To any and all willing to answer: what is the most beautiful or poetic fact you know about the universe? It can be anything. Some aspect of biology, an inspiring anecdote, a statistic, anything. Multiple entries are permitted and encouraged.
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We get to be alive.
Hydrogen formed after the Big Bang combined with oxygen created through nuclear fission in dying stars to create water so that I can drink beer while floating in my pool. It's such a simple molecule, yet so useful. But treat it with respect or it will kill you.
Hydrogen atoms are fused together in stars to produce helium, giving us light and warmth as by-products. Some of that helium was used to cool superconducting magnets for my brain scan, so I was able to look at the incredibly intricate pattern of blood vessels inside my own head.
Dynamics
We are but a tiny speck of dust, residing on a tiny speck of dust, hurling at thousands of miles an hour through a vastness that stretches beyond distances our relatively microscopic brains can hardly comprehend. And we use our primitive tools to gaze longingly into that unfathomable sea of worlds. And we imagine - (dare we imagine?) - perhaps... just maybe... somewhere out there in one of those countless clusters of light, there is another tiny speck of dust, residing on a tiny speck of dust, hurling at thousands of miles an hour through the incomprehensible vastness, looking up into its night sky, and wondering the same as I.
The most poetic fact about the universe is that an organ capable of making poetry exists. There is no reason for a universe to understand itself, and yet it does so through our brains. Even if I remove my theism, a universe whose physical laws did not allow for minds to exist, would not have produce them. But since ours minds do exists, it follows that somewhere, hidden in the fundamental codes or the very fabric of the universe, was the blueprint for a mind.
From what Algebe said, this means that even as those primitive hydrogen atoms, fresh out the oven, began to fuse into helium, they carried the information necessary to produce consciousness. I guess the question is why.
I said fact. Inspiring and beautiful as it may be, the existence of a blueprint for the mind is only conjecture, unsupported by logic or science.
I'm not talking about a literal blueprint floating around aimlessly, but rather one found embedded in the physical information of the universe. Whatever the reason why physics is the way it is, is also the reason why we think, feel, live, and are conscious.
The universe began in such a way as to allow, perhaps even require, sentience. If that wasn't a fact, you wouldn't be here disagreeing with me.
Yes, I agree that the laws of physics are beautiful, and they allow for consciousness in organisms, but a blueprint is not required. The laws of the cosmos don't need an author, only a chain reaction resulting in their formation, like everything else. The only certainty is their existence, not how they came to be. Any attempt to explain the process is simply an assumption until proven scientifically. So no, it's not a fact. Nice thought, but not a fact.
I don't see how what I am saying is in any way controversial or difficult to understand. I haven't mentioned beauty or an author, so I think you're just not paying attention.
Why is the universe the way it is? Why do things fall down instead of up? Why do we grow old instead of young? Why do we exist at all and why can we ask these questions?
The simplest most obvious answer is because we live in a universe in which these things are allowed. That means that whatever the reason why the universe began, it began with specific rules to govern it, and those rules were such that consciousness emerged. That means that the mind is not a recent invention, it's something that was accounted for since the beginning.
Whatever caused the universe to pop into existence, caused it with specific rules. If those rules didn't permit consciousness, then no amount of accidents, evolution, randomness or chain reactions, would have ever led to it.
The universe isn't improvising. It's not making rules up as it goes along.
Ah, I get it. Okay, that makes much more sense to me. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
You say that the universe was deliberately created with specific rules in order to achieve a specific result, and do not consider the possibility that you consider the rules that cause a specific result as special simply because you are able to be self-aware and to attach meaning to your existence.
Consciousness is not a trivial thing. It's possibly and objectivity the most important thing to have arisen in this universe.
I don't care if it brings your life meaning, and I don't care if you think it's special. If I did I would have just said so.
"Even if I remove my theism, a universe whose physical laws did not allow for minds to exist, would not have produce them. But since ours minds do exists, it follows that somewhere, hidden in the fundamental codes or the very fabric of the universe, was the blueprint for a mind."
That's a bit of a tautology, it reads like very circular reasoning to me, and your conclusions is not clear at all sorry. Define 'blueprint' and what evidence can you demonstrates that shows this blueprint 'MUST' exist, beyond your desire for it to be true?
Random chance produces lottery winners practically every day of the week, so given the size of the universe and it's age, that's a lot of random repetition for someone to make a bare assertion that what we see had to have a blueprint.
