Entropy, Kalam, and First Cause

[Anomalocaris]

I'm going to try to deduce what this sentence is supposed to mean. Please correct me if I am wrong. It sounds like you're trying to say that to gain evidence of the rules that govern the universe, the evidence would have to be within the universe and subject to the internal rules of the universe. If that is what you meant, I agree with that. I don't agree with the conclusion that it means we can find nothing out about conditions outside our universe unless the same rules apply without as within.

if by "same" you mean the set rules applying outside our universe is deductible from the set rules applying inside our universe, then yes, they do have to be the same. Other wise it is impossible to deduce how the condition and rules acting outside the universe would effect conditions observable inside the universe.

The rules governing the universe must to a high degree be connected to and analogous with the rules inside the universe.

Must they? How do you know that? Maybe they're connected in a low degree. Anything can be analogized, so I can't argue with that.

They have to be connected sufficiently closely so deductions from inside the universe, based on the only set of rules governing how data used as evidence can be generated, transmitted and received, must be as valid outside the universe as inside the universe.
If one set of rules should in principle be deductible from another, then I would say they are menifestations of the same underlying rules.

[Mister Agenda]

I'm going to try to deduce what this sentence is supposed to mean. Please correct me if I am wrong. It sounds like you're trying to say that to gain evidence of the rules that govern the universe, the evidence would have to be within the universe and subject to the internal rules of the universe. If that is what you meant, I agree with that. I don't agree with the conclusion that it means we can find nothing out about conditions outside our universe unless the same rules apply without as within.

if by "same" you mean the set rules applying outside our universe is deductible from the set rules applying inside our universe, then yes, they do have to be the same. Other wise it is impossible to deduce how the condition and rules acting outside the universe would effect conditions observable inside the universe.

'Deductible from evidence we can find within the universe' seems a backtrack from 'we can extrapolate that the rules outside of the universe are the same as the ones within it'. If this is your actual position, I have no problem with it, and don't see how it contradicts the possibility--possibly necessity--that entropy does not apply to the universe in the way that it applies within the universe.

Must they? How do you know that? Maybe they're connected in a low degree. Anything can be analogized, so I can't argue with that.

They have to be connected sufficiently closely so deductions from inside the universe, based on the only set of rules governing how data used as evidence can be generated, transmitted and received, must be as valid outside the universe as inside the universe.

This seems to be a bare assertion. Why do they have to be connected sufficiently closely so deductions from inside the universe must be as valid outside the universe?

[Anomalocaris]

if by "same" you mean the set rules applying outside our universe is deductible from the set rules applying inside our universe, then yes, they do have to be the same. Other wise it is impossible to deduce how the condition and rules acting outside the universe would effect conditions observable inside the universe.

'Deductible from evidence we can find within the universe' seems a backtrack from 'we can extrapolate that the rules outside of the universe are the same as the ones within it'. If this is your actual position, I have no problem with it, and don't see how it contradicts the possibility--possibly necessity--that entropy does not apply to the universe in the way that it applies within the universe.

The same argument applies inside the universe as well. What is to exclude the possibility that entropy does not apply within some parts of the universe where sufficiently large subset of other know physical laws still applies such that we would still call that part a region of our universe?

For the same reason there is as yet no reason to hypothesize such a region within our universe, there seem to be as yet no reason to suppose entropy does not apply outside of our universe.

Also, entropy is not just a arbitrary tunable parameter. It is actually intricately tied to time, what determines order, and statistical probability. So in principle saying entropy doesn't apply to creation of universe says a lot of things about time, statistical probability, and what conditions constitutes order. So,if other known rules still apply, then I think saying entropy doesn't apply would seem to set tight boundaries on what base condition outside of the universe is like. I suspect it says in effect that outside our universe, the Entropy overall is at a highest Statistically possible state. Entropy doesn't get "reset" when a new universe is created. Rather, each new instance of universe is menifestation of a random fluctuation in entropy away from base. Some higher than base, some lower. But average across them all, entropy across all instances of universes is at a maximum state.

So it's not so much entropy doesn't apply. It applies, just to a much larger system than the universe. Furthermore this much larger system doesn't have any room to sustain further increases in overall entropy, local entropy fluctuations in this system is statistically self canceling over the larger system.

[Clueless Morgan]

So, a recurring theme which I observe in the explanations here is the response to my admission that I can't wrap my mind around the issue. You guys say that it's natural to not be able to understand this stuff, there are a lot of unknowns and we really don't have answers, but reality is not constrained by our ability to grasp it; if something is true then it is true, whether we understand and acknowledge it or not.

