find yourself at the 4-dimensional equivalent of the North Pole. If you continue without changing direction you will find yourself travelling forward in time again. There is no "earlier" time.
If you want to know where it might have come from, see my other (longer) post.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
You're right in that a repulsive "cosmological constant" force greater than gravitational attraction - if lambda does indeed have such a value - would force the universe open.
IIRC the term "flat" was used to describe a universe with a time evolution that was neither open nor closed. You seem to be implying that the term "flat" actually refers to spatial geometry rather than spacetime geometry, and that the correlation of this word with such neither-open-nor-closed universes only applies if lambda=0.
If so, then what is the recommended terminology for a universe of indeterminate lambda which is neither open nor closed?
Where in the hell does the Cosmological Constant come from?
I think I read somewhere that it's the pressure created by the energy of the vacuum; sounds like those virtual particles are forcing space apart in a manner not too unlike the original primordial seed.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I know what you're referring to, but this isn't what I meant.
In Tipler's theory (which mainly focuses on our fate in a closed universe) we utilise the infinite energy density of the near-big-crunch to perform an infinite number of computational steps on a massively parallel computer whose computational states are stored as energy levels in each point in spacetime. There are a lot of rather speculative assumptions which would have to be correct before this can work (and Tipler's main justification seems to be "because it has to be so").
But computation in the flat universe scenario I was referring to only requires that the energy requirement of computation decreases faster than the ambient temperature (and it ought to; this is based on some fairly solid physics).
Although the amount of available energy is limited and dimishing as a flat universe approaches equilibrium, the universe still has an infinite time in which to process information assuming that there is still a small supply of energy.
The computation would proceed very very slowly after a while, but over an infinite period of time, an infinite number of steps can be performed. Emulated beings running on this computer would not notice the slowness of their consciousness with respect to the passage of absolute time, since their "clock" would run at the same rate as the computation.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Agh! Read my longest post, why don't you. This question has been answered in more precise and logical terms than you are offering. There are certainly better answers than a big piece of matter hanging around for a period of time and then spontaneously exploding. Sheesh.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I haven't heard this before. Sounds like you're saying Ptolemy's orrery with all the retrograde motion etc. was just as valid as the model NASA are using!
Where does the uncertainty principle come into this anyway? The consensus seems to be that the current understanding of general relativity doesn't have any quantum implications (and that's another problem).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Where it comes from, I don't know and don't want to hazard a guess. But the equations contain it!
Where does it come from? It comes from thin air. Einstein inserted it as a convenient bugger factor to make his general relativity equations balance, because he didn't know the universe was expanding. When Hubble's results were accepted, he took lambda out again. Now some other guys have put it back in.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
But if the new research supports Omega=1, and you don't buy lambda (cosmological constant, gravitational repulsion built into spacetime) as the missing factor, where does the missing density come from?
You're in good company I guess. Einstein believed the cosmological constant was the biggest mistake of his career.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Temperature is a function of both the average energy of the particles (in the case of molecules this is generally kinetic energy) and the number of these energised particles per unit volume. When a volume expands and pressure remains constant, temperature goes down as the energy per unit volume decreases.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's a misconception or a misinterpretation; the "before" state is not only undefined, it is in fact as meaningless to talk of a "before" as it is of "North of the North Pole". If you can be bothered, look for my other posts on this article tonight, I just wrote a long one about this particular point.
Superstrings are supposed to be topological defects caused by stresses on spacetime as it inflated unevenly (consider how quantum fluctuations in the original matter/energy distribution would have affected the inflation rate, it would not have been precisely uniform).
"Flat" doesn't imply space is flat like a tabletop, it means that spacetime is unbounded but finite, like the 2-dimensional surface of a sphere (or even more like the 3-dimensional solid surface of a hypersphere).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's a misconception or a misinterpretation; the "before" state is not only undefined, it is in fact as meaningless to talk of a "before" as it is of "North of the North Pole". If you can be bothered, look for my other posts on this article tonight, I just wrote a long one about this particular point.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Stephen Hawking's view is that there is no "Before the big bang". It's a meaningless concept; exactly like saying "Further North than the North Pole". That is, 4-dimensional spacetime is tightly curved near the singularity.