I don't really know what the most poetic fact about the universe is, I simply don't know enough to make such an observation with any authority really. As regard humans though it is undoubtedly our evolved brains, which enable us to love & be loved, and to share in & empathise with each others pain and suffering, even complete strangers.
How about this: What do you think would need to have come first, the physical universe, or whatever laws govern it?
Rocks exist; does that mean there is a blueprint hidden for those as well?
Everything that exists can only exist because the universe allows it. Science doesn't work without a deterministic universe, and a deterministic universe implies all that information is stored from the beginning.
The only difference is that rocks are hardly impressive, whereas minds are the things which aren't impressed by rocks.
@John 61X Breezy: "Science doesn't work without a deterministic universe"
And religion doesn't work with one.
It actually works either way, because theism begins from the starting point of a Mind which produces the universe, as opposed to a universe that produces the mind. That's why Christianity is split between Calvinists and Arminians. Either the universe and our behavior is predetermined by God, or it isn't, and God allowed free choices.
We know the universe is not deterministic.
No, what we know is that we can't prove its deterministic, because we lack the tools and the brainpower to compute it. However, we still base our sciences on the assumption that its deterministic.
That is simply false. Modern physics is not deterministic (basically by postulate) since the Hilbert space formulation (about 80 years ago).
Well let's see if that's true. Explain how modern physics isn't deterministic. Keep in mind this means any attempt to summarise, formulate, theorize, understand or predict, go out the window if the universe is not deterministic.
You can, but you have to use probability distributions (or complex spaces) instead of sets.
It isn't deterministic because experimental results can not be replicated by any one-to-one mapping of the states of a system to observable outcomes; and this is essentially by postulate. Now I realize that sentence probably don't mean much to you. To rephrase it: Systems with identical initial states, in an identical environment; can evolve into different final states. That is the end of determinism*.
*: with the caveat it is possible to make a deterministic model of reality, but it requires information to travel faster than the speed of light (which violates other famous postulates).
Ok but how do you make sure you have identical initial states and environments? That requires isolating variables in such a way that we are not yet able to do.
So take IQ. I can take a random sample from a population, and their scores will fall into a normal distribution more or less. But there's a cause behind that distribution. Those with low IQ are probably the result of diseases or disorder. Those disorders have a cause too which is often due to a genetic mutation. Those mutations have a cause too, perhaps it's the mother drinking alcohol.
Randomness exists for a reason, and we are often ignorant of those reasons. Even at the atomic level the probability distribution of electrons produce orbitals, with logical shapes.
I mean for something to truly not be deterministic, would mean it has no possible way of being described. It would be like an electron becoming an elephant, then going back to an electron, only to become a proton.
Actually, the concept of random defies determinism, as for an event to be random, there could not exist any way to predict the occurrence. By definition, random cannot truly exist in a deterministic universe.
Right and I'm saying nothing is truly random. Rolling dice is considered random only because we don't know everything that goes into it. But clearly we can build a computer that knows what will land the second it leaves the hand. We can probably build a machine, if one does not already exist, that will roll what we tell it to roll.
Randomness has a cause.
Well, one would be hard pressed to find something truly random, but the field of quantum physics, as little as we understand it, would be a good candidate. However, the idea of a deterministic universe rules out the idea of free will. If my choices can be predicted in advance by studying my biochemistry, I really don't make choices at all, do I? I am simply a slave to predetermined biological processes. One might find this distressing, but I find it to be unimportant. I still control some aspect of my life in that some of my biological urges are orchestrated by my consciousness. Sometimes the comfortable illusion of true choice is more appealing, however.
Gentlemen, I confess some of these things are a bit out of my league, and I certainly have nothing to contribute at that level. However, I am at least able to follow it reasonably well, and it has been most entertaining and informative thus far.
Well yes, except that in my opinion, choices are a real emergent property of our biology. For example gravity makes things fall, but no laws are being broken when a bird flies and "defies" gravity.
So I also don't think any laws are being broken when we make choices. I see those choices as the products of a properly functional brain. We can mess around with the brain and see these choices go away.
It's a strange concept to grasp, but I believe determinism can produce free will, much like it can produce randomness.
That is exactly correct. A deterministic world can not have any randomness.
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Yes, freewill and determinism are disjoint.
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