The posters in this thread aren't saying that you can't wrap your mind around the issue therefore you just have to take it on faith that we're correct and believe us, they're saying that a lot of what we want to know is conceptually unavailable to us but that we should continue to pursue scientific inquiry so that one day we can find answers to these questions.

It's perfectly okay not to understand something and to recognize that there are a lot of unknowns and I agree that reality and truth is not constrained by our ability to understand it, but you also need to recognize that knowledge is a progressive process that builds upon itself and you have to build foundations of understanding in order to reach for concepts that are currently beyond our reach. It's kind of like building a skyscraper - you can't simply start building the ground level and then jump to the twenty first floor and expect that the air will hold it in place until you build floors one through twenty; you have to building the ground level, and then use the ground level to support the first floor, then use the first floor to support the second and on and on. Eventually we progressed from walking materials up stair shafts to building cranes to hoist materials up higher and higher, but the fundamental principle that the floor below must support the floor above cannot be violated.

Science and knowledge progress the same way. The science that is done today was conceptually and technologically unavailable to us 200 years ago because we were still only building the eighteenth floor of the skyscraper. We might have been able to see the potential of the twenty-first floor, there might even have been people forging ahead on the plans of the twenty-first floor, but we still have to build the nineteenth and twentieth floors to get there.

My concern is that all of that sounds remarkably similar to what the theists tell me to believe- "God is real even if we cannot comprehend him. It may not all make sense but the fact that you can't wrap your mind around it logically or scientifically doesn't mean it is false."

The difference is, as Chuck has already pointed out, science progresses through methods of inquiry and through the gathering and analysis of actual evidence. Science has built its foundations on real, tangible, demonstrable facts about the world in which we live. Theists have built their foundations out of invisible scaffolding and are asserting conclusions they can neither demonstrate nor defend.

And, to be honest, given all of the unknowns which you guys readily admit, shouldn't we seek the explanation which has the most explanatory power for the facts which we do have?

Yes, we should, but we also need to be able to distinguish concepts with actual explanatory power and concepts that seem explanatory but are actually just baseless assertions.

As far as I can tell, the Christian understanding of God, creation, time, space, etc fits the available data very well and explains things better than all the shaky, unknown speculation atheists propose. (of course, either way it is shaky and unknown and you are going to be making guesses that can't be proven)

Aliens secretly visiting Earth and abducting humans also fits the available data of UFO sightings, people who claim to be "missing time," people who say they were paralyzed in their beds and woke up with strange scars and metal implants, people who say they have memories of being in a strange room with strange creatures doing experiments on them, etc. Does that mean that aliens secretly visiting Earth and abducting humans is the most reasonable explanation?

I hope that you agree that this is utterly absurd and that all of those things have much more probable explanations, but the exact same thing is the case with anyone who claims any god as the explanation for anything. What this all comes down to is an argument from ignorance.

Another way of putting my point: it seems like some kind of "god"-explanation is the most reasonable conclusion;

Sure, just like aliens are the most reasonable conclusion of the UFO/sleep paralysis/abduction/lost time phenomenon.

the only reason one would reject such an explanation is if he were already predisposed against the notion of god. (i.e. approaches the question with unwarranted naturalistic/materialistic presuppositions)

Wrong. This is simply you committing a fundamental attribution error: "if someone doesn't accept my god as the explanation for X then they must be biases against my god!" The reason I reject the "god" explanation is because there's no positive evidence that a god is the cause of any known phenomenon, let alone direct, or even indirect, evidence that any god exists to be that cause. Provide me with evidence of your god and that this god is the cause of the phenomenon you're trying to explain and I'll change my mind.

[Whateverist]

the only reason one would reject such an explanation is if he were already predisposed against the notion of god. (i.e. approaches the question with unwarranted naturalistic/materialistic presuppositions)

Wrong. This is simply you committing a fundamental attribution error: "if someone doesn't accept my god as the explanation for X then they must be biases against my god!" The reason I reject the "god" explanation is because there's no positive evidence that a god is the cause of any known phenomenon, let alone direct, or even indirect, evidence that any god exists to be that cause. Provide me with evidence of your god and that this god is the cause of the phenomenon you're trying to explain and I'll change my mind.

Boy I sure can feel how desperately he'd like to turn the situation around so that the positive proposition that god(s) exists was the universally correct position to hold toward the existence of god(s) in the absence of any evidence to the contrary. But wishes aren't horses. He is stuck with a very awkward position to square with enormous mountains of scientific knowledge.

