@Alan. You don't understand infinity. Infinity is God. Set theory is people thinking that the forms that they see in their consciousness are all there is (indeed they are all there is), but there is also the formless part that gives rise to the forms. And in any final analysis of reality you have to take them both into account, otherwise you end up in paradoxes.
On Thursday, 20 March 2025 at 10:12:29 UTC+2 Alan Grayson wrote: > On Wednesday, March 19, 2025 at 11:49:50 PM UTC-6 Brent Meeker wrote: > > > > On 3/19/2025 10:09 PM, Alan Grayson wrote: > > > > On Wednesday, March 19, 2025 at 10:50:41 PM UTC-6 Brent Meeker wrote: > > > > On 3/19/2025 9:14 PM, Alan Grayson wrote: > > > > On Wednesday, March 19, 2025 at 3:28:40 PM UTC-6 Brent Meeker wrote: > > > > On 3/19/2025 4:56 AM, Alan Grayson wrote: > > > > On Wednesday, March 19, 2025 at 5:40:48 AM UTC-6 John Clark wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 4:30 AM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote: > > *> If the universe is infinite in spatial extent, and we run the clock > backward, is all the mass/energy of the observable region confined to a > tiny or zero volume?* > > > *The short answer is nobody knows what will happen if you run the clock > back to zero, and the mystery remains regardless of if the universe is > finite or infinite. Nobody knows what will happen when things get super > small because our two best physical theories, Quantum Mechanics and General > Relativity, disagree with each other. Most believe that something will > prevent a zero volume from ever occurring, but nobody knows what that > "something" is. * > > *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* > > > Maybe it's a 5th force. What I'd like to know is this; assuming an > infinite spatial universe and that it gets very very small as we run the > clock backward, the observable regions shrinks, but what happens to the > unobservable region? Quentin claimed to have an answer, but I can't recall > what it was. AG > > All theories treat the unobservable regions as being similar to the > observable (what else could you justify?). So every finite region, > observable or not shrinks to zero. > > Brent > > > *But if every finite subset of an infinite set strinks to zero, in the > case the assumed infinite set is the spatial extent of the universe, won't > the infinite spatial set of the universe also shrink to zero (which is what > Quentin denies)? AG* > > > > > *No. Brent* > > > But, as I've shown, this contradicts basic set theory. AG > > > Basic set theory has no metric. Shrink to zero in meaningless for a set. > > Brent > > > "No" isn't an argument. It's just a claim. My argument is based on set > theory and topology. If an infinite set can be contained in a countable set > of finite sets, and if they represent spacetime, and each shrinks to zero, > then so will the original infinite set. But maybe the infinite set of > spacetime points cannot be contained in a countable set, in which case we'd > have to use the Axiom of Choice. But I'm not sure if the infinite set of > spacetime points can be covered or contained in an uncountable set created > by applying the Axiom of Choice. In any event, you need an argument to > establish your claim. AG > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/ecbe1f62-07f4-4fb7-ad89-e0882fc6957dn%40googlegroups.com.
