Actual Infinity in Reality?

[polymath257]

First, the singularity is NOT an event: it is a failure of the coordinate system to describe a situation. In this case, if you use standard general relativity, it describes a limit of infinite curvature.

I clearly did not say the singularity was an event. There was a change. Something started everything. 

Yes, it actually is part of the theory that the *previous* spacetimes already exist.

Note how you had to say *previous* when I said they have to all exist already--past and present. BECAUSE if all of them do not exist at once (in other words they exist sequentially as the theory clearly states), you have a very big problem of a past infinite. We could not have gotten to our current universe without an infinite amounts of universes already being created. We would still be waiting for an infinite amount of universe to be sparked before ours could be sparked--which will never happen, because there still needs to be an infinite more that need to come first. Why can't you address this!? You keep asserting that how it is. Explain why we could ever logically get to our current universe.  

You are assuming that if time is infinite, there is an infinite gap between two events. That is false. There is no 'infinite wait' because the process is always ongoing with an infinite amount *already* having happened at any point. If you pick any point in the sequences, the time to now is finite.

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Like I keep saying, cause/effect relationships are only meaningful to talk about in a certain context (from a temporal perspective). When we're discussing the fundamental nature of reality, especially if we're assuming B-theory of time (and/or eternalism), you have to be willing to accept that it may be logically possible that causality is just an illusion. If there is no time flow, then there is not really change or motion happening. And no causality. Which possibly leaves us with simply an eternal 4D (or higher) static structure of which every time moment is a part of. I'm just saying.

Do you really believe that? It seems to me you are looking for a theory that gets you a past infinite rather than looking for theories that relate better to reality. 

For example, you. Do you imagine that the thing that makes you you endures from moment to moment? How does human consciousness work with "causality being an illusion"

I already addressed this earlier, Steve. Go back a few pages to find my post where I show how inf - inf is indeterminate. You are doing subtractions with different instances of infinite sets. There's no contradiction here.

In the first case of subtraction, you took out everything up until e4 (including e4), so of course you will end up with just 4 events.

In the second case, you took out an infinite set from another infinite set in a way where an infinite set remains (by taking out one event for every two events we go through).

In the addition case, you seem to be missing some important assumptions here, so I'm not going to comment on that until I get a clearer picture of what you mean by "discrete" and such.

An you keep failing to understand that the point of Hilbert's Hotel (or the reformulated example) is to show that infinite set theory and how you can use them in theoretical mathematics does not translate into the world of real objects. Don't keep asserting that because mathematicians can do it paper--therefore reality. No one has shown how that is possible yet. You have failed to produce a single reference in this thread and the last that shows the mathematicians believe there can be an infinite amount of an actual thing. You can not get to an actual infinite by adding one thing after another. In the real world, that's what you have to do--add things one after another. You can't just jump to the end and declare that one actually exists because we can write it down on paper and talk about potential infinities in theory. 

Don't give me equations with the word 'infinity' in them. That is not proof or even a good indication that one can exists. Give me examples of something or show where smart people talk about how they can exist and I will reconsider. Until then, all you are doing is asserting a claim with nothing to back it up.

No, that is NOT the reasoning. The reasoning is that it works mathematically, so *there is no contradiction*. You are the one claiming a contradiction, but have yet to actually show one.

You keep claiming there has to be some sort of 'infinite wait' in the case of an infinite regress, but that is simply false: there is still only a finite amount of time between any two events.