webplodder

Yes you can, and maybe you can create mathematical models which are self-consistent but still, you have to test these at some point. The universe is not obliged to follow the way we imagine it is.

This thread is about whether something can come from nothing. The crucial question here is what you mean by nothing. If you mean something can come from nothing where you never re-examine what is meant by nothing then I do not think it is meaningful to assert it does because then you might as well forget about science and attribute things to some god or gods . Science functions by testing ideas and possibly falsifying them but never, never jumping to definite conclusions so that to conclude something can come from nothing would simply be taking an unproven position. What it should be is a starting position subject to modification based on future ideas and experiments. Interestingly, if it turned out something could come from nothing then it would totally undermine causality and make a mockery of science. It would mean our scientific models of reality only applied within certain limits and outside of these science could have no application. The concept of unicorns was simply used illustrate that despite something not actually having any objective reality, the idea does because an idea is a product of the brain and as the brain does objectively exist so does the idea. Ultimately, everything is just an idea, maths., art, love, ethics and so forth and the point is ideas can easily turn into more concrete entities as we have spectacularly seen over the last few centuries. This relates to the original topic of this thread by redefining what is meant by 'nothing' and puts it into a wider context.

You will have to expand on this a bit. But why exactly going faster than light upsets cause and effect? Nobody has spelt it out yet.

Now you've lost me a bit. Is a tachyon the same as a neutrino?

The catch here, I think, is as soon as you give something a name, even 'nothing', you have created an idea which, therefore, cannot literally mean nothing in the sense of not existing. Only stuff that has never been thought about literally cannot exist. Even a unicorn exists as a concept and as such can be seen in books and movies etc. even though not existing in the natural world. It might even come to exist one day as a genetically engineered species and this is only possible because it first existed an an idea. As soon as you say something came from nothing you have created a thought which itself is something, not nothing. Think of it as allocating the label 'nothing' as a placeholder for an idea which might well be modified in the future. One thing science teaches us it that things never stay the same; current ideas will eventually be replaced by newer ones so that the important element here is consciousness. The universe, in my view, is not so much 'there' as it is 'interpreted'. In mathematics 0 denotes nothing but it is still an important concept and an essential element in making maths logically consistent. If 0 literally did not exist it would have to be invented.

Well, if it is found that faster-than-light speed is possible then it could lend support to string theory which proposes that all known particles are simply objects called strings vibrating at different frequencies.

Could this problem arise because we do not have a single theory that accounts for both classical physics and QM?

Ok, so is it the case that the faster you go the more massive you become and, therefore, the slower you move? That at the speed of light you would become infinitely massive so that no movement or time would exist? If so, how could a particle like the neutrino, which I understand does possess a little mass, get past this barrier? Even a tiny amount of mass would become infinite at light speed, wouldn't it? The one about causality was the main one.

Please do. I did see that documentary but it seemed to leave unanswered questions.

If it is found that neutrinos do violate the faster-than-light barrier how would that destroy the notion of causality?

0 cannot interact with any form of number, therefore, is neutral. 0 is a necessary concept in order to make maths an entirely logical discipline.

Any maths is just a 'brain diagram' of events that occur in the real world and that we which to measure. Maths does not really exist outside of our brain.

Ok, I misunderstood you there. Yes, you are right, what we call 'consciousness' is just a very small part of what is going on. There's a huge amount of information stored way back in the unconsciousness that we are usually not directly aware of and at certain times comes into consciousness through some kind of stimulus. This could be an idea, memory, smell, sound, site, etc., etc. I like to compare the unconscious to a huge warehouse and the conscious mind to a kind of 'workshop' that utilises bits of information stored in the unconscious. Another good analogy I think is computers. The RAM of a PC, for example, can be compared to working consciousness and the hard disc, which stores most of the stuff, the unconscious. What do think about the controversial idea that we may be partial quantum computers where our brain has some ability to access parallel processing that takes place with superimposed quantum particles? Problem with this idea is that no feasible site within the brain has yet been identified.

Thanks for that swansont, but you've covered a lot of ground there. What do you mean by isotope?

The Halting Problem seems to be an example of not being able to predict the consequences of future actions. However you have to posses consciousness to realize this fact. Aren't consciousness and unconsciousness mutually exclusive?