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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[The Grand Nudger]

Books made to popularize science have to connect with a lay audience, and despite your constant protestations to the contrary..we're just not all as smart as you are.  

It's a limitation, sure...but...? The point of the entire book was to explain how the "nothing" people conceive of does what they think it can't..and even....that it's not actually "nothing".

[Angrboda]

Sure, there was always "something" but the something that always was is commonly conceived of as "nothing" by laypersons.

No it isn't lol. Everyone knows that anything at all isn't nothing. Krauss just came up with a misleading title to help him sell a book.

He should have called it "A Universe from Almost Nothing".

Even as a child I knew that something wasn't ever nothing lol.

It's not clear that virtual particles which exist on the edge of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle are indeed something as most ontologies consider the concept of substance. They seem to be neither substance nor nothing, making your lumping them into one or the other category more a rhetorical flourish than anything.

[LadyForCamus]

Not something, but not nothing?! My head hurts...I need a beer. 😁

[Whateverist]

New thread direction, finish this line:

If there was a 1st moment in time, then ..


.. then the moment before that was out of line.

[Edwardo Piet]

No it isn't lol. Everyone knows that anything at all isn't nothing. Krauss just came up with a misleading title to help him sell a book.

He should have called it "A Universe from Almost Nothing".

Even as a child I knew that something wasn't ever nothing lol.

It's not clear that virtual particles which exist on the edge of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle are indeed something as most ontologies consider the concept of substance.  They seem to be neither substance nor nothing, making your lumping them into one or the other category more a rhetorical flourish than anything.

And what is "neither something nor nothing" supposed to even mean exactly?

[haig]

So 14 billion years ago somebody named Will ( or was that something with a willy), oh just a minute, something with the will, created the universe. Then about 4.4 billion years ago earth was created. Then about 200,000 years ago homo sapiens started creating havoc all over the earth.

Now the christian fairy tales said this all actually happened about 6000 years ago. Not sure what the quaran says about that. In any event I'm quite confused about the math here.

Now if just for make believe, I say OK, something with a will (such as your god) did create the universe, can you explain why they would do that 14 billion years ago, then bring us into existence 6000 years ago? Did your god take a nap or something?

[Anomalocaris]

No it isn't lol. Everyone knows that anything at all isn't nothing. Krauss just came up with a misleading title to help him sell a book.

He should have called it "A Universe from Almost Nothing".

Even as a child I knew that something wasn't ever nothing lol.

It's not clear that virtual particles which exist on the edge of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle are indeed something as most ontologies consider the concept of substance.  They seem to be neither substance nor nothing, making your lumping them into one or the other category more a rhetorical flourish than anything.

Hawking radiation depends on virtual particles being substance.   Otherwise the substance that is blackhole transmutates through Hawking radiation into neither substance nor nothing, thus violating the general conservation of substanceness.

[paulpablo]

If there is a first moment in time,  it didn't always exist.

Although time wise, and only time wise, nothing precede the first moment in time.  First moment in time is like all other moments, coming to existence and that shifting to another moment in time.

Just like all other moments in time didn't always exist, the same is true of the first moment of time.

The only question remains, what ontologically preceded time. Preceded not as in time wise, but ontological precedence. 

I would say there is 3 options:

Nothing.
Something without will.
Something with will.

As for nothing, I don't think first moment in time just appearing out of nothing makes sense.

Something without will, is problematic, in that it is timeless. As it timeless, time wasn't part of it's reality, and as such it cannot undergo change.  Whatever that reality is, it cannot add to what's there, because ontologically is without time, without motion. Physical things without time cannot cause things to come to exist.

Something with will is the best reasonable conclusion, if there was a first moment in time, that caused the 1st moment in time.

Now when I say something with will, if we imagine will to be separate part of it's essence or part of it's essence, that has it's problems, but it's just semantics, and it means this thing that cause it, is will, because there is no divisions in God.

That is it is  a will that causes the first moment in time to come to be. And God is a will.  The best will at that.

But for the sake of argument, you can say the being has will or is will, doesn't matter.

It seems that there's more problems in your reasoning than the thing you're arguing against.

The problem with the notion you're arguing against is 

1) We don't know of something physical outside of time either moving or creating anything.

The problem with the notion you're arguing is 

1)We don't know of anything that has a will that's separate from anything physical, everything we're aware of that has communicated to us in some way that it has a will is also a living thing with a brain.

2)Physical beings with a will require time in order to move or create things.

3) IF there were such a thing as a being with no physical properties that is just a will then we have never seen anyone exercise their will outside of time either.

It seems to me that it's swapping a problem involving time and space for a problem that not just involves time and space but also biology and psychology.

A disclaimer to this is that I have no expertise in physics, so this is basically an idiot argument vs idiot argument.

[Angrboda]

It's not clear that virtual particles which exist on the edge of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle are indeed something as most ontologies consider the concept of substance.  They seem to be neither substance nor nothing, making your lumping them into one or the other category more a rhetorical flourish than anything.

And what is "neither something nor nothing" supposed to even mean exactly?

It means that traditional ontologies are inadequate for describing Nature as she is, and language and arguments built upon conventional ontological assumptions are therefore likely to be flawed. ("Ex nihilo nihl fit", for example.)

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It's not clear that virtual particles which exist on the edge of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle are indeed something as most ontologies consider the concept of substance.  They seem to be neither substance nor nothing, making your lumping them into one or the other category more a rhetorical flourish than anything.

Hawking radiation depends on virtual particles being substance.   Otherwise the substance that is blackhole transmutates through Hawking radiation into neither substance nor nothing, thus violating the general conservation of substanceness.

The general conservation of substanceness? Did you just pull that out of your ass? Regardless, the traditional ontological conception is that nothing comes from nothing, and that something always comes from something else. However, if, as I suggest, traditional ontology is flawed and incomplete, you can't use the strictures of traditional ontology to argue against something that calls those very assumptions into doubt. That would be invalid. In addition, Hawking radiation is the result of combining gravity and virtual particles, and gravity is not nothing, so the rules of traditional ontology are not violated anyway.