Can the definition of infinity disprove an infinite past?

[Speakpigeon]

I support it with the complete absence of any specific questions from you.

I cannot prove a negative.

What specific questions about my positions do you have?

Prove you should be taken seriously. What you just wrote is devoid of anything to take you seriously.

Like a specific question or specific misunderstanding on my part.

It is a blanket statement that includes no specifics.

It is worthless.

What specifically do I not understand?

What specifically do you not understand from these hundreds of posts?

And my English is perfect.

It is idiosyncratic like a natural language should be.

You on the other hand are a parrot with English.

We've been there before...

I spent the necessary time to ask you specific questions and you always failed to provide any appropriate answer. You never explained yourself. You failed to keep track of the debate. It's effectively impossible to have a rational conversation with you. Everybody ends up frustrated and flustered, and more importantly none the wiser. I even went so far as to explain to you what it was you could do, and in fact what you had to do to explain yourself. I'm still waiting for you even to acknowledge this post, let alone provide any sensible answer. I guess the main point is that you are intellectually devious. Never a straight answer. Never. Most of what you say comes out as irrelevant to what you pretend to be responding to. You just ignore the bits you don't like. It's not a debate. It's a sick joke. It's literally a sick joke.
EB

 

[Bomb#20]

I think unternensche got something right.

From QM energy transfer is quantized.

Not exactly. Energy transfer between bound states is quantized; but energy transfer between unbound states can be anything. As long as an electron is part of an atom, it only absorbs or emits a photon at one of the frequencies that will take it to a different allowed state of that atom. But once you ionize the atom and the electron flies away, you can accelerate the electron by an arbitrarily small increment.

Planck Time is a theoretical minimum interval for change.

No it isn't.

There is a Planck time and a Planck length.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time

In quantum mechanics, the Planck time (tP) is the unit of time in the system of natural units known as Planck units. A Planck unit is the time required for light to travel in a vacuum a distance of 1 Planck length, which is approximately 5.39 × 10 −44 s.[1]

According to your own link,

"Because the Planck time comes from dimensional analysis, which ignores constant factors, there is no reason to believe that exactly one unit of Planck time has any special physical significance. Rather, the Planck time represents a rough time scale at which quantum gravitational effects are likely to become important. This essentially means that whilst smaller units of time can exist, they are so small their effect on our existence is negligible. The nature of those effects, and the exact time scale at which they would occur, would need to be derived from an actual theory of quantum gravity."​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length

"The Planck length is the scale at which quantum gravitational effects are believed to begin to be apparent, where interactions require a working theory of quantum gravity to be analyzed.[5] The Planck area is the area by which the surface of a spherical black hole increases when the black hole swallows one bit of information.[6]

The Planck length is sometimes misconceived as the minimum length of spacetime, but this is not accepted by conventional physics, as this would require violation or modification of Lorentz symmetry.[5]"​

Discrete and quantized are synonmouse. The discrete or quantized unit of current is the electron.

No. The discrete or quantized unit of charge is the electron.

1 Coulomb = 242 x 10^18 discrete electrons. Charge is number of electrons.
1 Amper of current = 1 Coulomb/Secomd.

Equations always trump semantics.

Yes; and your equations are what refute you. Charge is quantized. Current is charge per second. For that to mean there's a discrete unit of current, there would also have to be a discrete unit of time. According to QM time is not quantized. You can have an arbitrarily small current even though charge is discrete because you can have an arbitrarily small time.

even though all things from QM are discrete.

No, some things from QM are discrete and some are continuous.

The curvy d's above and below the divide symbol, with the t underneath, mean "partial derivative with respect to time". Discrete quantities do not have partial derivatives. That means the Schroedinger equation says time is continuous.

 

[Bomb#20]

And, no, you won't get out by saying that time is also quantized, and the speed of light is what you get when an entity moves one space quant per time quant. Quite the opposite: This would seem to imply that the only possible velocities are integer fractions of the speed of light!

                     /
                    /
                    \
                    /
                    \
                    /
                   /
                   \
                   /
                  /

As long as the left-right pattern doesn't repeat, you can have an irrational fraction of the speed of light.