If only theist would leave god(s) where they actually find them .. in their qualia in prayer or in soulful interaction with other believers. But no, they insist on yanking god out of their heads and setting him up as the be-all of everything. Doing so is hopeless and so they come off looking foolish.

Now if a theist were sufficiently humble regarding their obviously very limited knowledge of god, and if they refrained from saying more than they knew, they could join with every other modern thinker with no loss. Why insist on projecting god into the objective world? Why isn't it enough to imagine god creating your personal subjective world and interacting with you there. I suspect that the god inkling isn't the one pushing for greater and greater omni powers. That is the hubris of believer's ego which expects an enormous payoff for its grand declaration of faith. Oh well.

[Mister Agenda]

The same argument applies inside the universe as well. What is to exclude the possibility that entropy does not apply within some parts of the universe where sufficiently large subset of other know physical laws still applies such that we would still call that part a region of our universe?

We can't exclude the possibility that physical laws may be different in a part of the universe we can't observe. At present, we lack a reason to consider that it might be the case, and at least some reason to think the laws of physics are consistent throughout the universe, though I'm not physicist enough to put a number on that. I suspect it's a decimal point followed by a lot of nines.

It's possible that we may be able to exclude that possibility entirely in the future when we understand more about the formation of the universe.

For the same reason there is as yet no reason to hypothesize such a region within our universe, there seem to be as yet no reason to suppose entropy does not apply outside of our universe.

Concentric rings in the WMAP cosmic microwave background survey provide at least some support to the cyclic universe hypothesis, which would violate the Second Law, as commonly understood as an argument against that being possible. The rings were predicted as evidence of black hole collisions in a previous iteration of our universe. That is a reason to hypothesize that something funny may be going on with universe initiation regarding the second law. I don't suppose that entropy does not apply outside the universe, I suppose we don't know whether it applies, applies differently, or doesn't apply to the universe, and that it is premature to make arguments based on it applying to the universe in advance of actual evidence for that being the case.

Also, entropy is not just a arbitrary tunable parameter. It is actually intricately tied to time, what determines order, and statistical probability. So in principle saying entropy doesn't apply says a lot of things about time, statistical probability, and what conditions constitutes order. If other known rules still apply, then saying entropy doesn't apply would seem to set tight boundaries on what base condition outside of the universe is like.

I'm not saying entropy does not apply, I'm saying we don't know how or even if it applies, and that it is improper to use entropy as an argument that the universe can't be cyclically past-infinite before entropy's applicability to that scenario has been supported. The fallacy of composition remains fallacious, and I don't see how you're avoiding making that fallacy, a matter which you haven't addressed.

Not that I particularly favor the cyclic hypothesis, or contend that it is only possible if entropy as commonly understood does not apply. But consider some things: entropy is only meaningful 'in time', which it practically defines. What is 'outside' of our universe? Another space-time continuum within which our universe floats like a bubble, with the arrow of time going the same direction as within our universe (and presumably any other universes)? That would be a mega-universe, which begs the question of whether it is a bubble floating in a 'mega-mega-verse', and whether it is 'mega-verses' 'all the way out'. Or does our uninverse exist 'within' 'no-space' and 'no-time' with no 'distance' between ours and any other universes that exist because there is no such thing as distance, and all universes exist simultaneiously because there is no such thing as time? And that's only two possibilities. I admit to being boggled by the unknowns, and if they were known, whatever the actual case is would probably boggle me equally.

We as yet are just not justified in concluding that the rules without our universe must be the same as the rules within it. I concede my position is largely based on the understanding that making that conclusion would commit the fallacy of composition. If you can show why the fallacy is not applicable to this case, I think I would be persuaded to your view.

[JuliaL]

Yeah, I can sit here all day long making unfalsifiable claims that "explain" things. They are utterly useless to anyone except as playthings for imagination.

They're utterly useless only because you can't back them up with large divisions.
If you could, you could own Austria....not that Austria is useful itself, but you could own it.

[Anomalocaris]

The same argument applies inside the universe as well. What is to exclude the possibility that entropy does not apply within some parts of the universe where sufficiently large subset of other know physical laws still applies such that we would still call that part a region of our universe?

We can't exclude the possibility that physical laws may be different in a part of the universe we can't observe. At present, we lack a reason to consider that it might be the case, and at least some reason to think the laws of physics are consistent throughout the universe, though I'm not physicist enough to put a number on that. I suspect it's a decimal point followed by a lot of nines.

