Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 2384201" data-attributes="member: 177">Of course not.  If nothing else, we don't know the initial conditions for particular stars or galaxies.  Failure to predict exactly what happens does nto equate to not understanding what's going on inside. I'm not off track at all.  You are overgeneralizing again.First - an infinite space does nto imply an infinite number of things.  If you want to be really picky about assumptions, apply the same rigor to yourself.  Infinite size and infinite contents are separate assumptions.Second - even having infinite things does not go far enough.  The quantum mechanics you depend upon to give you your "anything could happen" also vastly reduces the problem, as it requires that particles of the same type be interchangeable.  All electrons behave the same.  Once you know how one electron behaves, you know how they all behave.  Same for all the other constituent particles.If you have infinite stuff, built out of a finite set of building blocks (as we seem to have), you can learn all what there is to know about those building blocks, and then have a handle on how all the infinite matter in the infinite universe behaves. In order to approach your goal, you need an infinite universe, filled with an infinite variety of fundamentally differeint things.  That would be another separate assumption, and not at all in accord with what we see in our universe.  I return to what I said earlier - infinite space and time are not sufficient.   YOu need a number of other assumptions to make it work.  And even then, there's always a way to construct an idea of a thing that contradicts the reality you have at hand.  Name dropping is more fun, but I fail to see how Hawking is relevant to our conversation.People who dont' want to assume their conclusions do.  Sure, if you choose to claim that all things Mankind has ever seen can be dismissed as "local phenomena", then your position is ironclad - but it is then also self-referential, circular logic.  What good is that?Everywhere else, you failed to make enough assuptions to support your position, and here you assume waaaay too much.  Should I take it that you feel your position is too weak to stand on it's own merits, so that you feel a need to strengthen it by attacking me rather than my logic?  I hope not.  It is an old trick, but it has no place here.</blockquote>

Verification