Does infinity exist?

Wait what if the Big Bang is like a reversed “Sonic Boom” of light speed. So what is that, Auric Boom.

Well I am open to having my mind changed, but I wasn’t planning on it lol. I considered the title as an assertion “Infinity doesn’t exist”, but decided to not be overly presumptuous and instead phrase it as a question to be answered.

The thing is though, relationship doesn’t end with perception. There is still a connection and underpinning relationship even if it isn’t physically viewable.

What exists isn’t just what we can see, but what is able to relate to something else that exists. For instance the sun could give no light if no planets were around and the photons couldn’t even begin their journey unless a destination is already known, so if there is nothing for light to shine on, then there is no light in existence. Relationship underpins existence and that’s deeper than just perception. But deeper still is the realization that the relationship actually joins the things together into one thing: there are no planets and sun, but planet-sun relationships.

Changing what you’re looking at by looking alludes to self-inspection, doesn’t it?

Well, I suppose because things can’t be bounded by nothing because there is nothing in nothing to be a boundary.

But that presents a problem since if all things have boundaries and nothingness cannot itself be a boundary, then there must either be infinite things or the one big thing must be infinite in size and both conclusions are unacceptable to me. Instead, I see the problem as a hint to the solution of self-inspection: the thing doing the looking can’t also be the thing being observed and if it tries, infinity results like a camera pointed at its own monitor results in infinite regression due to self-inspection. We can’t look beyond the boundary simply because what’s beyond the boundary is what’s doing the looking.

I don’t perceive much differentiation between cogito and percipii and was delighted when I found that Goethe didn’t either (as if that meant something :slight_smile: )

“Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.”

This question is hard for me to understand. Can you rephrase it?

Yes because things are defined by what they are not. If there is nothing a thing is not, then a thing doesn’t exist.

Again, that seems like self-inspection to me.

Good comments! I appreciate you taking the time :slight_smile:

I thought we already knew the universe had a beginning. If the universe were infinitely old, then it would have been at thermal equilibrium an eternity ago lol

It just doesn’t make any sense to me to think an eternity has passed… gone… forever has come and gone… and here I am after all that time. And then I’ll go away for another eternity. That just seems like obvious nonsense to me, but it’s so obvious that’s it’s hard to explain.

This is ultimately why I believe infinity should not be an axiom of mathematics. It cannot be imagined - and it is not right to declare something exists which cannot be imaginable - not even in mathematics. If you say you believe in infinity, say you understand it, say you can manipulate it and do mathematics with it - it isn’t true. It can’t be imagined, it can’t be realized, it can’t be used in mathematics - only finite approximations can. You cannot imagine infinity, use infinity, describe, or realize infinity. If you could - it would be finite. Not only does infinity not exist - I think it cannot exist - not in the real world - not in imagination - not in mathematics. theorangeduck.com/page/infinity-doesnt-exist

If the computer knows it’s there, then the computer has contrasted it from everything else. Essentially you would have told the computer to focus on one coordinate on a black screen and call it a dot, so the computer knows (x,y) because it knows (not-x,not-y).

But give the computer infinite space and there is no (x,y) because there is no edge.

Gold should decay. Everything is losing energy through electromagnetic radiation (thermal radiation) above absolute zero and at absolute zero there is an identity crisis where nothing has any differentiation from anything else.

Start at 27:00

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7bbYNCdqak[/youtube]

Here’s an electron microscopic view of gold atoms being pulled apart:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGWSX6pStd0[/youtube]

Some atoms on the edge seem fuzzy and seem to pop in and out of existence.

Yeah how long is a moment lol. Time isn’t a thing, but is an attribute of a thing. d=rt. t=d/r so time is the relationship between distance and velocity.

A sonic boom results from traveling faster than sound can propagate through the medium of air, so an auric boom (cool name btw) would be traveling faster than light can travel through its medium. My next thread is going to be about either the ether through which light travels or the variable speed of light.

A document reported to be of Tesla, but not confirmed, says "The stars, planets and all the universe appeared from the ether when some part of it, due to certain reasons, became less dense. It can be compared with formation of blebs in boiling water although such a comparison is only rough. The ether tries to return itself to its initial state by compressing our world, but intrinsic electric charge within material the world substance obstructs this. It is similar to that when the water compresses blebs filled with hot water steam. Until the steam does get cold the water is unable to compress the bleb. With time, having lost the intrinsic electric charge, our world will be compressed with the ether and is going to turn into ether. Having come out of the ether once - so it will go back into the ether. "

A change in density seems consistent with an auric boom. Anyway, I’ll have to start the other thread before I let too many cats out of the bag.

A lot of people think this but there is no consensus amongst astrophysicists. I spent an hour at a recent party picking the brain of one. Yes, there was a big expansion, the Big Bang, that has consensus. But was this part of a cycle? Does this happen in the context of a larger metauniverse? and there are other scenarios banded about.

Nope. I mean, look for a moment at the Big Bang. Suddenly we have all sorts of thermal disequilibrium out of nothing. If that can happen once, for all we know it can happen many times.

Hey, look, I have similar intuitions. But that and a couple of bucks’ll get you a cup of coffee.

At least with my intuitions ALL THE OPTIONS seem absurd. You bring up the second law…that suddenly there appears out of nothing a really wound up clock that will for a while than stop. That seems ridiculous. That the universe is finite with neither nothing nor something outside it. That seems ridiculous. That the universe isn’t more simple, instead of say a single dense cube, seems ridiculous to me. The results of the double slit experiments, relativity, both seem ridiculous to me. And more…

Yeah a sonic boom is when the sound that normally would go ahead of the object (say a noisy craft) gets caught up by the craft and joins the sound the craft leaves behind.

It is very simple logic I did when I was 6 proving there is no beginning. But my Auric Boom concept which im just working on now maybe can explain that there is a bottom of what can be perceived.

I’m afraid I must dash your hope. To the extent that I may personally be included in the “we” of your claim; I do NOT agree that “a good working definition of infinity is “boundless””.

Even Aristotle noted the point I’m about to make. He noted that there’s potential infinity in the upward direction, as in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, … And there’s potential infinity in the downward direction: 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc. Downward infinity has of course both mathematical and physical implications. Mathematically, it says that there is no smallest positive rational number. This led to a couple of thousand year of trying to logically deal with the infinitely small, which mathematicians finally did in the 19th century by way of the theory of limits.

Physically, of course, we have the question of whether matter and indeed spacetime itself may be indefinitely divided; or if to the contrary, we live in a discrete grid. This question is very much open, with passionate adherents on each side.

Having noted the infinitely small, I ask you to consider as a mathematical example the closed unit interval [0,1], which is defined as the set of all real numbers between 0 and 1, inclusive.

We know that this set contains infinitely many real numbers; in fact, an uncountable infinity of them. Yet this set is bounded. Indeed, no element of the set ever gets smaller than 0 or larger than 1. And the set has a boundary, namely the set consisting of 0 and 1. No real number can go past those points.

I submit to you the set [0,1] as a collection of real numbers, or geometrical points if you wish to think of them that way, that is:

  • Infinite; and

  • Bounded.

In conclusion I note that it’s often counterproductive to use dictionary definitions for technical terms. There are plenty of bounded, infinite sets. And if you believe the physical world is continuous, there’s infinity in a grain of sand. As William Blake wrote:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

Augeries of Innocence

Yes but cycles have beginnings (arbitrary ones).

I was referring to a steady state universe that didn’t have a genesis. In that case, it would be thermal equilibrium. It’s the genesis that causes the disequilibrium that, given infinite time, would cool to equilibrium. So if infinite time were already behind us, the universe would already be cool.

Time was created at the big bang as an artifact/consequence of space or some resistance to traveling through it. What caused the big bang isn’t spacially nor temporally confined since we can’t have self-causation. The thing that is created can’t be the cause for the creation of the thing. There was a T=0 because T was made.

It’s the problem of how to explain to the blind man what red looks like. I can see it clearly, but I can’t explain what I see. So the nobel prize will have to wait until everyone else develops sense organs lol. Newton and Einstein probably weren’t the first to think of their ideas, but they did it in a time that was conducive to acceptance of those ideas. Newton himself said “people aren’t ready” and who knows if we know all he knew. Same with Tesla and especially Tesla. It’s less about the genius and more about everyone else.

That’s a strong hint brother: looking at yourself is absurd.

You should submit a better definition in that case.

Below, you’re proceeding to talk about what you haven’t defined. What do you mean when you say there are “infinite” numbers between 1 and 0 if infinity is not boundless? The first step in an argument is to define terms clearly before using the terms to construct an argument, otherwise you’re saying a+b+c=z but not saying what the variables are. Defining terms commits you to what you’re saying.

Probably why 1+2+3+4+5+… forever = -1/12

“potential” is the key word.

Infinity doesn’t exist. If it did, the sum of all natural numbers would certainly equal it.

The sum of all squares = 0

The sum of all cubes = 1/120

youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww

youtube.com/watch?v=0Oazb7IWzbA

You’re making divisions where there are none, or did you forget that you cut it? You’re creating differentiations on the fly and will need an infinite amount of time to finish, so you’re assuming infinity in your proof of it. This was spelled out nicely in the article I posted theorangeduck.com/page/infinity-doesnt-exist

[i]Keep Adding One
The obvious argument for infinity existing is that, given some number, it is always possible to add one to get a new number. Therefore there must be an infinite number of numbers.

The problem with this argument is that it presupposes infinity exists already. More specifically it assumes that a process can be repeated an infinite number of times. If you can’t repeat a process infinitely, and there isn’t infinite time, it isn’t possible to continue adding one forever.[/i]

Likewise, you’re just adding new numbers between 0 and 1 and you’re reliant upon infinite time to complete the process, but if you stop to inspect along the way, the answer will always be finite.

That is why 1-1+1-1+1-1… forever = 1/2 because if you stop, you get either 0 or 1.

No, you’ve defined it to be so. You’re not observing, but conjuring.

You’ve defined the universe to be a fraction 1/x where x >1, so you’ve just moved the goal posts from simply counting forever to counting forever and plugging into a function… it’s the same problem of using infinity to prove infinity. You need an infinite amount of x to prove there are infinite amounts between 1 and 0. Why bother? Just prove there are infinite x >1.

He also said “A fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”

You can only cut something so many times before the knife becomes larger than the thing you’re cutting and that fact will become self-evident once you begin and persist in cutting.

The only way to “have” infinity is to stop the process, but if you stop the process, the result will always be finite.

Sure, but then those cycles could be taking place in an infinite span of time.

Yeah, I got that. But the Big Bang being the begining is predicated on the idea that out of nothing a giant really highly wound up clock is created. IOW energy in a state that can run down and it will take a long time. If that can happen, then an infinite universe going back in time could have this happen over and over. We are already accepting the ‘suddenly there is a really well wound up clock running down out of nothing’ as a possibility. Well, that little miracle could happen over and over.

Some cosmologists think this is a the case, but there is no consensus. We cannot turn to current astrophysics to dtermine the universe being around for a finite time or not. As I said there are a number of other ideas out there, none of them denying the Big Expansion, but placing it in a longer time frame.

Well, this and two bucks gets me a cup of coffee.

You seem to be agreeing with my point. That something is obvious to you could have to do with oracular insight or it could have to do with built in biases.

Here is a possible-probable-certainty:::

That observed things , the farther/or nearer they get from a point of view, reach observable limits, where they come upon cosmic or mini black holes, which may symbolize some no d of entry into some other state. These states can begin the process of experiencing other limits, from other vantage points of observation, each removed from particular spatial temporal manifestations.

In this scheme, infinity is always a non discernible point a way from its absolute limit.

The difference is, that this negates the absolute manifestation into relative at
any point, suggesting that perception and cognition changes an underlying absolute into its relational, or, relative aspect.

This is why consciousness is never absolutely cignuscient of its object, because it changes it , in a process of increasing proximal awareness of it.

However it doesent negate the absoluteness of the absoluteness of its being. If it were so, it would destroy the process of the conceptual framework of relativity.

So in this scheme relational existence has to ascertain its absolute being-ness.Or, infinity as an absolute can never overtly and absolutely be realized, because this would undermine its own existential requirement, of necessity.

…though it can be imagined, infinity can never be reached/achieved, so it doesn’t ever get to exist… poor infinity, huh.

In that case the cycles would be infinitely reoccurring meaning we’ve already had this conversation an infinite number of times and are destined to have it infinitely more. Don’t you remember what I said last time? Why must we keep rehashing this throughout eternity? :laughing:

It also means we’ve had this conversation infinite times while wearing pink tutus and sitting in chairs suspended by helium balloons. :occasion-balloons: It means any possible variation has already happened infinite times.

I don’t think I’m equipped to really disprove that, and I can’t appeal to absurdity, but I just can’t accept the notion. Maybe I’m dogmatic :-k

But more to the point and all joking aside, how could cycles take place inside infinite time if time only exists inside the cycle?

The same goes for space: how can we have concepts of space outside space if “outside” is a concept of space?

Obviously the energy that went into winding the spring is eternal, but that’s absence of time instead of infinite amounts of it. Energy doesn’t observe time or space, but defines it. Energy travels at the maximum speed, which is instant ( because when you travel c, no time passes, so it’s instant).

What does it mean to happen over and over outside of time and space?

Time is a relation of one thing to another thing. It takes me 1/24 revolution of the earth to drive 60 miles. We relate time to the decay of atoms or the speed of light, so time is a relation of one thing to another thing and there were no things before the big bang, except the one thing that caused the big bang.

No doubt I have confirmation bias :slight_smile:

Right, the thing doing the looking changes the thing by the looking; hence, infinite regression.

It would seem that something must be absolute, but there will never be a way to tell what it is because infinite regression will always result from self-inspection.

Yes that sums up the situation I think.

Well, right off the bat, there’s an infinity. Second, if there is a finite number of possible moments, then it must recycle, if not, not.

Could be.

Well, again, in astrophysics - me going by what I have read, and then also going by me cornering an astrophysicist at a recent gathering - it is not consensus that time started just before the Big Expansion or that there are not other cycles - the same or otherwise - have gone before or that the Big Bang did not take place within a larger universe context. IOW that Big Bang was local. I asked specfically about infinite time and volume and neither have been ruled out and there is no clear majority either.

Again, if we allow for there suddenly being an extremely neg-entopic state, we cannot then rule out other hypotheses based on the second law. We allow, in this one version of the Big Bang theory, for the sudden negentropic creation of everything. Once that is one of the axioms of your belief, you cannot criticize other theories for seeming to violate the second law, since you’ve already done it yourself. Well, it only happened once, it not a great defense.

Not outside, but as time and space.

You can say this, but again, there is no consensus this is the case. And since we do not know what that ‘one thing’ was, we do not know what it’s limits are, if it is still present, if something can reboot or reenergize what is happening nad so on.

You mean you’re actually getting data on this??? :astonished:

You did not appreciate my point. You said that “we all” agree that infinity is boundless. But as someone who’s studied university math, I’ve seen so many examples of bounded, infinite sets that the idea that “infinity is bounded” is obviously false.

Therefor it is false that “we all agree.” That was my point. So even if you disagree with me regarding infinity, that very disagreement makes my point! Because my point is that we do NOT “all agree.”

That said, reading through your post it seems that you are arguing from a finitist or ultra-finitist perspective. Given that, it’s perfectly sensible for you to deny infinite sets. In so doing you must also abandon a rigorous construction of the real numbers, which means you’re going to lose the foundation of modern physical science along with most of modern math.

Now it’s perfectly consistent to do this, and I have no objections to your making that choice. But it seems to me somewhat nihilistic, since it forces you to reject the whole of modern science along with physics, which turns out to be founded on infinitary and nonconstructive math.

So as I say I have no problem with the logical consistency of your point of view, though it does seem to limit the conversation. If you say, “Let’s talk about infinity” when in fact you reject infinity, further dialog seems pointless.

All that said, you did mention a number of interesting and widely-believed fallacies and misunderstandings, which I will endeavor to correct for anyone who may be interested.

As I say, if you deny that there are infinitely many real numbers between 0 and 1, that is your choice. I assume you must deny there are infinitely many rational numbers between 0 and 1 as well. This is your right, to adopt a finitist or ultra-finitist stance. It just makes conversation pointless.

When you were in high school and they showed you the real number line in Algebra I when you were 14 years old or so, did you complain that there can only be finitely many points between 0 and 1? I confess I don’t understand this point of view.

And of course it is manifestly obvious that the unit interval is bounded. No member is ever less than 0 nor greater than 1. The unit interval is an infinite, bounded set.

But really, if you want to use your time on God’s earth to post to an Internet forum that you think there are only finitely many points on the real number line between 0 and 1, more power to you. I won’t stand in your way.

Mathematically, a set is infinite if it may be bijected to a proper subset of itself. That was one of your dictionary definitions if I recall. Galileo noted this in the 1600’s and various non-Western mathematicians noted it in the 1200’s or earlier.

Oh my. You are a victim of some very unfortunate misinformation floating about the Internet.

The infinite series 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + … of course diverges. Or we can say that it converges to +infinity in the extended real numbers. Or we can say that it converges to Aleph-null as a cardinal, or omega as an ordinal. These are all different ways of saying that this infinite sum “converges to a point at infinity.”

So, what is this -1/12 business about? Briefly, everyone knows that the sum of the positive integers is infinity, or undefined, whichever formalism you’re using at the moment. But there’s a thing called “Zeta function regularization” that says that something called zeta(-1) is -1/12. And you can choose to INFORMALLY interpret zeta(-1) as the series 1 + 2 + 3 + … But it is NOT the same thing as that series. I’ll give you some links that explain all this.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_%2B_2_% … larization

blogs.scientificamerican.com/ro … equal-112/

Why some ignorant Youtubers decided to start an online campaign to confuse people I have no idea. But that’s modern life. The Internet, which was supposed to make us all smart, has in fact made us all much more stupid. And this -1/12 business is a classic example.

Oh my. As I said, it’s perfectly ok for you to reject completed infinity That’s finitism. You can even reject potential infinity. That’s ultra-finitism. Those positions are logically consistent (though there’s no known axiomatic basis for ultra-finitism). But they’re nihilistic, in the sense that you have just kicked the rug out from not only math, but physics as well. I’d say that’s an intellectual challenge for your position, to rebuild physics on finitistic or even constructive principles. There actually are people doing the latter.

But now it seems you are drawing your finitistic conclusion based on a misunderstanding of bad Youtube videos. Every mathematician knows that 1 + 2 + 3 + … diverges to infinity. The interpretation of that sum as -1/12 is a distortion and abuse of a very sophisticated bit of mathematics in higher complex number theory. Somebody made a misleading video and a horde of people just ran with the wrong idea. It’s awful frankly. But if that’s your evidence for rejecting infinity, your argument is refuted. Please read the links I gave you above to put the -1/12 business into its proper context.

More nonsense on the same lines I imagine. The explanation of -1/12 in terms of analytic continuation and zeta function regularization is all over the Internet. For you to choose the completely wrong interpretation and then expound on your thesis of infinity based on it is truly … well, it’s your right. But I question your motivation. After all, the correct information is just as easy to find as the falsehoods.

Here you’re again arguing that the unit interval’s not an infinite set. That’s not a serious intellectual position.

If you reject taking successors, that makes you an ultra-finitist. Fine with me. You not only reject the real numbers but the counting numbers as well. Whatever. So what happens to physics in your theory? You can’t do modern physics without the real numbers and the modern theory of infinite series.

The real numbers are a mathematical abstraction. They don’t require time or space or energy or any physical resource to construct.

I would agree with you that PHYSICAL infinity may well not exist. I don’t believe it does. But we are talking about MATHEMATICAL infinity. Mathematical infinity does not require any physical resources to construct.

It’s tragic that people can get so many bad ideas from the Internet, yet won’t take the time to learn any actual math.

Did you have a bad math teacher when you were young? Where is this coming from?

That, I’m afraid, is incoherent.

How did you get these ideas? I’m curious how someone goes down this path of rejecting all of modern math and physical science.