Even that argument is overkill. If there really are quants of spacetime, they are almost certainly laid out in an amorphous glass rather than in a regular crystal structure; otherwise there would be observable macroscopic anisotropies. So the sort of uniform step-wait-wait-step-wait-wait-... movements you're envisioning to infer integer fractions of light speed would be impossible from the get-go.

 

[untermensche]

I support it with the complete absence of any specific questions from you.

I cannot prove a negative.

What specific questions about my positions do you have?

Prove you should be taken seriously. What you just wrote is devoid of anything to take you seriously.

Like a specific question or specific misunderstanding on my part.

It is a blanket statement that includes no specifics.

It is worthless.

What specifically do I not understand?

What specifically do you not understand from these hundreds of posts?

And my English is perfect.

It is idiosyncratic like a natural language should be.

You on the other hand are a parrot with English.

We've been there before...

I spent the necessary time to ask you specific questions and you always failed to provide any appropriate answer. You never explained yourself. You failed to keep track of the debate. It's effectively impossible to have a rational conversation with you. Everybody ends up frustrated and flustered, and more importantly none the wiser. I even went so far as to explain to you what it was you could do, and in fact what you had to do to explain yourself. I'm still waiting for you even to acknowledge this post, let alone provide any sensible answer. I guess the main point is that you are intellectually devious. Never a straight answer. Never. Most of what you say comes out as irrelevant to what you pretend to be responding to. You just ignore the bits you don't like. It's not a debate. It's a sick joke. It's literally a sick joke.
EB

As I thought. I see no questions.

You do nothing but make blanket statements like this. You do not engage in anything.

You are worthless.

 

[untermensche]

Mathematical infinities like real numbers bare no relation the question of cosmology.

That is my point.

There are no real infinities.

There could not be any.

It is impossible.

If you can move a smaller and smaller distance without end then your movement will take infinite time to make.

What you described is Zeno's Paradox on infinite stepping has been around for thousands of years. The question is hardly new. There was a lengthy thread on it. The link in my OP on infinity covers the history of thought on infinity.

It is not a paradox even though that is what it is called.

It is what happens when you try to apply infinity to reality.

You end up with a bunch of absurdities and impossibilities.

Infinity is not a concept that can nakedly be applied to reality.

It is only something that is used in models of reality.

When it comes to the universe we can never know.

You can know.

You can know a real infinity is impossible.

It makes no sense in the real world.

Infinity is only something for models of reality, abstractions of reality.

To try to apply it to the real thing is an absurdity.

 

[steve_bank]

Not exactly. Energy transfer between bound states is quantized; but energy transfer between unbound states can be anything. As long as an electron is part of an atom, it only absorbs or emits a photon at one of the frequencies that will take it to a different allowed state of that atom. But once you ionize the atom and the electron flies away, you can accelerate the electron by an arbitrarily small increment.


No it isn't.

There is a Planck time and a Planck length.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time

In quantum mechanics, the Planck time (tP) is the unit of time in the system of natural units known as Planck units. A Planck unit is the time required for light to travel in a vacuum a distance of 1 Planck length, which is approximately 5.39 × 10 −44 s.[1]

According to your own link,

"Because the Planck time comes from dimensional analysis, which ignores constant factors, there is no reason to believe that exactly one unit of Planck time has any special physical significance. Rather, the Planck time represents a rough time scale at which quantum gravitational effects are likely to become important. This essentially means that whilst smaller units of time can exist, they are so small their effect on our existence is negligible. The nature of those effects, and the exact time scale at which they would occur, would need to be derived from an actual theory of quantum gravity."​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length

"The Planck length is the scale at which quantum gravitational effects are believed to begin to be apparent, where interactions require a working theory of quantum gravity to be analyzed.[5] The Planck area is the area by which the surface of a spherical black hole increases when the black hole swallows one bit of information.[6]

The Planck length is sometimes misconceived as the minimum length of spacetime, but this is not accepted by conventional physics, as this would require violation or modification of Lorentz symmetry.[5]"​

Discrete and quantized are synonmouse. The discrete or quantized unit of current is the electron.

