I think that you don’t properly grasp Lynd’s model.
You and I are obliged to live our lives again and again in identical fashion. Without a mere change. So enjoy it! and don’t panic…
Cheers
Giannis

I am writing this response because Peter Lynds’ theory, if valid, utterly destroys the one final micropscopic shard of hope that I’ve clung to in my darkest hours all of these years — namely, the idea that there had to be something before the Big Bang to cause it to happen; that even though science could condense all of the universe into one tiny speck, it still couldn’t explain how that speck got there.

But here’s the thing: I don’t see how his theory resolves this. It seems to me (and again, what the hell do I know?) that he is simply saying that the Big Bang itself can be explained as a consequence of the Big Crunch; that the crunch caused the bang, and that an eternal crunch/bang cycle is playing out with no start or end. To me, this just seems like a vastly more complicated version of the existing Big Bang theory; instead of one Big Bang, he says there have been an infinite number. But doesn’t the same contradiction still exist — how the “materials” (for lack of a better term, since I don’t really know any) that make up the “speck” that explodes during the Big Bang to create the universe ever got there in the first place? How was nothing created from something?

One previous poster tried to resolve this up above, and said that making something from nothing is logical. His reasoning seemed suspect to me, but I’m basing this on an entry level Logic class I took in college (plus my own B.S. detector), not any meaningful knowledge of physics.

Anyway, I’m not sure why I’m even writing this. It’s an old thread and I doubt it will be seen. And my instincts tell me that Peter is probably right, simply because my instincts have always told me that there must be some scientific explanation for the whole nothing-from-something contradiction that I’ve clung to. Every other reason for believing in some supernatural order that I’ve toyed with has been discredited; this has been all I’ve had left for years. But I still don’t get Peter’s theory — and I admit, I don’t really want to, either.

It really is terrible. None of us asked to be born. And we’re all forced to die. Every bit of enjoyment along the way is just cruel — something to make you cry when you realize how alone you will be forever and ever and ever and ever.

“Truth is crooked, time is a circle”
Nietzche , Thus spoke Zarathustra

There are ways to introduce paradigmatic changes?

The usual method is to have the old one collapse of its own inherent weaknesses and built the new one from the bottom up, out of the lessons learned. That’s why the Bush administration has given me such a warm fuzzy feeling. It’s so nice to see the old world order collapse when you want to start a new one. Just think, if Gore or Kerry had won, the Republicans would still be in control of the house and senate. Change is bottom up, even if it’s just the foundation crumbling.

Here is part of an essay posted on a yahoogroups that was in my maibox this morning;

Thing is, the History of Science shows that science itself is overburdened with the social aspect, an intrigue I refer to as ’sand box.’ One thing that keeps people in the sand box is the simple function of eating. If you don’t want to play in the sand box of those writing the checks, you don’t get to eat. Got to keep one’s self and one’s family fed, you see. As a result of this, those who will ‘buy in’ when it comes to ‘articles of faith’ are the ones who are earliest to employ, since they don’t ask embarrassing questions. As a result, you get opacities based on what one might otherwise call cloudy thinking, thinking that can usually be tracked back to one leader and a covey of followers or other hangers on.

I think that in any of this we need to be a bit less arrogant than is usually the case in science. I know that may seem a bit odd. But look at the evidence we have. How many times have you heard someone say that in a particular case that the outcome is governed by some equation? I’d guess that you’ve heard it quite a few times. Equations never govern. It’s that simple, the things that we write down or the words we define to suit ourselves govern nothing. What our various equations do, however, is at most predict how things should come out.

John Merryman: Can they propose these dimensions as anything more then the copyrighted product of their own imagination and not loose control over the idea?

Tried to respond.

Growth is bottom up, not top down, so capitalism is at its most vibrant when wealth is most evenly distributed. The problem with treating the economy like a game of Monopoly is that when one person controls everything, the game is over and you start again. In real life this stage is called revolution.

Money is a public utility, not private property. Pass it on.

There are ways to introduce paradigmatic changes? The last line is a important one.

The idea that originally led me off the beaten track was the observation that Omega=1. That the rate of expansion and the force of gravity are balanced. While this point has been open to question, observations from, I believe it was COBE, proved it to be fairly close, if not equal. If this is so, then the universe is ultimately flat, with regions of intergalactic expansion balanced by the gravitational vortexes of galaxies. It first occured to me that the space, as we measured it, that was being pulled into galaxies, was re-emerging as vacuum fluctuation across the open spaces inbetween. In discussing this on forums back in the ’90’s, a physicist pointed out that the logical medium for this transmission was simply light itself. He used a far more complex description, but the point was simple. He also said that when he mentioned it to an older mentor, he was advised that if he wanted a job in the field, he’d do better to find ways to support accepted theory then question it, so he dropped it.
The fact is that politics is as important to science as anything else. I’m into this because as a child I was fifth of 6 kids and I found out early on that the ones in charge got to decide what’s right and what’s wrong, so the only way I could win anything was to understand the facts better then anyone else. It has done me few favors in life because so much of what is accepted, from politics to religion, to economics and yes, even science, is biased towards the power structure and most change occurs when it gets so out of touch with reality that it collapses. As Stephen Jay Gould described it, Punctuated Equilibrium. Catastrophism to the classicists. Revolution to the politicians. Nova to cosmologists. Chaos to everyone else. But as Complexity Theory points out, a little chaos is necessary. Now the fact is that science has quite a few brownie points under its belt, so that the larger society will continue to tolerate its junk code for a long time to come, therefore the current situation isn’t going to change anytime soon. Remember it was well over a millenium between Ptolomy proposing epi-cycles and Copernicius and Galilao refuting them. So that’s why I don’t put much personal capital, beyond the obsession factor, into this discusssion. Here is another idea on another subject that I do get a fair amount of positive feedback on, not because it’s any better than what I keep pointing out here, but because the power structure is so much closer to collapse.

http://www.exterminatingangel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=203&Itemid=118

John, “when” nothing exists there exists no requirement why also “the opposite” should occur as well. You could argue that also an “anti-universe” also should be created, but logically there is no reason to insist on this. So we can use Occams
razor on it if we wish.

Regards,

Carl

Yes, if the universe continues to expand indefinitely, my theory is wrong. However, I feel that there are some compelling reasons to believe that the universe will eventually collapse. Some of these are discussed in my paper, but I feel that the most compelling (and, as yet, generally least recognised) one is that an ever expanding cosmos offers no answer at all to its origin…a question which is not possibe to answer if the universe is thought to have had a beginning at some finite time in the past.

Again, the question of existence over non-existence is a different question. I think you are confusing it with the question of the universe’s origin, to which the model says that there was (and can be) no beginning (but yet that the universe is finite).
Moreover, that the universe (and conditions in it) can have no “causal” explanation.

Best wishes

Peter

If you have something from nothing, then you need its opposite to occur as well. So it’s actually something from its opposite. Otherwise something from nothing would need explanation for what it took to occur.