Mad Question that just ocurred to me

[The Grand Nudger]

I didn't fully understand your assumption but maybe this is what I mean a bit clearer.

Just for ease I am gong to assume a creator God as it helps the picture (its not really part of the answer).

So you have God who decided to make the universe on his desk. It starts as this highly energetic point and expands out from there. At some point God thinks - fuck me - this is taking over the whole desk - so he freezes it and then, in order to create the illusion of expansion within the universe - he makes everything within the universe shrink relative to him. So the universe is of fixed size in this story (although it could be shrinking itself - as long as it is shrinking at a slower rate than everything within it is) but it appears to be expanding from our POV.

The question is - how do we know it isn't?

With the added encumbrance of a sentient trickster that is capable of such thorough deception - how do we know anything? (the trickster need not even be sentient, obviously..it's the trick thats important).

The next question is - if we don't know why are we assuming this is not the case?

We're not simply assuming, we can only work from what we know. We can only make solid conclusions with a firm actionable foundation of knowledge/observation.

Since your proposal eliminates any way of knowing this (or anything..really)specifically by the way you've worded it........

I see this alot though, when we go about explaing things in this way we're not assuming that we're right, just stating that this is as far as we know from what we can tell. Provisional certitude. If we wanted to just assume things we wouldn't have to be so pedestrian with regards to those assumptions.

And the final point is - doesn't this solve the problem of what the universe is expanding into?

Hehehehehe, I suppose it does, in a roundabout way. What with solving problems of knowledge by eliminating the possibility of knowledge.....