No. The discrete or quantized unit of charge is the electron.

1 Coulomb = 242 x 10^18 discrete electrons. Charge is number of electrons.
1 Amper of current = 1 Coulomb/Secomd.

Equations always trump semantics.

Yes; and your equations are what refute you. Charge is quantized. Current is charge per second. For that to mean there's a discrete unit of current, there would also have to be a discrete unit of time. According to QM time is not quantized. You can have an arbitrarily small current even though charge is discrete because you can have an arbitrarily small time.

even though all things from QM are discrete.

No, some things from QM are discrete and some are continuous.

The curvy d's above and below the divide symbol, with the t underneath, mean "partial derivative with respect to time". Discrete quantities do not have partial derivatives. That means the Schroedinger equation says time is continuous.

I am familiar with PDEs. Are you familiarwith lasers?

Consider a HeNe gas laser. It can be modeled as a rectangular box infinite potentential well. Photons with a wavelength multiple integers of the box are bouncing back and forth. The wave equation solution for the box is sines and cosines. The WE is in this case the probability of a photon being in a dydxdz in the box, in engineering we call it a resonant standing sine wave. Or simply a resonant condition.. The WE operates on variables. The interpretations of the WE would be another thread.

We treat macroscopic variables as continuous because quantum effects are low. When it came to partcles Newton did not work. In a trasisyor there is a probably of a change in state, not a continuous determinitic function.

As I said eerything appears quantized. Energy trasfer is discrete. An elec tron and a photon are the means of energy transfer in current and EM radiation respectively.. QM says there is a minimum energy transfer. I belive the enrgy of a photon is hv, Planck constant times frequency.

In macroscopic time we treat seconds as infinitely divisible. Resolving picoseconds is routime. In any clock mechanism mechanical or electronic the theoretical limit will be quantum effects, There is an ultimate limit. At our Newtonian scale we treat time and chnage as continuous, like a basball in flight. As I recall from solid state physics as we go from quantum to Newtonian the density of stats appears continuous to us. We can not resolve a quantum transner of energy to a baseball.

Everything changes in discrete steps.

The universe to us is discrete. Whether there can be an infinite nimber of discrete entities in the universe is not knowable.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I support it with the complete absence of any specific questions from you.

I cannot prove a negative.

What specific questions about my positions do you have?

Prove you should be taken seriously. What you just wrote is devoid of anything to take you seriously.

Like a specific question or specific misunderstanding on my part.

It is a blanket statement that includes no specifics.

It is worthless.

What specifically do I not understand?

What specifically do you not understand from these hundreds of posts?

And my English is perfect.

It is idiosyncratic like a natural language should be.

You on the other hand are a parrot with English.

We've been there before...

I spent the necessary time to ask you specific questions and you always failed to provide any appropriate answer. You never explained yourself. You failed to keep track of the debate. It's effectively impossible to have a rational conversation with you. Everybody ends up frustrated and flustered, and more importantly none the wiser. I even went so far as to explain to you what it was you could do, and in fact what you had to do to explain yourself. I'm still waiting for you even to acknowledge this post, let alone provide any sensible answer. I guess the main point is that you are intellectually devious. Never a straight answer. Never. Most of what you say comes out as irrelevant to what you pretend to be responding to. You just ignore the bits you don't like. It's not a debate. It's a sick joke. It's literally a sick joke.
EB

As I thought. I see no questions.

You do nothing but make blanket statements like this. You do not engage in anything.

You are worthless.

We've been there before...

