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.

And that's exactly the problem with this. It's a language usage problem, namely deliberately calling something nothing while it's clearly something. It's ass backwards. If it's something just call it something. It's just like the big bang. It wasn't a bang and it wasn't big, so why is it called big bang? I have no problem with these ideas, it's not as if I have any better ones, but come on, something is nothing and a big bang that wasn't a bang and not big? These people need to take some English lessons! It's a philosophical issue any way and I shouldn't have brought it up.

Or perhaps not use the word nothing in science if you mean something? Of course not, but humans most certainly do.

It's not nothing. This is just using the word nothing in the casual sense. Example: There's nothing in the closet, except air of course, and air isn't even remotely nothing. A universe from nothing is the equivalent of click bait titles. A universe from something doesn't sound spectacular so you just use the word nothing in the casual sense. Here we are.

Close to nothing is still extremely far away from true nothingness. Ultimately something, what ever it is, must have always existed.

Not this universe from nothing nonsense again. You can't get something from nothing unless you redefine nothing to be something.

Because it seems nonsense that something can come from absolute nothingness.

Absolutely. I don't pretend to be someone I'm not.

Religion is sadly anything but simple, because it's an extremely effective control mechanism.

Of course you can believe in both god and evolution. You can believe anything you want. You could believe that invisible goblins made the universe out of magic pixie dust. That's how belief works: It allows anything.

It's only useless if it can't be repeated as many times as is necessary to get good data.