Likewise, there is no "outside the universe". Imagine being an ant trapped inside a sealed jar. You could walk around the inner surface of the glass forever, perhaps often inadvertently returning to your starting point, but there is no edge or opening you can reach which leads to the outside. If the jar has a hole, that's almost analogous to a wormhole leading outside of our universe - but it's not good to push an analogy too far;o)
I'm not too keen on the superparticle idea. It's not really in favour any more, it was only mooted because no-one really had any better ideas.
The inflation theories which also predicted this "flat" result are compatible with a wide range of starting conditions.
One idea is that our universe is a so-called "baby" universe which has budded off another, older region of spacetime when some small domain in that original continuum underwent inflation. But this is ontologically unsatisfying because all it does is postpone the question. Where did the "parent" universe come from? Back to square one.
Well, either it always existed, or it too was a baby of some other preceding parent, and so on and so on, perhaps infinitely far back into the past. Perhaps there was no beginning, there has always been a universe endlessly spawning children.
But I did hear one speculation as part of a lecture about inflation, and this one is really cool:
"Before" there was just this timeless, dimensionless void. Not like spacetime, which has both dimension and duration. And not really "before": in the sense that this nothing could be said to have any existence at all, it "always" exists.
Anyway; in this void there was a quantum fluctuation. A fluctuation in what? Consider that in a void without time or space there can be no mass or energy and basically no physics at all of any kind. But there is an obscure branch of quantum theory which claims that quantum probability is the most fundamental aspect of reality, more closely related to abstract mathematics and information theory than anything crudely physical.
So: there was an infinitesimally small but still finite probability that anything could exist. To say that something can happen in such a realm is to be certain that it does happen. In the sense that anything could be said to "happen" at all. I imagine that events which are more likely happen more frequently then less likely events.
There was finite probability that a blob of matter/energy could exist, and so it did exist. And in springing into existence, it generated time and space before it because matter/energy needs something to exist in. Since the spacetime was created on demand from nothing, so to speak, the blob would initially have (near)zero dimension and thus (near) infinite density and temperature. It thus expands rapidly, cooling as it goes...and the universe is born.
Some short time later a critical temperature is reached, a phase transition takes place and the new universe inflates rapidly creating much, much more matter as it goes. The initial seed that popped into existence doesn't have to be very big at all; virtually all of the present mass of the universe was supposedly created during inflation, according to the theory.
An inevitable consequence of the theory is that what can happen once can happen an infinite number of times. There would be an infinite number of alternative universes created out of the void in a similar way, but they need have no connection of any kind to this one or to each other.
What is most interesting of all is that when you examine the concept of the original void, you find that what you are looking at doesn't have any "real" existence at all, it is merely an abstract mathematical space of pure probability. In fact, it is the space of all possible universal wave functions and our universe is the instantiation of one of these.
The universes that spring from it are all merely possible universes. None are real in any universally objective sense because there is no external platform from which a universally objective measurement can be made. Our universe only exists from the point of view of its inhabitants. Or, to put it another way, to talk of "instantiation" of any universal wave function is meaningless. The wave function is simply a potential for existence, and all possible wave functions are equally valid. Within the context of the void, "exists" is indistinguishable from "could exist". All universes that could exist therefore do exist, within their own frame of reference.
To make such statements is all meaningless philosophical speculation of course. You simply can't describe the nature of existence and reality in conventional human terms. It only make sense when you look at it from a quantum theory standpoint.
Pah. Sorry, I could go on like this all night and get nowhere. Time to press the "submit" button...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Not really, the universe will continue expanding infinitely and eventually everything will cool and become a dark, endless void.
Wronggg! That's Omega1. In a flat universe the expansion slows asymptotically, so it has a maximum size that it never quite reaches. Thus, cooling also slows; the universe as a whole can only cool as it expands, so if there is a maximum size then there is also a minimum temperature. However, entropy does increase so the local temperature differences get all smoothed out. When there are no more energy gradients, you can't do any work.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
well actually the big bang theory was descredited about 5 years ago. The doppler effect theory it was based on was proved to be uncontinuous across the stars that were "moving". Instead there is a group of physicists, including Stephen Hawkins, that are basing the origin of our universe on sound waves, and they figure they will have a complete theory in another 15 years on our true cosmology!
What kind of comics have you been reading? I don't think you've understood a word about anything. The man's name is Stephen Hawking, not Hawkins; he has not rejected the big bang, it is still the dominant theory of cosmogony, and he is not "basing the origin of the Universe on sound waves" or anything like it.
