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Refute this.

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Refute this.

Gadfly II
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Posted 07/06/09 - 11:11 PM:	#21
1.) given infinite time and space every thing possible must necessarily come to pass. 2.) If a is possible then not-a is possible 3.) a is possible therefore not-a is possible 4,) if not-a is possible then by 1 not-a is necessary 5.) if a is possible then by 1 a is necessary C.) therefore it is necessary that both a and not-a C is a contradiction; hence the argument is false. (reducio ad absurdum) Your agument was a correct reducio, and all sound reducios are false. Infinite possibility is not necessity (true in all possible worlds) Hence this is the mistake in your argument and reason it is false. It's hard to wrap your mind around it at first, but logically given an infinite amount of time, all possible things may not come to pass. but that's OK. there's still a good chance that a heck of a lot will still occur.
Dare to use your own reason. Kant

movinartist
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Posted 07/08/09 - 07:13 PM:	#22
Void must have infinite geometry and finite information. Energy is the expression of the finite, or limit, or rule. Energy, even in field form, with out electrons, expresses limit (all be it a limit on the move). A thing, whether geometric (a comparison of two things - such as electrons) or informational (the comparison itself - photons) is a rule or limit. With out some sort of limit there is no energy. The universe is a ratio of void to energy, with void being the dominant force. Void is infinite and becomes unknowable because it evaporates energy. Everything will eventually evaporate, even black holes (a rare case where energy dominates void) will eventually be pulled into void. So "universe" must include void which is eventuality unknowable. If it weren't it would include it's neighbor until it became unknowable. We live in the middle of the limit of energy - c^2 and Planck, with 0k all around. I believe this. Edited by movinartist on 07/08/09 - 08:00 PM

aufbau87
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Posted 07/09/09 - 04:23 AM:	#23
brianjones wrote: I wonder if anyone can refute this sequence of logic. Suppose the universe is infinite in time and space, then by that, anything that can happen in an infinite universe will eventually happen. I take this assumption to be false. Assume if the universe is infinite in space and time, then anything that CAN happen WILL happen. Next, assume the universe IS infinite in space and time. From this, it obviously follows that anything that CAN happen WILL happen. One thing that CAN happen is that only supergiant stars are born and after their deaths, give birth to new ones, ad infinidum. That is, no other type of event occurs in the universe and the universe is infinitely old and spacious. From the above assumptions, it follows that this WILL happen. It is also possible that only subatomic particles persist throughout the infinite space and time of the universe, without forming into stars. And from this and the assumptions above, it follows this WILL happen. I see your argument as a similar reductio ad absurdum of the idea, not a paradoxical conclusion to seemingly true premises and valid reasoning. It's very much like the barber paradox, where the solution is just that no barber can exist; likewise, the assumption that anything that CAN happen WILL happen in an infinite universe, is logically false. NOTE: I just realized Gadfly II beat me to this punch. Maybe different wording will help drive the point home, though!

MassVision
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Posted 07/21/09 - 12:33 AM:	#24
Gadfly II wrote: 1.) given infinite time and space every thing possible must necessarily come to pass. 2.) If a is possible then not-a is possible 3.) a is possible therefore not-a is possible 4,) if not-a is possible then by 1 not-a is necessary 5.) if a is possible then by 1 a is necessary C.) therefore it is necessary that both a and not-a C is a contradiction; hence the argument is false. (reducio ad absurdum) Your agument was a correct reducio, and all sound reducios are false. Infinite possibility is not necessity (true in all possible worlds) Hence this is the mistake in your argument and reason it is false. It's hard to wrap your mind around it at first, but logically given an infinite amount of time, all possible things may not come to pass. but that's OK. there's still a good chance that a heck of a lot will still occur. Hmm maybe you didn´t understand what he meant, and as I sometimes am inclined to think like the thread author despite identifying some problems about thinking this way, I will try talking about it a lil bit. The infinity idea can be utter overwhelming to us. When we speak about infinite time, we mean that this time will never come to an end, so if the odds of something happening tends to zero, it will happen, because infinite time was considered. There is even a strong disposition among mathematicians although not amongst all, that two paralell lines meet at infinity. How can we assume that given infinite space and infinite time, we can´t have anything that we can imagine as being possible to happen, to happen during the , ahem, course of infinity? Your inferences about not A and A being simultaneously necessary may be a bit out of the scope of what was proposed. 1) Given infinite time and space, everything that could potentially happen will eventually happen; 2) A is possible; 3) notA is possible; We can infer that "A and notA are possible" without commiting any logical fallacy here. We could go on and say "A and notA will happen" because we did toss the notion of infinity onto our proposition. I think you took it as it was like the following: Mr. Smith can both exist and not exist at the same time. If that´s the case, I don´t think it was what the thread starter had in mind. It would be more like: "Mr. Smith will exist during a given ammount of time, and will not exist during the ammount of time it doesn´t". No doubt that both an event and its absence cannot be perceived as existing exactly at the same time by an observer. But who can tell that during the course of infinity, we wouldnt have register both as occurring? Ah this theme is so interesting, if you guys are interested on going further, I can go on and try to support this particular point of view. That´s a nice brain gymnastics. Cheers p.s: I beg you pardon about my bad english, not a native and unfortunatelly not yet fluent at it. Edited by MassVision on 07/21/09 - 12:46 AM

van keister

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Posted 07/21/09 - 03:59 AM:	#25
Excuse me, but I teach Earth/Space science and have studied this most of my life. When I hear people, like you, talking about infinity and the finite I realize as Kant first imagined that these terms express more about our epistemological make-up, our way of fabricating reality, than anything real in nature. This is just the way we perceive reality. Back to the Big Bang. If you believe that Big Bang cosmology is correct then it precludes anything infinite in the universe because space and time are curved and it makes little or no sense to talk about anything beyond the boundaries "our universe" because we would be referring to places beyond time and space that means little or nothing. ONly fools or idiots speak of infinity as if it were something. PS. I'll let you in on a little secret, I have counted to infinity. It's a big number!