I spent the necessary time to ask you specific questions and you always failed to provide any appropriate answer. You never explained yourself. You failed to keep track of the debate. It's effectively impossible to have a rational conversation with you. Everybody ends up frustrated and flustered, and more importantly none the wiser. I even went so far as to explain to you what it was you could do, and in fact what you had to do to explain yourself. I'm still waiting for you even to acknowledge this post, let alone provide any sensible answer. I guess the main point is that you are intellectually devious. Never a straight answer. Never. Most of what you say comes out as irrelevant to what you pretend to be responding to. You just ignore the bits you don't like. It's not a debate. It's a sick joke. It's literally a sick joke.
EB

 

[Bomb#20]

Not exactly. Energy transfer between bound states is quantized; but energy transfer between unbound states can be anything. As long as an electron is part of an atom, it only absorbs or emits a photon at one of the frequencies that will take it to a different allowed state of that atom. But once you ionize the atom and the electron flies away, you can accelerate the electron by an arbitrarily small increment.
...

I am familiar with PDEs. Are you familiarwith lasers?

Consider a HeNe gas laser.

Yes. Do you know how they work? The collisions with helium create a population inversion in the neon, so it can lase. I.e., there are more neon atoms in excited states than in the ground state, so the light gets amplified by stimulated emission. I.e., the light comes from electrons dropping from a loosely bound state to a more tightly bound state. I.e., it wouldn't work in a neon plasma. I.e., a HeNe laser is not evidence that energy in general is quantized; it's only evidence that energy in bound states is quantized.

As I said eerything appears quantized. Energy trasfer is discrete. An elec tron and a photon are the means of energy transfer in current and EM radiation respectively.. QM says there is a minimum energy transfer. I belive the enrgy of a photon is hv, Planck constant times frequency.

But frequency is not quantized; therefore Planck's constant times frequency is not quantized.

Everything changes in discrete steps.

That's a statement of faith; it's not what quantum mechanics says.

 

[steve_bank]

I worked with stuff.

Consider a pitcher throwing a baseball. Is the chemical energy in blood continuous or discrete? At a macroscopic level I could say there x.xx... joules/liter of ATP. At the molecular level ATP is discrete. The pitcher can only trasder energy to the ball in discrete steps. The steps are so small we treat the change in velocity of the ball as coninuous. Then ATP in the blood can only change one molecule at a time.

Electrons are quantized. I can only change the voltage on a capaciter in steps of discrete electrons. Instruments usually can not detect single electron changes, at the macro electric circuit level voltage appears continuous. In equations we use a real variable. Sometomes we need to know the quantityof electrons and convert volts to coulombs.

https://socratic.org/questions/what...nergy-used-to-power-a-muscle-cell-in-your-arm

A common creationist attack on evolution is that it is faith based analogous to creationism. Depends on what you mean by faith. When you are on the takeoff roll why do you believe the jet will fly, baring a failure. For me I understand fluid dynamics and lift.

I've dealt with this stuff on routine basis. What we do know of QM is that the models produce predicable results at the level we can measure. Transistors, lasers, solar cells. The faith is in the models which after being used for enough time people have confidnce in them. I have faith in Kircoff's Laws in electric circuuits because for over 200 years they have never failed. There is always the unknown.

In some areas in electronics QM is used daily. It is routine and trusted. Reality so far appears quantized. Nothing in science is absolute.

 

[untermensche]

I support it with the complete absence of any specific questions from you.

I cannot prove a negative.

What specific questions about my positions do you have?

Prove you should be taken seriously. What you just wrote is devoid of anything to take you seriously.

Like a specific question or specific misunderstanding on my part.

It is a blanket statement that includes no specifics.

It is worthless.

What specifically do I not understand?

What specifically do you not understand from these hundreds of posts?

And my English is perfect.

It is idiosyncratic like a natural language should be.

You on the other hand are a parrot with English.

We've been there before...

I spent the necessary time to ask you specific questions and you always failed to provide any appropriate answer. You never explained yourself. You failed to keep track of the debate. It's effectively impossible to have a rational conversation with you. Everybody ends up frustrated and flustered, and more importantly none the wiser. I even went so far as to explain to you what it was you could do, and in fact what you had to do to explain yourself. I'm still waiting for you even to acknowledge this post, let alone provide any sensible answer. I guess the main point is that you are intellectually devious. Never a straight answer. Never. Most of what you say comes out as irrelevant to what you pretend to be responding to. You just ignore the bits you don't like. It's not a debate. It's a sick joke. It's literally a sick joke.
EB

I asked you for specific questions and this is what I get. A rant devoid of content.