How unfortunate it is that humans should be able to speak and write without necessarily possessing any higher brain functions. I apologise to all here for trolling this guy, but my goodness, What a complete twit.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Which iteration of Big Bang -> Big Crunch are we in? Or are there infinite iterations?
No no no! Omega=1, a flat universe, means no "big crunch", and no "iterations". The universe we are in would have just one epoch of expansion (punctuated by inflation) from big bang to infinity, with the expansion eventually slowing to an infinitesimal rate but never completely stopping.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That statement doesn't make sense because we are not talking about space being flat, we are talking about spacetime being flat. In fact the geometry of spacetime itself dictates how the universe evolves over time. In a nutshell:
A "closed" universe is one which has omega>1; the average density is sufficient for gravity eventually to halt the expansion and thus the universe recollapses down to a final "big crunch".
An "open" universe is one which has omegapredict omega=1, gained popularity. In such a universe the energy of expansion and the universe's internal gravitational attraction are exactly balanced. The expansion of the universe continues forever but slows asymptotically, almost but never quite reaching zero.
Our ultimate fate in a flat universe is dictated by entropy. Eventually all the energy will be evenly spread out as heat, and without energy gradients no processes which require the conversion of energy can occur (such as life, or indeed any sort of process which can perform computation).
Fortunately, it's been calculated that as the universe cools, the energy requirement for computation decreases. In theory, an infinite amount of computation can be performed. Therefore, artificial intelligences simulated in an appropriate computer can still experience a subjectively infinite life span.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
One of the good things that can be said about the current government is that their constitutional changes might make constructive opposition both more common and more popular.
Only if they do introduce proportional representation. And while it appears they will maintain a large majority for at least another term, there is really no pressure for them to do so.
Of course the Tories were dictatorial enough during their own time in office but taking recent events into account I don't really see the current government's behaviour as being any better.
What this tells us is simply that a government with a strong majority is simply a bad thing, whatever its colour. I don't think it's justified to claim that effective opposition paralyses government. What it does is to limit ideological excesses and to ensure that the only legislation that gets passed is that upon which a cross-pary consensus can be reached. There must be modern democracies with proportional representation who have effective government, and whose populations don't have to suffer being swung between opposite radical political philosophies every 10-15 years.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
They're not getting away with it because they're Labour, they're getting away with it because they have a huge majority in the Commons.
Worse still, the Conservatives were so badly smashed to bits in the last election that they are unlikely to recover in time to fight the next election effectively. William Hague is an ineffective "second-tier" leader, and all the old Tory talent has either retired, been kicked out of office or relegated to the back benches because their views on European Union and the Single Currency don't fit with the standard party line.
Worse, the repercussions from old scandals are still resounding (al-Fayed denouncing Neil Hamilton in court the other day, Jeffrey Archer being dropped from the Mayor of London Candidacy because of a lie he told years ago).
With no effective opposition we are little better than a one-party state. And this very Government has shown repeatedly since they came to office that they are not to be a government of consensus nor a protector of minority rights. Witness their offhand treatment of widows, pensioners, the disabled and even one-man companies in the Welfare Reform Bill. Despite massive representations from the public to their MPs and plenty of opposition in the Lords, the Government showed their teeth and the Lords had no legal right to refuse.
A few days later the hereditary peers (the ones who didn't get there via party political sponsorship) were all kicked out forever. That's an unprecedented constitutional change.
So not only do we presently lack an effective opposition party, we no longer even have any effective upper house. The government is now planning monstrous legislation and there is no-one to stop them.
The British are notoriously apolitical, especially about abstract priciples like freedom; there will be no uprising as long as the people are fed.
I'd emigrate, but where to?
Bugger.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
SuSE's much-vaunted 60-day installation support isn't worth a great deal IMHO. For example there are a lot of things such as basic network services which aren't covered even when their configuration files are maintained by the SuSEconfig utility (part of YaST). At least this was the case fairly recently. It's not too surprising, really: if you want good technical support with any OS you have to pay through the nose for it.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
In other words, unless "the man" says otherwise.
