X-Message-Number: 17893
From: "Michael LaTorra" <>
Subject: RE: Do you like philosophy?
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 17:08:37 -0700

david pizer  asked:
Subject: Do you like philosophy?

1.	The idea that something can come from nothing doesn't make sense to me.
For instance: I find that some theories of the Big Bang don't make sense.
What I don't understand is how someone can hold that specific theory that
says the universe was created (formed, arose, came from) from nothing.  To
me, "nothing" means nothing!  That would mean not even the propensity to
become something.

Does anyone have advice on how to state this more convincingly??  Or can
you show that something can come from nothing?

2.	An uncaused event.  I have never liked Hume's theory about how causation
is just one event following another.  And, I have nevered believed there
can be an uncaused event.  How would an uncaused event happen?

What would be a good way to show that there can not be an uncaused event?

=> Gosh, Dave, I hate to disappoint you, but I think modern physics has
shown fairly conclusively that something can come from nothing and that
uncaused events do happen.

The best example of something coming from nothing is the spontaneous - but
temporary - creation of subatomic particle pairs (one matter, the other
antimatter) from the "quantum foam" of the vacuum. These pairs recombine and
vanish almost immediately in most circumstances. However, if the pair
happens to appear right next to the event horizon of a black hole, then one
particle gets sucked in while the other escapes. This is the so-called
Hawking radiation. Some cosmologists also believe that our entire universe
came into existence by a similar kind of process.

Radioactive decay of a heavy nucleus is an example of an uncaused event. The
timing of radioactive decay is said to be uncaused because there is no known
cause for the decay of a single radioactive nucleus to happen at one moment
and not another. To be sure, the statistical probability of radioactive
decay by large numbers of nuclei is quite well defined. But no one can
predict when any particular nucleus will spontaneously decay.

The philosophical lesson I draw from these discoveries is that we can only
predict the behavior of large assemblages of entities, but not of
singletons. Probabilities rule large groups, but individuals can be
unpredictable. Perhaps this also suggests why we each feel that we possess
free will, yet at the same time we know that crowds tend to behave in
predictable ways.

Regards,

Michael LaTorra


Member:
Extropy Institute: www.extropy.org
Alcor Life Extension Foundation: www.alcor.org
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