Thorham

No, because monkeys aren't random.

Thanks, and the same to you 🙂

Just my opinion. As we all know, it's peoples good right to disagree. I'm indeed quite unwilling if I completely, totally and utterly disagree with something. If that leads to mutual disagreement, well, that's fine with me, because... ... I'm absolutely not an authority. I just got to worked up about this stuff, that's all.

That's exactly what I wasn't doing. I was complaining about someone else whom I thought was doing that (which he wasn't) and how I thought that was a stupid idea. You see, if everyone just redefines words to mean whatever they want then we might as well call everything smurf.

Well, I did say I wasn't sure 🙂

Humor me.

Point taken. I'm not exactly sure.

Okay, it appears to be a little different from what I thought. After watching the linked video above it seems that Krauss calls a lack of space, time, matter, energy and laws of physics nothing. He doesn't appear to be redefining anything (a lack of those mentioned things seems to be physically nothing indeed). Problem solved. I'm not. I'm complaining about redefining nothing to mean something, which is actually not what's happening here. My problem was that I thought Krauss was messing around with the meaning of nothing so he could use a click bait title for his book, which I don't like because it causes unnecessary confusion. Turns out that he didn't do that. Yeah, it does matter sometimes. Not a single humanbeing is an absolute authority on what the meaning of words should be, so this kind of thing is certainly something that can and should be debated. Especially in this case.

I have no problem with quantum foam, existing data, etc. I have a problem with redefining nothing to mean something. Now you have two words for 'something', and no word for 'nothing', and that makes no sense. Nothing and something are two specific concepts, and if the concept of nothing doesn't apply, use something else. If something looks like nothing, but it isn't, just stop calling it nothing instead of performing mental gymnastics to make nothing mean something. If it was as simple as nothing being nothing in a context, such as 'There is nothing in that box over there.', then sure, there's no problem, even if I don't like it. It would just be casual speech, but I don't think that's what's happening here. The notion that there has to be a scientific definition of nothing that's different from the philosophical absolute nothingness is flawed. In science, if it's not nothing don't call it nothing. It's literally that straightforward. That's Thorham, thanks 👍

The whole problem is that it's not.

Not as obvious as simply calling it what it is. If nothing and something both mean something, then why have the word nothing? This is one reason why this whole thing is ridiculous. I called his book pop science, not his hypothesis. Absolutely because of that. If nothing gets redefined to something, then why even keep the word at all? Nothing and something are opposites. The whole point is that they are not the same It's not as clear cut and dry as it should and indeed could be because people like to needlessly complicate things. Sometimes people also like to needlessly complicate things by performing mental gymnastics in order to make something mean what it really, REALLY doesn't mean, and I'm not going to accept that without a fight, especially not when scientists do it. They should know better.

No, he can't, because he just wants to be able to call his pop science book A universe from nothing. That's all there's to it. There's no scientific value at all in redefining the word nothing to mean something. He just blatantly ignores the philosophical meaning of the word nothing and it's utter rubbish. And it's not, so you call it something. I don't think words as fundamental as nothing and something should be redefined. Krauss is literally just word fucking for absolutely no good reason at all, and it causes confusion for no good reason at all. If something is something, just call it something. I don't understand why that's so difficult. Something is something and nothing is not something. Seems so easy.

Nothing simply means 'not something'. That we simply call it quantum foam and not nothing. Simple. A universe from quantum foam. What's the problem with that? Of course, but when people start to needlessly redefine a word then it becomes confusing for no good reason.

And I don't agree. Krauss doesn't get to decide what words mean. He's a physicist, not a linguist. And how exactly can we do that when the terminology is confusing or just blatantly nonsensical (on purpose no less)?

Wow, really? What a shame that name stuck. I understand, but this is still just messing around with language. If it's as fundamental as is possible then it's more like the ultimate something rather than nothing.