It's possible that we may be able to exclude that possibility entirely in the future when we understand more about the formation of the universe.

For the same reason there is as yet no reason to hypothesize such a region within our universe, there seem to be as yet no reason to suppose entropy does not apply outside of our universe.

Concentric rings in the WMAP cosmic microwave background survey provide at least some support to the cyclic universe hypothesis, which would violate the Second Law, as commonly understood as an argument against that being possible. The rings were predicted as evidence of black hole collisions in a previous iteration of our universe. That is a reason to hypothesize that something funny may be going on with universe initiation regarding the second law. I don't suppose that entropy does not apply outside the universe, I suppose we don't know whether it applies, applies differently, or doesn't apply to the universe, and that it is premature to make arguments based on it applying to the universe in advance of actual evidence for that being the case.

Also, entropy is not just a arbitrary tunable parameter. It is actually intricately tied to time, what determines order, and statistical probability. So in principle saying entropy doesn't apply says a lot of things about time, statistical probability, and what conditions constitutes order. If other known rules still apply, then saying entropy doesn't apply would seem to set tight boundaries on what base condition outside of the universe is like.

I'm not saying entropy does not apply, I'm saying we don't know how or even if it applies, and that it is improper to use entropy as an argument that the universe can't be cyclically past-infinite before entropy's applicability to that scenario has been supported. The fallacy of composition remains fallacious, and I don't see how you're avoiding making that fallacy, a matter which you haven't addressed.

Not that I particularly favor the cyclic hypothesis, or contend that it is only possible if entropy as commonly understood does not apply. But consider some things: entropy is only meaningful 'in time', which it practically defines. What is 'outside' of our universe? Another space-time continuum within which our universe floats like a bubble, with the arrow of time going the same direction as within our universe (and presumably any other universes). That would be a mega-universe, which begs the question of whether it is a bubble floating in a 'mega-mega-verse', and whether it is 'mega-verses' 'all the way out'. Or does our uninverse exist 'within' 'no-space' and 'no-time' with no 'distance' between ours and any other universes that exist because there is no such thing as distance, and all universes exist simultaneiously because there is no such thing as time? And that's only two possibilities. I admit to being boggled by the unknowns, and if they were known, whatever the actual case is would probably boggle me equally.

We as yet are just not justified in concluding that the rules without our universe must be the same as the rules within it. I concede my position is largely based on the understanding that making that conclusion would commit the fallacy of composition. If you can show why the fallacy is not applicable to this case, I think I would be persuaded to your view.

What I ams saying is it is not a strong position to argue that problems that appear difficult to surmount within known laws of physics can be dismissed by merely claiming laws of physics had been different. It becomes all the more difficult when the hypothesized differences is structured in such a way as to be nearly in principle unverifiable.


Regarding cyclic universe, I see no reason why, even if the universe is cyclic, the cycles themselves must be more or less eternal in the sense that broadly speaking, the cycles in the future are as likely to fit any particular descriptiom as cycles in the past. The cyclic process in itself may well systematically evolve from cycle to cycle. If the cycles were to evolve, then there is no intrinsic problem with every cycle starting at a higher entropy than the last cycle, and there was a definitive beginning with a first cycle that started with minimum antropy, and a last cycle of maximum entropy beyond which any further cycling would produce no more universes in which anything could happen - Ie all further universes would begin already heat dead.

So 2nd law applies to before the beginning and after the end of our universe.

[Mister Agenda]

So 2nd law applies to before the beginning and after the end of our universe.

Maybe.

I have great respect for you as a poster, but I think we're at an impasse and I think at heart our disagreement is not as significant as it first seems. It's certainly no skin off my nose if you're right, and although I have a quibble with the process you used to arrive at your conclusion, I think the conclusion itself has merit.

At any rate, I don't think there's anywhere left to go with our difference of opinion at this point. I greatly appreciate the food for thought you have served.

[Anomalocaris]

So 2nd law applies to before the beginning and after the end of our universe.

Maybe.

I have great respect for you as a poster, but I think we're at an impasse and I think at heart our disagreement is not as significant as it first seems. It's certainly no skin off my nose if you're right, and although I have a quibble with the process you used to arrive at your conclusion, I think the conclusion itself has merit.

At any rate, I don't think there's anywhere left to go with our difference of opinion at this point. I greatly appreciate the food for thought you have served.

Likewise.