If there was a 1st moment in time.

[Edwardo Piet]

Consider this..christians believe that their god created the universe from nothing.

Nah. They believe he created the universe with magic... there's a difference.

  Whatever something god was in, before he created the universe..is conceptualized as a nothing by them.

Nah they believed he was around forever and used his magical powers to create stuff out of his magic.

  Similarly, if you ask a layperson about a vacuum they're likely to tell you it's an empty space.  Nothing in it.

Yeah but Krauss isn't talking about empty space he's talking about the scientific concept of it that isn't actually empty... hence why it contains activity.

He made his title misleading because it was more catchy and gave more of a "wow" effect. It was to make people react like "Oh wow! From nothing?! Wow!"

Well, no, not from nothing. From almost nothing. From very little. Which is to be expected when we're talking about the quantum world.

  Yes, the title is good for selling books..it's a catchy title...but the reason that it's catchy is that it does tap into how people commonly see these things.

Nah people know there's a difference between actual empty space and 'empty space' with something in it.

It's catchy and he felt like he had to defend himself, so when criticized he doubled down on his wrongness. Part of me thinks he may be sincere and he genuinely thinks it's actually nothing just because he's so fucking godawful at philosophy. But even the average dumbfuck wouldn't consider anything nothing. He keeps using science's re-definition and then committing a fallacy of equivocation, that's what he keeps doing (Daniel Dennett does similar things with consciousness but he's a philosopher so he should really know better. But Dennett is more of a science loving pragmatist in terms of philosophy than a philosopher who loves logical argumentation. (I can't fucking stand pragmatism)).

Amusingly, chapter 9 of that book is titled "Nothing is Something"

He may as well have said "Squares are actually triangular".

, in that chapter he expresses his distaste for how we conceptualize nothing, particularly in that the way we do so might lead a person to classify the something he;s talking about -as- nothing...and that the term itself isn't really coherent in physics.

Yes "nothing" isn't coherent in physics... and that's precisely why he shouldn't use it. He should speak of voids or empty space in the scientific sense. Not "nothing". "Nothing" is not a scientific term. But "A universe from a quantum void" or a "universe from quantum empty space" sounds less dramatic. "A universe from nothing" sounds really dramatic... but it's also fucking incorrect.

You like Daniel Dennett... know of his term deepity? I actually really like that concept.

This here is a deepity.

Definition of a deepity:

Generally, a deepity has (at least) two meanings: one that is true but trivial, and another that sounds profound, but is essentially false or meaningless and would be "earth-shattering" if true. To the extent that it's true, it doesn't matter. To the extent that it matters, it isn't true.

The example Dennett uses to illustrate a deepity is the phrase "love is just a word." On one level the statement is perfectly true (i.e., "love" is a word), but the deeper meaning of the phrase is false; love is many things — a feeling, an emotion, a condition — and not simply a word.

The true but trivial meaning is the fact that more complex matter ultimately was derived out of quantum activity or "empty space". That's common knowledge now even among many laypeople now. Someone only has to have heard a little bit about quantum mechanics in passing and they already know that.

So that sense of nothing is the trivially true aspect.

The other meaning that sounds profound is the idea that the universe came out of literally nothing. It sounds profound and is essentially false or meaningless but would be "earth-shattering" if true.

So basically, the part where Krauss refers to quantum voids as "nothing" is just him taking a step away from science and going all Chopra on our asses to sell a book.

More reviews of his book:

Samantha Nelson, writing for The A.V. Club, gave A Universe from Nothing a 'B' grade and commented that it "is solidly in the New Atheism camp, a cosmologist's version of Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker," but noted that "the concepts he explores are so complex, and filled with so many factors that top physicists and cosmologists don't understand, expanding on them in print actually makes them more confusing"

Science journalist John Horgan, who writes a blog for Scientific American, characterizes the book as "...a pop-science book that recycles a bunch of stale ideas from physics and cosmology." Horgan quotes arguments by physicist George F. R. Ellis, who characterized the book's thesis as "...presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence...".

Anyways, here's some other examples of deepities under hide tag:

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You learn about nothing from philosophy

The first reading is that the study of philosophy can teach about the concept of nothingness, which is true, but trivial. The second interpretation, which is implicit, is that philosophy is useless, i.e. "You learn nothing by studying philosophy." This second sense would have profound implications, if true.