I've no doubt a powerful government could easily use those exclusions to justify all sorts of invasive behaviour. And secret government security organisations don't tend to pay much heed to the law anyway.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
And that's the problem with this too-wide definition of a hack that we're working with here. If you accept al lof the suggestions that have been made as being representative then "hack" is hardly any different than "do" or "make".
So judging by the current definition, the greatest "hack" ever surely has to be... the Universe itself.
As Londo Mollari would say: Grrreat Maker!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's the worst misquote I ever heard. Ok, you kind of captured the spirit of it but that's about all.
Here's the original (found in the alt.quotations archives); it's from one Martin Niemoeller, a prisoner of Dachau in 1944:
In Germany, they came first for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists but I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time nobody was left to speak up.
Most notably the original author refers to political and religious groups but does not mention anyone of abnormal gender orientation. I guess in the end Niemoeller felt sorry for most of the groups he's failed to support. But not those he saw as perverts.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Slashdot Mirror
You have to remember that the quantum effects I was talking about owe nothing to GUTs or quantum gravity. These big-bang epoch events all took place within a very small volume; quantum effects dominated. And nobody doubts the correctness ofquantum mechanics on small scales - in fact the transistors which make your computer work depend upon them.
I'm well aware that this "something out of nothing" theory is spiritually unsatisfying for those who need to feel that the universe has a "purpose" which can make sense to humans.
Ontological arguments can be logically contructed within both theological and cosmological frameworks, and both require some assumptions to be made. The difference is that the assumptions acceptable to physicists are generally rather more economical than those acceptable to priests.
The whole point of the quantum cosmogony I wrote about is that it achieves consistency with our poor but experimentally verified understanding of quantum physics without actually requiring the intervention of any external agency. Without requiring the pre-existence of anything in fact. It doesn't require our universe to be unique or even objectively real. You can't get much more economical than that.
What plain everyday quantum physics tells us is that it is quite plausible for the Universe to have been formed out of nothing. Given that, by Ockham's razor it seems most likely that this is precisely the case. Why look for any additional cause if there is no evidence for one, and self-consistency can be achieved without it?
On the anthropic principle, Polkinghorne missed
the point entirely. If all possible universes exist (as quantum theory demands), then our finding ourselves in a universe like this is hardly a free lunch. Every kind of universe is available but only a universe like this one could have produced us. So naturally this is the kind of universe we perceive as we could exist in this form in no other kind of universe. There is nothing surprising, fortuitous or mystical about it, it is simply inevitable and required.
If you are not convinced by the Anthropic argument then I beseech you to read J.D. Barrow & F.J. Tipler "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" for a compelling and very tightly argued account of the theory.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Ah but as every mathematician knows, there are different sizes of infinity. An asymptotically approached infinity isn't as big as an exponentially approached infinity.
I'm really just arguing for the sake of it.
You may well be right about this, but it seems to me that if the density and expansion energy of the Universe are exactly balanced then KE+PE=0 and a finite separation is approached.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I understand your frustration but it's only because you don't get it. You are assuming, incorrectly, that there is some measure of time which exists independently of the universe. There isn't, anymore than there is space "outside" the universe. Time and space are the universe.
What Hawking is saying with this assertion is that, looking at the shape of the Universe near the singularity, we see that...
In his book Hawking drew a 2D diagram of the universe (one dimension of space, one dimension of time). It is something like a "V" as expected. But there is no tip to the triangle, instead it's rounded off and doesn't actually touch the projected position of the singularity. Hence, near the singularity (in time) the shape of spacetime is curved like a hypersphere. If you follow a geodesic back through time to the earliest point, you find yourself at the 4-dimensional equivalent of the North Pole. If you continue without changing direction you will find yourself travelling forward in time again. There is no "earlier" time.
If you want to know where it might have come from, see my other (longer) post.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
You're right in that a repulsive "cosmological constant" force greater than gravitational attraction - if lambda does indeed have such a value - would force the universe open.
IIRC the term "flat" was used to describe a universe with a time evolution that was neither open nor closed. You seem to be implying that the term "flat" actually refers to spatial geometry rather than spacetime geometry, and that the correlation of this word with such neither-open-nor-closed universes only applies if lambda=0.
If so, then what is the recommended terminology for a universe of indeterminate lambda which is neither open nor closed?
Where in the hell does the Cosmological Constant come from?
I think I read somewhere that it's the pressure created by the energy of the vacuum; sounds like those virtual particles are forcing space apart in a manner not too unlike the original primordial seed.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I know what you're referring to, but this isn't what I meant.