MassVision
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Posted 07/21/09 - 11:43 AM:	#26
van keister wrote: Excuse me, but I teach Earth/Space science and have studied this most of my life. van keister wrote: When I hear people, like you, talking about infinity and the finite I realize as Kant first imagined that these terms express more about our epistemological make-up, our way of fabricating reality, than anything real in nature. This is just the way we perceive reality. I like this view and most of the time I share it. But despite being easy to identify the problems that arise from such an intelectual effort, a large number of the scientists and philosophers do care about studying and speculating about the boundaries of the known universe. van keister wrote: Back to the Big Bang. If you believe that Big Bang cosmology is correct then it precludes anything infinite in the universe because space and time are curved and it makes little or no sense to talk about anything beyond the boundaries "our universe" because we would be referring to places beyond time and space that means little or nothing. Here we deal with bigger problems. You say that because the theory predicts that big bang gives birth to space and time in our known universe, what would be beyond that, is not worth of intelectual efforts because that means little or nothing? That is the point where a series of issues may arise from the simple attempt to wrap these subjects around our reasoning mind. I believe that you just did present your current disposition about the subject , right? Or did you actually try to be cathegorical about it? van keister wrote: ONly fools or idiots speak of infinity as if it were something. Be careful on accusations and appeal to authority when you deal with such a problematic concept. That was kind of a sloppy styatement. It smells like empty rhetorics. It clearly shows your disposition towards what you presented, but I doubt that you can prove that whoever dares to intelectually and or empirically embrace what science established as being beyond space and time, is being an idiot and a fool. There is no concrete way of proving scientifically anything in that domain, other than taking for granted that what relativistic physics predicts on paper is what would describe the origins of the "known" universe. I´m not dealing here with problems like "is the current way of doing science the most tenable one we can reach". For now i´m just going with what we can call establishment. van keister wrote: PS. I'll let you in on a little secret, I have counted to infinity. It's a big number! Come on, you died trying, I do believe though, you reached a relativelly big number while trying to. Edited by MassVision on 07/21/09 - 11:53 AM

Apollo Cloud
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Posted 09/23/09 - 09:12 AM:	#27
Hey guys, a quick answer to this question would be greatly appreciated (it's related somewhat to the topic, which I happened to stumble across through a Google search); is the claim "Anything that can possibly happen will eventually happen given enough time." accepted as a rule of logic concerning the nature of infinity or are there accepted criticisms of that claim?

Cadrache
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Posted 09/23/09 - 10:19 AM:	#28
Blues and birds exist at the same locality.
"...There was a writer who asked why it was that when we find positive experiences we say that only the physical facts are real, but in negative experiences we believe that reality is subjective. He made an example of those who say that in birth only the pain is real, the joy a subjective point of view, but that in death it is the emotional loss that is the reality." - Tony Ballantyne, Recursion. _____________________________________________ Truth is want. - The internal state of matters. Truth is Need. - The external state of affairs.

Cadrache
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Posted 09/23/09 - 10:20 AM:	#29
Apollo Cloud. The statement itself is an ideology through form and not physicality of fact. Disregard it as Science.
"...There was a writer who asked why it was that when we find positive experiences we say that only the physical facts are real, but in negative experiences we believe that reality is subjective. He made an example of those who say that in birth only the pain is real, the joy a subjective point of view, but that in death it is the emotional loss that is the reality." - Tony Ballantyne, Recursion. _____________________________________________ Truth is want. - The internal state of matters. Truth is Need. - The external state of affairs.

Makarismos
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Posted 09/23/09 - 10:41 AM:	#30
It does seem to make intuitive sense that the universe - being bigger than anything else, and having existed for longer than anything else; or specifically, being 'infinitely' big and 'infinitely' old - we would find within it all manner of improbable, yet possible things. I think this is plausible. I think it could be a scientific hypothesis, and could be tested by examining all things within the universe, counting them, and using some kind of statistical analysis to measure how often these things occur. If the results of your counting matched with the measure of probability for a particular thing, then you could perhaps conclude the 'bias' of the universe for certain things over others. For example, the chance of a living mattress existing within the visible universe (yes, this is plagiarism, ten points for who knows what ) might be 40 to the power of 253,000,000. If the actual occurrence of such mattresses was of a proportion greater than this, we could conclude that the universe was biased in favour of such a seemingly unlikely juxtaposition of life and mattresses. I am left with two problems: how could we work out the odds of such a thing? And would the ods become meaningless if taken over the entire (assumed infinite) universe? P.S It seems to have been missed by some posters that the size of the universe is taken as infinite for the purposes of argument. If the universe is not infinite, this does not count as any kind of point against the original argument.

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