You have nothing to say on this matter.

You are not any kind of judge on this matter.

You are a waste of time.

Infinite time in the past is as possible as reciting all the positive integers in the past.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I support it with the complete absence of any specific questions from you.

I cannot prove a negative.

What specific questions about my positions do you have?

Prove you should be taken seriously. What you just wrote is devoid of anything to take you seriously.

Like a specific question or specific misunderstanding on my part.

It is a blanket statement that includes no specifics.

It is worthless.

What specifically do I not understand?

What specifically do you not understand from these hundreds of posts?

And my English is perfect.

It is idiosyncratic like a natural language should be.

You on the other hand are a parrot with English.

We've been there before...

I spent the necessary time to ask you specific questions and you always failed to provide any appropriate answer. You never explained yourself. You failed to keep track of the debate. It's effectively impossible to have a rational conversation with you. Everybody ends up frustrated and flustered, and more importantly none the wiser. I even went so far as to explain to you what it was you could do, and in fact what you had to do to explain yourself. I'm still waiting for you even to acknowledge this post, let alone provide any sensible answer. I guess the main point is that you are intellectually devious. Never a straight answer. Never. Most of what you say comes out as irrelevant to what you pretend to be responding to. You just ignore the bits you don't like. It's not a debate. It's a sick joke. It's literally a sick joke.
EB

I asked you for specific questions and this is what I get. A rant devoid of content.

You have nothing to say on this matter.

You are not any kind of judge on this matter.

You are a waste of time.

Infinite time in the past is as possible as reciting all the positive integers in the past.

We've been there before...

You had all the time to explain yourself and you haven't. Countless people have died trying to get you to articulate something cogent. You're parroting yourself ad libitum. Nauseating. You never produce anything like an argument, a piece of knowledge, or even a piece of your own expertise. You're just parroting yourself without a fail. You have one absurd belief that infinity doesn't exist in the physical word and you have no proof whatsoever. You're only argument is to claim that the word "infinite" means without end, which is no even true, and if it was, it would still be an idiotic argument. It's a bit short to argue that infinity doesn't exist. You're attention span also is very short. No way anyone can have a rational debate with you. It always ends up in the same litany of your deadbeat mantra that an infinite past is impossible because "it would never complete".
Parrot.
EB

 

[untermensche]

You have been somewhere.

But you clearly can't address a thing.

What specific thing am I not understanding?

No need for any input from me to answer that.

But you can't.

You clearly do not understand that a real infinity is an absurdity.

As absurd as saying you recited all the positive integers. An impossibility.

Infinite time means that no matter how much time has passed there is always infinite time that has not.

No matter how much time passed before yesterday there is still infinite time more that must pass for yesterday, or any day, to occur.

It is not something that can pass or be in the past.

But you don't understand that and need spoon feeding.

 

[Speakpigeon]

You have been somewhere.

But you clearly can't address a thing.

What specific thing am I not understanding?

No need for any input from me to answer that.

But you can't.

You clearly do not understand that a real infinity is an absurdity.

As absurd as saying you recited all the positive integers. An impossibility.

Infinite time means that no matter how much time has passed there is always infinite time that has not.

No matter how much time passed before yesterday there is still infinite time more that must pass for yesterday, or any day, to occur.

It is not something that can pass or be in the past.

But you don't understand that and need spoon feeding.

We've been there before...

I spent the necessary time to ask you specific questions and you always failed to provide any appropriate answer. You never explained yourself. You failed to keep track of the debate. It's effectively impossible to have a rational conversation with you. Everybody ends up frustrated and flustered, and more importantly none the wiser. I even went so far as to explain to you what it was you could do, and in fact what you had to do to explain yourself. I'm still waiting for you even to acknowledge this post, let alone provide any sensible answer. I guess the main point is that you are intellectually devious. Never a straight answer. Never. Most of what you say comes out as irrelevant to what you pretend to be responding to. You just ignore the bits you don't like. It's not a debate. It's a sick joke. It's literally a sick joke.