Good without God becomes 0

This is a deepity constructed from a Use/Mention error, combined with a confusion of the letter "o" with the number "0", which are both represented by similar symbols.

In the first reading, we have the trivial, but true, statement that the word "Good", without the three letters "God", becomes the letter "o". The second reading, in which we consider the meanings of the words, implies that any good that is done without God is worth nothing ("zero"), which is false, but plays on your acceptance of the evident truth of the trivial first sense to misdirect or confuse. If taken to be true, the second reading would have important implications.

The Theory of Evolution is only a theory

In the first reading, the meaning is that the "Theory of Evolution" is a "theory" which is true, but trivial. This usage assumes the scientific sense of the word "theory" as a well-established scientific explanation.

However, since there is another sense of "theory", as a word which means a hypothesis or an unsubstantiated guess, this is exploited by the second reading, which brings to mind the idea that life does not actually evolve, since in their mind, evolution is not a real phenomenon, just an abstract idea.

Note: this phrase is also a prime example of equivocation.

A human zygote is a human

In the first reading, this statement is true, but trivial; the zygote is the earliest developmental stage of the human embryo. In the second reading, the statement could be interpreted to mean the zygote is a human person; this is false, but would be profound, if true. The statement is obviously false, because a person cannot be a single-celled organism, any more than they could be a paper shredder. The statement would be profound (if true) because a large percentage of zygotes fail to implant in the uterus, and thus, die. The deaths from this would far exceed deaths from abortions or maladies, such as breast cancer or childhood leukemia, and thus would mandate society to immediately divert massive government funds to stop the crisis. Certainly, any problem killing a massive percentage of children deserves a large percentage of NIH funding.

There is no 'I' in team

In the first reading, this statement is true; the letter I is nowhere to be found in the word team. In the second reading, the statement is meant to exhort the listener/reader to remember they're part of a group and to put aside "selfish" feelings and interests. The problem is, this doesn't actually provide a reason to support the group, and the premise of the statement is a non sequitur: what difference does it make whether the letter "i" happens to occur in a given word? Additionally, while there is no I in team, neither is there a you, we, or us; but if you scramble the letters, there is a me. People who use this gem tend to react negatively if you turn their own "logic" against them along the lines of "And there's no 'us' in victory!"

Everything is connected

In the first reading, this statement is true, since everything in the world has some kind of influence on everything else (e.g. gravity, molecules touching each other). In the second reading, the statement becomes somewhat obsolete, because some connections just don't matter much in the grand scheme of things, as in the hair color of a scientist doing scientific work.

Thought is material

On one hand, this is trivially true since thoughts have a physical medium: they are encoded as firings of neurons, which are made of entirely ordinary organic matter. But if someone uses the assertion that "thought is material" to argue that you can change the world around you simply by thinking about it really hard… sorry, but no.

Age is just a number

This timeless classic may be used to justify a romantic/sexual relationship between individuals of greatly varying ages, implying that it's A-OK because love/lust wants what it wants. While semantically true, there should be plenty of emotional and physical differences to be found between (for example) a 16-year-old and a 50-year-old. When encountering someone using this phrase, helpfully complete it by saying, "…and jail is just a room."

To be fair though, people often justify their arrogant, condescending, contemptuous attitudes towards younger people and their ideas, as though their age magically endows them with wisdom, knowledge, intelligence, etc., (It doesn't) and as though their age earns them respect by default. (It doesn't) When countering this type of arrogance, saying "age is just a number" is NOT a deepity.

Love Trumps Hate

"The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe"
The first reading of this protest slogan is that a society based on tolerance creates a better society than bigotry, which is true for any sensible definition of what a strong society should be. The double meaning (by adding an apostrophe) tells the reader to adore Donald J. Trump's racism (i.e., "Love Trump's Hate"), which you actually don't have to and shouldn't.

Killing is killing

In the first reading, the statement is obviously true. X = X.

The second reading might imply that the killing of non-human animals is the moral equivalent of killing people or that the execution of a murderer is just as bad as murder. Both examples are highly controversial and not obviously true.

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