In Tipler's theory (which mainly focuses on our fate in a closed universe) we utilise the infinite energy density of the near-big-crunch to perform an infinite number of computational steps on a massively parallel computer whose computational states are stored as energy levels in each point in spacetime. There are a lot of rather speculative assumptions which would have to be correct before this can work (and Tipler's main justification seems to be "because it has to be so").
But computation in the flat universe scenario I was referring to only requires that the energy requirement of computation decreases faster than the ambient temperature (and it ought to; this is based on some fairly solid physics).
Although the amount of available energy is limited and dimishing as a flat universe approaches equilibrium, the universe still has an infinite time in which to process information assuming that there is still a small supply of energy.
The computation would proceed very very slowly after a while, but over an infinite period of time, an infinite number of steps can be performed. Emulated beings running on this computer would not notice the slowness of their consciousness with respect to the passage of absolute time, since their "clock" would run at the same rate as the computation.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Agh! Read my longest post, why don't you. This question has been answered in more precise and logical terms than you are offering. There are certainly better answers than a big piece of matter hanging around for a period of time and then spontaneously exploding. Sheesh.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I haven't heard this before. Sounds like you're saying Ptolemy's orrery with all the retrograde motion etc. was just as valid as the model NASA are using!
Where does the uncertainty principle come into this anyway? The consensus seems to be that the current understanding of general relativity doesn't have any quantum implications (and that's another problem).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Where it comes from, I don't know and don't want to hazard a guess. But the equations contain it!
Where does it come from? It comes from thin air. Einstein inserted it as a convenient bugger factor to make his general relativity equations balance, because he didn't know the universe was expanding. When Hubble's results were accepted, he took lambda out again. Now some other guys have put it back in.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Nice post, well stated.
But if the new research supports Omega=1, and you don't buy lambda (cosmological constant, gravitational repulsion built into spacetime) as the missing factor, where does the missing density come from?
You're in good company I guess. Einstein believed the cosmological constant was the biggest mistake of his career.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Ah bugger, I pressed the button too quickly.
Temperature is a function of both the average energy of the particles (in the case of molecules this is generally kinetic energy) and the number of these energised particles per unit volume. When a volume expands and pressure remains constant, temperature goes down as the energy per unit volume decreases.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
No, "cool" means they aren't moving about so much.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's a misconception or a misinterpretation; the "before" state is not only undefined, it is in fact as meaningless to talk of a "before" as it is of "North of the North Pole". If you can be bothered, look for my other posts on this article tonight, I just wrote a long one about this particular point.
Superstrings are supposed to be topological defects caused by stresses on spacetime as it inflated unevenly (consider how quantum fluctuations in the original matter/energy distribution would have affected the inflation rate, it would not have been precisely uniform).
"Flat" doesn't imply space is flat like a tabletop, it means that spacetime is unbounded but finite, like the 2-dimensional surface of a sphere (or even more like the 3-dimensional solid surface of a hypersphere).
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's a misconception or a misinterpretation; the "before" state is not only undefined, it is in fact as meaningless to talk of a "before" as it is of "North of the North Pole". If you can be bothered, look for my other posts on this article tonight, I just wrote a long one about this particular point.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Stephen Hawking's view is that there is no "Before the big bang". It's a meaningless concept; exactly like saying "Further North than the North Pole". That is, 4-dimensional spacetime is tightly curved near the singularity.
;o)
Likewise, there is no "outside the universe". Imagine being an ant trapped inside a sealed jar. You could walk around the inner surface of the glass forever, perhaps often inadvertently returning to your starting point, but there is no edge or opening you can reach which leads to the outside. If the jar has a hole, that's almost analogous to a wormhole leading outside of our universe - but it's not good to push an analogy too far
I'm not too keen on the superparticle idea. It's not really in favour any more, it was only mooted because no-one really had any better ideas.
The inflation theories which also predicted this "flat" result are compatible with a wide range of starting conditions.
One idea is that our universe is a so-called "baby" universe which has budded off another, older region of spacetime when some small domain in that original continuum underwent inflation. But this is ontologically unsatisfying because all it does is postpone the question. Where did the "parent" universe come from? Back to square one.
