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  • The Multiverse and Existential Scale | Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Today we continue the FQxI "My Favourite" short series, where our members explore profound scientific ideas. In this episode, Robert Lawrence Kuhn delves into the mind-bending concept of the multiverse, reflecting on the staggering scale of potential universes. Drawing from his work on "Closer to Truth", Kuhn explores the philosophical implications of inflation theory and the provocative question: Why does anything exist at all? Join us as he contemplates the breathtaking vastness of reality and the mathematical scales that challenge our understanding of existence. Closer to Truth: https://closertotruth.com/ Watch the episode of Closer To Truth featured in this video: Series 01, Episodes 02: How Vast is the Cosmos? https://closertotruth.com/video/how-v... Stay tuned for the next episode, where another FQxI member reveals their most cherished scientific inspiration.

Keywords: #Inlfationary_Cosmology #Multiverse #Pocket_universes

I think the only way we’ll ever be able to answer Kuhn’s question “Why is there anything at all instead of nothing?” that leaves no somethings unexplained is to start with absolute metaphysical nothing. Not the nothing of physicists that still contains the laws of physics, not the nothing that contains counteracting positive and negative energies, not the nothing that contains possibilities, etc.; but absolute nothing. We’ve always ruled this out because of the ex nihilo nihil fit (out of nothing, nothing comes) idea. But, I think there’s a way to start with nothing and not violate this principle.  If we start with nothing and end up with something, and because you can’t change nothing into something, the only way this could be is if that “nothing” was somehow actually a “something” in disguise.  Another way to say this is by using the analogy that you start with a 0 (e.g., "nothing") and end up with a 1 (e.g., "something").  We know you can't change a 0 into a 1, so the only way to do this is if that 0 isn't really a 0 but is actually a 1 in disguise, even though it looks like 0 on the surface.  That is, in one way of thinking, "nothing" just looks like "nothing".  But, if we think about "nothing" in a different way, we can see through its disguise and see that it's actually a "something".  So, “something" doesn't come out of "nothing".  Instead,  the situation we used to think of as "nothing" is actually a "something”. If "nothing" is actually a "something" in disguise, this would always have been the case, meaning that "something" always has been here.  But, at least we now have a clue on how to start and proceed in figuring out how that can be. The next step I think is to figure out why any normal thing like a book exists and then see if that can be applied to “nothing”. I think it can be. It’s hard to think about, of course, because our minds would not be there in “nothing”, but we can try our best.

  1. The Multiverse concept.

(0:32) … what I didn't understand is, when estimating the size of the multiverse, huge exponential numbers were given, but no units of measurement … (0:55) When I first met Andre [Lind] in person on the set of Closer to Truth, first season in 1999, I asked him about the units. Andre smiled and said units don't matter …

I think that Robert Kuhn is correct to question the size/ “units” issue in a multiverse. But the multiverse concept is wrong anyway, simply because to implement a multiverse requires a consciousness/ knowledge and creative INFRASTRUCTURE to exist OUTSIDE of every existing, and potential new, universe. The existence of an external logical infrastructure is necessary in order to implement the multiverse idea.

Mathematicians/ physicists get away with the multiverse concept simply because they have never acknowledged the invisible logical infrastructure that underlies ALL visible mathematics. This supporting logical infrastructure is provided by the consciousness and agency of the mathematicians and physicists themselves, so it is unacknowledged/ invisible/ hidden.

  1. Why not nothing?

(2:06) … Closer to Truth has focused on: “Why is there anything at all, why not nothing?”

“Why not nothing?” is a question we can’t fully answer. We can potentially explain the physical world (i.e. the universe) we inhabit as being due to the world being a type of standalone, self-sufficient thing that has consciousness and creative aspects, the world we see being a consequence of the playing out of these consciousness and creative aspects. But we can’t explain why these consciousness and creative aspects exist in the first place.