EB

 

[untermensche]

I see no specific misunderstanding on my part in that childish rant.

Why don't you just face the fact you have nothing to say on this?

It is beyond you.

While on my part it is all so clear.

If you don't comprehend the fact that infinite time in the past is as possible as reciting all the positive integers in the past you have no business pestering me.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I see no specific misunderstanding on my part in that childish rant.

Why don't you just face the fact you have nothing to say on this?

It is beyond you.

While on my part it is all so clear.

If you don't comprehend the fact that infinite time in the past is as possible as reciting all the positive integers in the past you have no business pestering me.

We've been there before...

You had all the time to explain yourself and you haven't. Countless people have died trying to get you to articulate something cogent. You're parroting yourself ad libitum. Nauseating. You never produce anything like an argument, a piece of knowledge, or even a piece of your own expertise. You're just parroting yourself without a fail. You have one absurd belief that infinity doesn't exist in the physical word and you have no proof whatsoever. You're only argument is to claim that the word "infinite" means without end, which is no even true, and if it was, it would still be an idiotic argument. It's a bit short to argue that infinity doesn't exist. You're attention span also is very short. No way anyone can have a rational debate with you. It always ends up in the same litany of your deadbeat mantra that an infinite past is impossible because "it would never complete".

EB

 

[untermensche]

Your rant is noted. Again.

I am making point after point.

When you decide to address one of them there will be a conversation.

What is the conceptual difference between infinite time and counting all the positive integers?

Why don't you try to address that?

 

[untermensche]

Here's what the feeble-minded say about the difference between infinite time and counting aloud all the positive integers.

They say the difference is: infinite time could possibly be in the past.

They do not know how lost they are.

 

[Juma]

Here's what the feeble-minded say about the difference between infinite time and counting aloud all the positive integers.

They say the difference is: infinite time could possibly be in the past.

They do not know how lost they are.

We've been there before...

You had all the time to explain yourself and you haven't. Countless people have died trying to get you to articulate something cogent. You're parroting yourself ad libitum. Nauseating. You never produce anything like an argument, a piece of knowledge, or even a piece of your own expertise. You're just parroting yourself without a fail. You have one absurd belief that infinity doesn't exist in the physical word and you have no proof whatsoever. You're only argument is to claim that the word "infinite" means without end, which is no even true, and if it was, it would still be an idiotic argument. It's a bit short to argue that infinity doesn't exist. You're attention span also is very short. No way anyone can have a rational debate with you. It always ends up in the same litany of your deadbeat mantra that an infinite past is impossible because "it would never complete".
(Thanks speakpidgeon..)

 

[Speakpigeon]

Your rant is noted. Again.

I am making point after point.

When you decide to address one of them there will be a conversation.

What is the conceptual difference between infinite time and counting all the positive integers?

Why don't you try to address that?

Good point. Let me address that.

We've been there before...

I spent the necessary time to ask you specific questions and you always failed to provide any appropriate answer. You never explained yourself. You failed to keep track of the debate. It's effectively impossible to have a rational conversation with you. Everybody ends up frustrated and flustered, and more importantly none the wiser. I even went so far as to explain to you what it was you could do, and in fact what you had to do to explain yourself. I'm still waiting for you even to acknowledge this post, let alone provide any sensible answer. I guess the main point is that you are intellectually devious. Never a straight answer. Never. Most of what you say comes out as irrelevant to what you pretend to be responding to. You just ignore the bits you don't like. It's not a debate. It's a sick joke. It's literally a sick joke.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

What is the conceptual difference between infinite time and counting all the positive integers?

Hey, I'm really interested in that but I can't answer myself because I'm too thick to understand your question.

I give my tongue to the cat as we say in French.

So, please, do explain what is the conceptual difference between infinite time and counting all the positive integers.

Please note this is your opportunity to shine and impress all of us here. Don't miss it! Your explanation has to be not only brilliant and smart, but convincing and illuminating of the issue of infinitehood as only you understand it. Here's our chance to understand YOU!

Why don't you try to address that?

Oh, well, I guess I'm done here. Your turn.
EB