Well, either it always existed, or it too was a baby of some other preceding parent, and so on and so on, perhaps infinitely far back into the past. Perhaps there was no beginning, there has always been a universe endlessly spawning children.
But I did hear one speculation as part of a lecture about inflation, and this one is really cool:
"Before" there was just this timeless, dimensionless void. Not like spacetime, which has both dimension and duration. And not really "before": in the sense that this nothing could be said to have any existence at all, it "always" exists.
Anyway; in this void there was a quantum fluctuation. A fluctuation in what? Consider that in a void without time or space there can be no mass or energy and basically no physics at all of any kind. But there is an obscure branch of quantum theory which claims that quantum probability is the most fundamental aspect of reality, more closely related to abstract mathematics and information theory than anything crudely physical.
So: there was an infinitesimally small but still finite probability that anything could exist. To say that something can happen in such a realm is to be certain that it does happen. In the sense that anything could be said to "happen" at all. I imagine that events which are more likely happen more frequently then less likely events.
There was finite probability that a blob of matter/energy could exist, and so it did exist. And in springing into existence, it generated time and space before it because matter/energy needs something to exist in. Since the spacetime was created on demand from nothing, so to speak, the blob would initially have (near)zero dimension and thus (near) infinite density and temperature. It thus expands rapidly, cooling as it goes...and the universe is born.
Some short time later a critical temperature is reached, a phase transition takes place and the new universe inflates rapidly creating much, much more matter as it goes. The initial seed that popped into existence doesn't have to be very big at all; virtually all of the present mass of the universe was supposedly created during inflation, according to the theory.
An inevitable consequence of the theory is that what can happen once can happen an infinite number of times. There would be an infinite number of alternative universes created out of the void in a similar way, but they need have no connection of any kind to this one or to each other.
What is most interesting of all is that when you examine the concept of the original void, you find that what you are looking at doesn't have any "real" existence at all, it is merely an abstract mathematical space of pure probability. In fact, it is the space of all possible universal wave functions and our universe is the instantiation of one of these.
The universes that spring from it are all merely possible universes. None are real in any universally objective sense because there is no external platform from which a universally objective measurement can be made. Our universe only exists from the point of view of its inhabitants. Or, to put it another way, to talk of "instantiation" of any universal wave function is meaningless. The wave function is simply a potential for existence, and all possible wave functions are equally valid. Within the context of the void, "exists" is indistinguishable from "could exist". All universes that could exist therefore do exist, within their own frame of reference.
To make such statements is all meaningless philosophical speculation of course. You simply can't describe the nature of existence and reality in conventional human terms. It only make sense when you look at it from a quantum theory standpoint.
Pah. Sorry, I could go on like this all night and get nowhere. Time to press the "submit" button...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Damn HTML disappeared my relation. What I typed was: "Wronggg" That's Omega less than 1."
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Not really, the universe will continue expanding infinitely and eventually everything will cool and become a dark, endless void.
Wronggg! That's Omega1. In a flat universe the expansion slows asymptotically, so it has a maximum size that it never quite reaches. Thus, cooling also slows; the universe as a whole can only cool as it expands, so if there is a maximum size then there is also a minimum temperature. However, entropy does increase so the local temperature differences get all smoothed out. When there are no more energy gradients, you can't do any work.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
well actually the big bang theory was descredited about 5 years ago. The doppler effect theory it was based on was proved to be uncontinuous across the stars that were "moving". Instead there is a group of physicists, including Stephen Hawkins, that are basing the origin of our universe on sound waves, and they figure they will have a complete theory in another 15 years on our true cosmology!
What kind of comics have you been reading? I don't think you've understood a word about anything. The man's name is Stephen Hawking, not Hawkins; he has not rejected the big bang, it is still the dominant theory of cosmogony, and he is not "basing the origin of the Universe on sound waves" or anything like it.
How unfortunate it is that humans should be able to speak and write without necessarily possessing any higher brain functions. I apologise to all here for trolling this guy, but my goodness, What a complete twit.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Which iteration of Big Bang -> Big Crunch are we in? Or are there infinite iterations?