    Lorraine Ford
    Re the mathematical universe/ multiverse concept (continued):

    Mathematics is not mathematics.

    Almost all, if not all, of mathematics is made up of the consciousness and the agency of mathematicians. But mathematicians never seem to notice themselves and the part they play in mathematics; they (wrongly) seem to assume that the mathematical symbols represent every necessary aspect of mathematics.

    So, there can be no such thing as a mathematical universe WITHOUT a logical infrastructure that plays the same part that human mathematicians play in man-made mathematics.

    With a single mathematical universe, this necessary logical infrastructure can be internal to the system. But with a multiverse, the logical structure must be external to all the existing universes, and all the potential new universes coming on.

    Because mathematicians never seem to notice themselves and the part they play in mathematics, they never seem to notice that a multiverse would require an extensive logical infrastructure that would need to be explained.

        Lorraine Ford
        Re: Why not nothing?

        The world can’t be explained solely in terms of a description of aspects that seem to exist:

        • Categories (e.g. energy, mass, position, acceleration, velocity);
        • Relationships that have been inferred to exist between the categories (i.e. laws of nature); and
        • Numbers that apply to the categories.

        These aspects don’t explain how it could be that the world would know its own categories, relationships and numbers. So, it must be further inferred that a fundamental-level consciousness/ knowledge aspect is possessed by the world (or by small parts of the world).

        These aspects also don’t explain why the world would ever move or change:

        • Why move from no categories to some categories?
        • Why move from no relationships to some (law-of-nature) relationships?
        • Why move from no numbers to some numbers (these numbers apply to the categories).
        • Why move from one number to another number? The delta symbols in the equations that represent laws of nature only represent number change IF other numbers change: i.e. the equations don’t explain why the world would ever initiate number movement or continue to initiate number movement.

        So, it must be yet further inferred that a fundamental-level creative aspect is possessed by the world (or by small parts of the world).

        These higher-level inferences, i.e. that fundamental-level consciousness/ knowledge aspect exists and that a fundamental-level creative aspect exists, cannot explain WHY a knowledge aspect would exist in the world or WHY a creative aspect would exist in the world.

        So, we can’t explain: “Why not nothing?”. We can only explain that, if there is something, then these are the necessary aspects of that something.

            Lorraine Ford
            Isn't ' number' itself a higher level concept? What the world has is quantities, separations, people sometimes produce a ranking of items under consideration., all of which can be quantified by a person or device designed for that task.

                Georgina Woodward
                Everything in the human mind is seemingly a higher-level concept. And, of course, mathematicians have very high-level, highfalutin concepts about numbers. But the real-world numbers, categories and relationships of physics are very low-level aspects of the world.

                  @"Lorraine Ford"#873II 7
                  I don't doubt that matter resosonds to other matter accorng to what exists and is happening without names or numbvers, which are parts of lzanguages,

                    Georgina Woodward
                    Georgina, why do you never pause to think or to check your spelling?

                    Everything in the human mind is seemingly a higher-level conscious concept. And, of course, mathematicians have very high-level, highfalutin concepts and ideas about numbers. But the real-world numbers, categories and law-of-nature relationships of physics are very low-level aspects of the world.

                    These numbers, categories, and relationships are no accident, and no mistake: they are mathematically necessary aspects of the real-world system.

                    High-level human minds can consciously conceptualise the low-level number, category, and relationship aspects of the world. But it is logically necessary that the low-level world ALSO, in its own way, knows its own numbers, categories, and relationships. Obviously, this necessary aspect of the low-level world is the foundation out of which higher-level knowledge/ consciousness is built.

                    The question of what exists, and what can be inferred to exist, is quite separate to the question of measurement, and the units of measurement. Only the categories can potentially be measured; the low-level numbers can be discovered via measurement of their associated categories, the low-level numbers themselves can't be measured; the laws of nature can't be measured; consciousness/ knowledge can't be measured. However, people CAN still represent numbers, laws of nature, and consciousness/ knowledge with special symbols.

                        Lorraine Ford
                        Concentration gradients play an important role in biology, metabolism and evelopment spring to mind. A scale can be applied by people so that the gradients can be compared, analysed and included in verbal comunication

                          More philosophers and other people are now seeming to consider that low-level consciousness (possessed by particles, atoms and molecules) is an idea that makes sense. The only question is: what are particles, atoms and molecules conscious of? And clearly, they can only be conscious of themselves and their surroundings, in terms of low-level category and number information. In fact, this is similar to what occurs with living things, where low-level category and number information arrives via interactions in the senses. But with living things, this low-level information has to be collated and analysed in order to acquire high-level conscious information about potentially harmful-to-them objects in their surroundings.

                          ALL higher-level conscious information possessed by living things can be traced right back to low-level consciousness BY the senses of whatever low-level, physics-level information arrives via interactions in the senses. Consciousness of written and spoken words, and consciousness of objects in the environment, can only occur after the organism has analysed and collated the low-level, physics-level information continually arriving via the senses. There is no break in the chain of consciousness. There is no miracle ex-nihilo emergence of higher-level consciousness.

                          So, higher-level consciousness can be explained in terms of lower-level consciousness. And lower-level consciousness can be seen as the necessary “knowledge” component of a mathematical system, so that consciousness is a necessary prerequisite if you want to build a mathematical world.

                          Consciousness and creativity are necessary prerequisites if you want to build a mathematical world. However, when it comes to the question of why there is something rather than nothing, consciousness and creativity are the somethings that can’t be explained.

                            Lorraine Ford
                            Whether the concept of low level concsciousness applies, depends on how exactly you define it.
                            If consciousness is the thought or awareness of feeling resuting from exterernal and from internal sensory stimulation -many material systems lack the complexity to be conscious. They can however be sub conscious. Responding automatically to inputs, so they have an effect upon what is acted upon and probably the actor.That is to say things can happen without a necessity of awareness.
                            Although we might think of our brain as being conscious a lot of its functioin is sub conscious. The life support function of the brain stem are mostly subconsciours, As is the co ordination of momements carried out effortlessly by the cerebellum, not needing indstruction from the pre-frontal cortex, when all is working well. The pre-frontal cortex behind the forehead is the conscious thinking part of the brain we may associate with ourself. Many learned reflex actions are sub consciously controlled. We can even ride a bicycle or drive a car while daydreaming or pereoccupied on 'autopilot'.

                                Georgina Woodward
                                So Georgina, define consciousness. I have given my CONCISE definition of consciousness MANY, MANY times on this website, but NO ONE else seems willing to risk giving a definition. E.g. a definition of consciousness seemed to stump Steve and Ulla! Also, no one wants to read tiresome, long-winded, meandering definitions: give us a CONCISE definition of consciousness, as you see it.

                                    I am not Steve or Ulla ,so your reply wasn't very helpful to me.I found thisote though. LORRAINE FORD quote" Consciousness a nd matter are different aspects of the world, requiring different methods of symbolic representation (symbols like AND, OR and IS TRUE are required to represent consciousness), but they always exist together. There is no free-floating consciousness.
                                    Low-level consciousness has a function; it is the necessary knowledge aspect of the world, whereby the world can know itself, i.e. know its own law-of-nature equations, categories (like mass and position), and numbers that apply to the categories.
                                    Consciousness is a basic aspect of the world like particles, atoms and molecules are basic, and like laws-of-nature, categories and numbers are basic. So, being a basic aspect of the world, the question of how consciousness feels, or doesn’t feel, is actually irrelevant.'
                                    YOUR DEFINITION SEEMS TO BE CONSISTENT/COMPATIBLE WITH YOUR MODEL, BUT THAT DOES NOT GUARANTEE THE CORRECTNESS OF EITHER OR THAT IT WORKS WITH OTHER'S DEFINITIONJS AND MODEL'S OF REALITY.

                                      Georgina Woodward
                                      I THINK "consciousness is anattribute of complex systems, organic and potentially inorganic that process sensory input, whether or external or internal origin into feelings ,sensations output products of the senses or sensors, overseeing function of the system within set boundaries of function, associated with non-automatic homeostasis,, self talk and identity."

                                          Lorraine Ford Like I explained, we have deep unknows still in maths, physics, philosophy, we must accept these limitations with humility. We evolve yes and actually yes we evolve quickly in the researchs but we have these deep unknowns and limitations. We try to reach, explain, define, prove these unknowns like this quantum gravitaion, the dark energy, the dark matter, the consciousness,.....we have not actually success at this quantum scale to explain them wih concrete maths, models, fields, particles......so this consciousness is nott explained , your ideas are interesting about categories, numbers.....but is not proved philosophically and physically speaking. This consciousness has a specific mechanism yes but not still found, we could have even a kind of mechanism where the panpsychism, the materialism, the pantheism are in a spefic mehanism where these unknowns that I cited are even in this mechanism added to this actual QFT, QM, SM. The dimensions maybe are a key with the geometrical algebras but not easy due to these limitaions in maths, physics,cosmology and philosophy. We could even have a 0D of consciousnes in a kind of pantheistic reasoning with this materialistic and panpsychic mechanism of this QM, QFT and its realistic dimensions. In fact nobody acttually has found the real mechanism , so we cannot affirm, regards

                                            Georgina Woodward
                                            Georgina,

                                            Are those your own words enclosed in quotes, or someone else's words? There is no attribution. In any case, I’m sorry, but that quote is pretty much a meaningless jumble of big words.

                                            You do realise, I hope, that to represent complex systems requires the use of logical connective symbols, as well as the usual equations (representing relationships, e.g. law of nature relationships) and numbers. What aspect of the real-world system do you think these necessary logical connective symbols are supposed to represent? What do you think is the significance of the logical connective symbols that are necessary to represent complex systems?

                                            People once mistakenly thought that complex systems could model the idea that consciousness emerged from the world-system. But I think that it was soon realised that the things that seem to “emerge”, e.g. in cellular automata, are a completely superficial and non-functional aspect of the system. In fact, nothing actually emerges, except from the point of view of someone outside the system, looking down on the superficial appearance of the system.

                                              @Lorraine Ford"#p168752
                                              I THINK, MEANS THESE ARE MY THOUGHTS NOT WORDS SHARED AS YET "consciousness is an attribute of complex systems, organic and potentially inorganic, that process sensory input, whether or external or internal origin into feelings ,sensations output products of the senses or sensors, overseeing function of the system within set boundaries of function, associated with non-automatic homeostasis,, self talk and identity." Georgina Woodward.
                                              I have been thinking it may be better to replace the terms organic and inorganic with living and non living, to better communicate the intended meaning.

                                                Georgina Woodward So you consider that this consiousness is a basic foundamental of the universe and that all is conscious organic and non organic , could you tell us more please about the philosophy correlated with this reasoning it seems interesting , is it a kind of pantheistic reasoning like if this consciousness were a reality for all particles of this universe and after the complexity imply the categories and expressions of this consciousness. Me Personally I consider an infinite eternal consiousness creating this universe and so I consider that all is conscious at its level of complexity but of course we cannot affirm, Regards

                                                    Georgina Woodward it may be better to replace the terms organic and inorganic with living and non living, to better communicate the intended meaning.

                                                    What is life? It shares the same atoms like non-living matter, so how can it start to live, do choices? Somehow this feel arbitrary. The main difference between living and non-living is not in the atoms, but in the time, so we must construct some time organization, and we see this dicotomy fades away? The only difference is in time and in amount of choices. We can put all functions on a line if we start from this?