JRRZZ blog

As I’ve promised.

I’m going to elaborate on two things about infinity in this post. First, it’s meaning and second, it’s implication within and effect upon the deterministic universe.

There are a few fundamental aspects of infinity you’ll have to understand. Infinity is enormous and at the same time really small. Infinity is the number of times nothing fits into something. Infinity, like it’s name implies, has no end. That’s the whole idea about infinity. It’s something that just keeps on going. Just try to grasp that idea for a moment. Take your time, it has taken me several years and I still can’t fully understand. Let me help you along.

In our world view everything has a container, there’s always a higher something encompassing the object of reference. A man is standing in his garden. His garden is part of a city, this city is part of a country, this country is part of the world, our world is part of our solar system, our solar system is part of our galaxy, our galaxy is part of our universe and our universe is part of what? The containers stop at a certain point. We have reached the furthest we can zoom out while staying relatively certain we’re looking at the actual picture. When we try to zoom out further the picture becomes blurry and speculative. Just because we can’t measure beyond certain reference points. At this point you’ll need infinity as the final container.

Now we’ve got a problem. Is our universe the only universe in existence? Is our big bang the only big bang? As I’ve said before, this is mere speculation. There’s no way (yet) to prove there’s anything beyond our universe. When our container is actually infinitely large it would have room for an infinite number of universes.

I’m going to make a bold statement right now. Why will become clear later on. There is an infinite amount of universes in infinite space, constantly interacting with each other. Actually, the entity we call universe is just an effect of one interaction. Interactions are caused by previous interactions which are caused by previous interactions before that and so on. Infinite causality. Again, a few problems have to be solved to support this statement.

At the very basic level, how does an infinite amount of interacting universes fit within infinity? I’m going to call upon your visual comprehensive skills for a moment. I’ve taken the liberty to create four pictures.

Continue zooming out. Imagine zooming out infinitely. This will create an infinite number of dots in infinite white space. Does this mean infinity can be smaller than infinity? Yes. And no. Because infinite space has no end, it can encompass anything an infinite number of times. But there’s a catch. If something is infinite in it’s dimensions, it will fill up infinite space instantly. The infinite number of finite objects is an infinite object in itself, thus filling up infinite space instantly. Infinity equals infinity. Infinity multiplied by a constant still equals infinity. To solve this paradox you need to understand an infinite amount of finite objects will encompass everything in existence, effectively balancing out the paradox in reality by limiting the constant to one.

Another problem with my bold statement is infinite causality. This problem can be split up into two major aspects. The existence of infinite time and the existence of energy.

Energy as we know it doesn’t really exist. This beautiful Steven Hawking quote explains this better than I ever could.

There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty [five] zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the universe is exactly zero. The matter in the universe is made out of positive energy. However, the matter is all attracting itself by gravity. Two pieces of matter that are close to each other have less energy than the same two pieces a long way apart, because you have to expend energy to separate them against the gravitational force that is pulling them together. Thus, in a sense, the gravitational field has negative energy. In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that this negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero.

So what has triggered the creation of particles? The big bang is the event we fairly certain know of creating all the matter in our universe. Following my train of thought here it would mean some event, triggered by another event, ad infinitum, has created our universe. The chain of events didn’t start and won’t stop. This is a perpetuum mobile without breaking the second law of thermodynamics. Because this infinite process encompasses everything, loss of energy is not possible. This enforces entropy of exactly zero, constantly. Plus, change in energy is not the cause but an effect.

Imagine there has always been causality. Our big bang event was triggered by another event. Infinite causality can be explained best using an infinite binary tree.

This image shows a part of the infinite binary tree of causality. You can move down the tree finding out what caused something, but the tree never had a root. This binary tree is infinitely wide and infinitely long. Everything has a cause, except everything itself. Infinite causality imposes several questions, though. The most important of which is wether or not we can actually determine the future. The simple answer is theoretically yes, but in practice no. Because the causality is infinite you need to know the entire (infinite) path down the tree. The only thing existing long enough to “know” the entire infinite history is the infinite perpetuum mobile itself. And this process can’t possibly be sentient, because “sentient” doesn’t really exist in a deterministic universe.

That’s the effect on the deterministic universe I wrote about in the introduction. The entire theory is based upon determinism. The deterministic universe hasn’t been that popular among scientists because of the existence of free will. If the universe is really deterministic we can’t have free will because every action we take has to be a reaction upon prior events. Free will is the ultimate example of absolute randomness. Absolute randomness can’t exist in a deterministic universe.

This is the point where we can take all the pieces and put them together. For free will to exist we need to provide the system with a factor of absolute randomness. Causality is the opposite. It provides a structure upon which the universal system we live in is based. Any underlying structure cancels out the possibility of absolute randomness. Infinite causality however, provides an infinitely complex underlying structure. An infinite binary tree is an infinitely complex algorithm. This enables the universal system to mimic absolute randomness, thus providing us with the perfect illusion of free will.

That pretty much sums it up. There are a few counter arguments I can already take care of.

Doesn’t this entire infinity idea just equal to belief in a supreme being? Infinite causality is equally vague and unsupported as the deistic universe.

Yes, I can’t argue with that. There’s no way to provide any sort of proof supporting this theory. It’s basically the question of wether infinite logic still counts as logic.

So it doesn’t matter what I do, it’s all predefined anyway, right?

In a way that’s right. Although the human psyche, and every decision it makes, is a product of determinism this does not mean you should become a nihilist all of a sudden. The perfect illusion of free will still equals free will in every way so you’ve got the freedom to do whatever you wish. The universal system is too complex for you to notice the difference. You can’t even possibly feel the difference because absolute free will does not exist. Remember, this is not a question of wether you’ve got a free will or not. This theory provides a link between causality and the perceptive free will.

Tags: Stuff //