No no no! Omega=1, a flat universe, means no "big crunch", and no "iterations". The universe we are in would have just one epoch of expansion (punctuated by inflation) from big bang to infinity, with the expansion eventually slowing to an infinitesimal rate but never completely stopping.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That statement doesn't make sense because we are not talking about space being flat, we are talking about spacetime being flat. In fact the geometry of spacetime itself dictates how the universe evolves over time. In a nutshell:
A "closed" universe is one which has omega>1; the average density is sufficient for gravity eventually to halt the expansion and thus the universe recollapses down to a final "big crunch".
An "open" universe is one which has omegapredict omega=1, gained popularity. In such a universe the energy of expansion and the universe's internal gravitational attraction are exactly balanced. The expansion of the universe continues forever but slows asymptotically, almost but never quite reaching zero.
Our ultimate fate in a flat universe is dictated by entropy. Eventually all the energy will be evenly spread out as heat, and without energy gradients no processes which require the conversion of energy can occur (such as life, or indeed any sort of process which can perform computation).
Fortunately, it's been calculated that as the universe cools, the energy requirement for computation decreases. In theory, an infinite amount of computation can be performed. Therefore, artificial intelligences simulated in an appropriate computer can still experience a subjectively infinite life span.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
One of the good things that can be said about the current government is that their constitutional changes might make constructive opposition both more common and more popular.
Only if they do introduce proportional representation. And while it appears they will maintain a large majority for at least another term, there is really no pressure for them to do so.
Of course the Tories were dictatorial enough during their own time in office but taking recent events into account I don't really see the current government's behaviour as being any better.
What this tells us is simply that a government with a strong majority is simply a bad thing, whatever its colour. I don't think it's justified to claim that effective opposition paralyses government. What it does is to limit ideological excesses and to ensure that the only legislation that gets passed is that upon which a cross-pary consensus can be reached. There must be modern democracies with proportional representation who have effective government, and whose populations don't have to suffer being swung between opposite radical political philosophies every 10-15 years.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
They're not getting away with it because they're Labour, they're getting away with it because they have a huge majority in the Commons.
Worse still, the Conservatives were so badly smashed to bits in the last election that they are unlikely to recover in time to fight the next election effectively. William Hague is an ineffective "second-tier" leader, and all the old Tory talent has either retired, been kicked out of office or relegated to the back benches because their views on European Union and the Single Currency don't fit with the standard party line.
Worse, the repercussions from old scandals are still resounding (al-Fayed denouncing Neil Hamilton in court the other day, Jeffrey Archer being dropped from the Mayor of London Candidacy because of a lie he told years ago).
With no effective opposition we are little better than a one-party state. And this very Government has shown repeatedly since they came to office that they are not to be a government of consensus nor a protector of minority rights. Witness their offhand treatment of widows, pensioners, the disabled and even one-man companies in the Welfare Reform Bill. Despite massive representations from the public to their MPs and plenty of opposition in the Lords, the Government showed their teeth and the Lords had no legal right to refuse.
A few days later the hereditary peers (the ones who didn't get there via party political sponsorship) were all kicked out forever. That's an unprecedented constitutional change.
So not only do we presently lack an effective opposition party, we no longer even have any effective upper house. The government is now planning monstrous legislation and there is no-one to stop them.
The British are notoriously apolitical, especially about abstract priciples like freedom; there will be no uprising as long as the people are fed.
I'd emigrate, but where to?
Bugger.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
SuSE's much-vaunted 60-day installation support isn't worth a great deal IMHO. For example there are a lot of things such as basic network services which aren't covered even when their configuration files are maintained by the SuSEconfig utility (part of YaST). At least this was the case fairly recently. It's not too surprising, really: if you want good technical support with any OS you have to pay through the nose for it.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
In other words, unless "the man" says otherwise.
I've no doubt a powerful government could easily use those exclusions to justify all sorts of invasive behaviour. And secret government security organisations don't tend to pay much heed to the law anyway.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
And that's the problem with this too-wide definition of a hack that we're working with here. If you accept al lof the suggestions that have been made as being representative then "hack" is hardly any different than "do" or "make".
So judging by the current definition, the greatest "hack" ever surely has to be... the Universe itself.
As Londo Mollari would say: Grrreat Maker!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Here's the original (found in the alt.quotations archives); it's from one Martin Niemoeller, a prisoner of Dachau in 1944:
Most notably the original author refers to political and religious groups but does not mention anyone of abnormal gender orientation. I guess in the end Niemoeller felt sorry for most of the groups he's failed to support. But not those he saw as perverts.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction