Does infinity exist?

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.

Things could be partly infinite.
For example, a road could be endless in one direction, but endful in another.
MEST could in fact be infinitely divisible, but finitely multipliable, if you know what I mean, or vice versa.
Just because there’s an infinite amount of total apple, doesn’t mean apple has to be omnipresent.
Now whether anything/everything actually is infinite, is another matter.
I think finitude and infinitude are equally possible.
But finite, unomniscient beings such as ourselves couldn’t definitely prove either-or/neither-nor.
But if something appears to go on, and on…and on, we may feel like concluding it’s endless.
Conversely, after many unsuccessful attempts to divide a particle, we may may like concluding it’s indivisible.

ps to my previous post. I did a quick preliminary read of your paper that you linked. I am impressed. You have a thesis. You are wrong about a lot of things, but you did mention all the relevant topics. You’ve done your homework.

From what I can see so far, you keep saying you’re talking about mathematical infinity, but as arguments against it you immediately cite physical analogies. But just because something is physically impossible doesn’t mean we can’t work with it as an abstract entity. You constantly fall back on physical arguments even when you claim to be arguing against abstract mathematical infinity.

You are absolutely correct that the nub of the matter is the Axiom of Infinity. It is indeed arbitrary, in the sense that both it and its negation are perfectly consistent with the other axioms of math. There is no absolute truth of the matter; and no logical reason to prefer one to the other.

However, there is a pragmatic, practical reason. When you assume the axiom of infinity, you can construct the real numbers and do all of modern math and physics. When you deny the axiom of infinity, you get a far more paltry universe that can’t be made to serve the needs of mathematical foundations.

So ultimately the reason we accept the Axiom of Infinity is that it is more useful. We do NOT claim it’s “true.” You are chasing a strawman. Nobody is claiming mathematical infinity is true. Only that it’s useful.

Once we accept the axiom of infinity, we get modern math and the physics that’s based on it. So we assume infinity. It’s working great. Is it “true?” It’s hard to even know whether such a question is meaningful. Are there infinite sets? I myself question whether there are ANY sets at all. A set is an abstract object in math, very much different than the naive sets we think of as “collections of objects.” Mathematical sets are much stranger than that.

The axiom of infinity is no more “true” or “false” than whether the knight in chess “really moves that way.” What a ridiculous question! It’s a formal game. It’s not true and it’s not false. The rules are what they are, and if they are consistent and interesting, we accept them. Chess is fun to play, so we play. Math is fun to play, and the physicists and engineers find it useful. That’s as far as the ontology goes.

I mean, forget about an infinite set. Does the empty set exist? Ponder that.

I hope you’ll take some of my points to heart. You’re tilting at windmills. You think somebody thinks the axiom of infinity is true. On the contrary. People who think about the question at all, understand that the reason we accept infinity in math is because it’s useful.

ps – You may be interested to read a pair of papers by Penelope Maddy, Believing the Axioms parts I and II. You can find pdfs if you Google around. She walks through each axiom of ZFC and discusses the history and philosophy of how and why it came to be adopted.

How… is it possible to argue against mathematical infinity?
Is there a way of proving there can be only a finite number of numbers?

I think Peanos axioms are invalid if there is a limit somewhere.

@Serendipper is correct when he states (in his paper that he linked) that the axiom of infinity, which states that there is an infinite set, is an assumption. It can’t be proven. Nor can its negation. It’s simply an axiom that you can assume or deny. It gives more fruitful, useful, and interesting math to accept it, so we do. It’s perfectly valid to study the system you get when you assume its negation.

Also note that even in the absence of the axiom of infinity, there are infinitely many counting numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, … There just isn’t a completed SET of them. In set theory without infinity, the counting numbers form a proper class: a collection that’s “too big” to be a set.

There is an even more radical position, which is that there aren’t even arbitrarily large finite numbers. That’s ultra-finitism.

So we have:

  • Standard math in which we have infinite sets;

  • The Peano axioms in which we have infinitely many natural numbers, but not a set of them. That’s finitism.

  • The denial of arbitrarily large finite numbers. That’s ultra-finitism. There is no known axiomitization of ultra-finitism. It’s mostly the realm of cranks BUT there are a couple of famous serious ultra-finitists.

Okay I would intuitively agree that an infinite class is more sensible than an infinite set. But math isn’t about sensibility or intuition.

I do know there are different classes of infinity, such as the infinite row of integers is different in math from the infinite row of real numbers.

How long is a moment? You have to know how long a moment is before you can calculate how many exist. :slight_smile:

How long is 1 second? quora.com/How-long-is-1-sec … measured-1

It is basically the time taken by light of specified wavelength emitted by a Cesium 133 atom to execute 9,192,631,770 vibrations.

Right after the big bang there was no cesium 133, so how long was 1 second? Time has no intrinsic meaning but is only a relation of one thing to another thing. If it helps to see a phd physicist and philosopher say the same thing, fwd to 38:00 here youtube.com/watch?v=N-NTXoYTvao

(Btw the consensus of those 4 guys is that time is not fundamental. The guy on the right however disagrees somewhat because if the laws of the universe are emergent, then they must have evolved through time and therefore time could not be a product of the fundamental laws, yet he still doesn’t see time as truly fundamental.)

There could be a seemingly infinite number of seconds in the finite span between now and the big bang just like there are seemingly infinite numbers of numbers between 0 and 1 because time is related to the very thing that was created and what we call seconds are changing the closer we get to the beginning (light moves faster), but this infinity is only an illusion produced by infinite regression once again because seconds are defined by the thing we’re trying to measure.

Asking what came before the big bang is akin to asking what’s north of the north pole: there is no north of the north pole and there is no before the beginning.

Truth is independent of majority consensus and, apart from grass being green and the sky blue, majority opinion is more likely to be wrong than right.

It is published that “Most Published Research Findings Are False” :smiley: journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/ … ed.0020124

Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.

Atheism is the prevailing bias and physicists will not let go of infinity until theism is eliminated because they need it as a substitute for god.

So (how did you put it…) cornering an astrophysicist at a party for his/her opinion about consensus opinion + $2 will get you a cup of brown liquid. :beer:

It’s not a matter of consensus opinion, but realization that time is a relation of one thing to another thing and doesn’t start until “things” come into existence just like “north of” doesn’t start until we move south of the north pole.

The 2nd law seems obviously false to me because if it were a law, then everything would have dissolved to disorder long ago and a big bang couldn’t have manifested. Time in terms of order seems counter-intuitive considering that life would then be going backwards in time since life is negative entropy. How can we have life getting more ordered through the same time that other things are getting more disordered and call that a standard of measurement?

I’m not sure you understand what I meant. Time exists inside the cycle and we are outside the cycle being objective observers. What does it mean for the cycle to happen over and over (when viewed outside the cycle) when “over and over” is a property only inside the cycle?

Here’s an analogy: a casino puts up a display showing the history of red and black at the roulette table and people think if there are a string of reds, then black must be more likely to come next, but the events are not connected and the history means nothing. So, every event is the first event because there is nothing intrinsically linking the events.

So if a universe comes and goes, there is nothing left to be a memory and each universe is the first and only universe. The concept of “over and over” only exists when memory exists, and I don’t mean human memory, but the universe would somehow remember because that information would be relevant to another process and encoded into the universe fabric. Time moves in the direction of unknown to known. A bird flaps its wings over and over because each flap is encoded into the time-space continuum, but once the universe is over, those flaps never happened because the information is forever lost. That doesn’t mean the energy is lost, but only the pattern.

This is all simple deduction. There can only ever be one thing. If we assert more than one thing, maybe 2 things, then how does thing #1 relate to thing #2? They would have to relate to each other or they wouldn’t exist to each other and we wouldn’t have 2 things. So in order to have 2 things, there must be some relation between them… and if that is so, then they are one thing. So one thing is the only possible number of things.

How does a cause influence an effect? The answer can only be that they are the same process. There is not one thing affecting another thing, but only one thing. Otherwise we’d have to explain how one thing can both relate to another thing while also not relating to another thing (mutual exclusivity is required to be a thing, otherwise it’s a dissection or abstraction, but mutual exclusivity necessitates nonexistence).

So, before the big bang there was one thing and after the big bang there is still only one thing. That’s from the spacial perspective. Temporally, likewise, there is only one moment. There is not an infinite number of moments throughout time, but only “now” in absence of time. Otherwise we have to explain how one moment causes the next moment without influencing it, which is ridiculous.

“The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” - Albert Einstein

I suppose I could have taken the opposite position and tried to disprove what I suspect instead of confirming it. At least then I’d have everyone unwittingly on my side :smiley:

Cesium 133 is part of one of the ways we measure time. Of course we experience time without cesium 133 and we don’t know if there were thing to relate one thing to another back then. We do not know if universes emerge from a larger universe - one of the theories out there - and so this larger context would have time.

That’s all peachy, but again, in the astrophysics community there is no consensus about infinite vs. finite, in time or volume.

Could be. I am not arguing that the universe is infinte, though I tend to think it is, but that’s just my intuition. But, sure could be. I am not saying you are wrong. I am questioning your certainty or better put, I see little reason to be certain around this issue.

Seriously, I knew this idea 20 years ago and I am so tired of it getting trotted out by other laypeople. Yes, it seemed like there was some consensus for a while about this, but there isn’t now. So trotting out old explanations that scientists and science writers used to try to help people with this counterintuitive idea THEN, does very little for me, because they are not sure about this at all.

Right, but you are working with opinions from the scientific community and THEIR consensus. Am I supposed to take a video with four people in it as evidence when you are here dismissing the consensus of the scientific community? A consensus of four is also fallible.

And this holds for what is below. Your ideas are based on and specifically refer to ideas trickling out of the scientific community. Now you are telling me that we shouldn’t look at consensus in the science community. Now, first off, I don’t always do this. But second, here you are trotting out the old semi-consensus as if it is fact. And then dismissing consensus. Fine. You just threw out both authorities.

Since I make no claims to be sure, that’s really easy to live with. Since you seem to think you have proven the universe is finite, good luck with having undermined your own authorities that you appeal to.

But many physicist let go of infinity. Now you’re just making stuff up.

Right except I also researched what percentages believed various positions and this fit with his estimates of his peers. He wasn’t telling me his stand, I don’t know what that is in fact.

And again, you are the one claiming to have demonstrated that infinity is impossible. I am saying that I am skeptical. Fine, now you seem to be saying you do not base your ideas on the ideas of astrophysicists and cosmologists and don’t care what the experts say. Great. I see even less reason to believe your ideas which are in part based on the positions of physicists and cosmologist. IOW their ideas are parts of your arguments.

You seem to think you can demonstrate infinity is not possible. I just don’t see it. It seems very speculative to me. Especially now that you dismiss scientists, which would include those whose ideas you use. I think we should remain utterly unconvinced by your arguments, only more so now.