Evidence, if not proof, that life is no accident.

The famous double slit experiment:

We know everything about a particle's trajectory until it gets to the slits. If we knew which slit it would go through, we'd know its future trajectory. But if that information is not available to be known, the future is abstraction. Even though the future is abstraction, the past wasn't. It only became abstraction after and during its passing through the slits.

The past happened as it happened. The big bang happened and we can know everything that followed as a result. The past is concrete all the way back to the big bang. Had anything happened at all during the big bang and after that could have been considered an unknowable variable, the information that held the physics of the developing universe in concrete form would have broken down into complete abstraction and what would have followed would have been a perpetuation of unknowable and unpredictable events.

Since the past is inferable and can be known, it has always been knowable. Since it has always been knowable, life has been inevitable since the beginning of the universe.

a reply to: smithjustinb


The past is predictable? Hmmm.....

a reply to: smithjustinb

Star and flag for a novel approach to this subject.

Since the past is predictable and can be known, it has always been knowable. Since it has always been knowable, life has been inevitable since the beginning of the universe.

This goes well with one of the paradoxes of the universe. Scientists have been debating about the nature of time. Does time go backwards and forward?

Science doesn't say that life happens by accident. Everything in the universe follow sets of laws (the laws have always been there). The future may be unpredictable but the laws are always predictable.

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: smithjustinb


The past is predictable? Hmmm.....

Usually we use the word, "predict" to describe a future event. What would be the word I'm looking for? Either way, I think people know what I mean.

a reply to: Deaf Alien

I would think that if time were cyclical, that would be the
apex of a predictable past? Or am I way off?

Either way SnF for a thread to watch.

a reply to: randyvs

It is difficult to understand what the OP mean. Even if time was cyclical it still wouldn't be predictable in the future.

I wonder if he meant that maybe that time goes both direction?

a reply to: smithjustinb

What would be the word I'm looking for?

Forecast?

The quantum arrow of time

According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, quantum evolution is governed by the Schrödinger equation, which is time-symmetric, and by wave function collapse, which is time irreversible. As the mechanism of wave function collapse is philosophically obscure, it is not completely clear how this arrow links to the others. Despite the post-measurement state being entirely stochastic in formulations of quantum mechanics, a link to the thermodynamic arrow has been proposed, noting that the second law of thermodynamics amounts to an observation that nature shows a bias for collapsing wave functions into higher entropy states versus lower ones, and the claim that this is merely due to more possible states being high entropy runs afoul of Loschmidt's paradox. According to the modern physical view of wave function collapse, the theory of quantum decoherence, the quantum arrow of time is a consequence of the thermodynamic arrow of time.

en.wikipedia.org...

Maybe I am going way ahead? LOL

In the 1928 book The Nature of the Physical World, which helped to popularize the concept, Eddington stated:

"Let us draw an arrow arbitrarily. If as we follow the arrow we find more and more of the random element in the state of the world, then the arrow is pointing towards the future; if the random element decreases the arrow points towards the past. That is the only distinction known to physics. This follows at once if our fundamental contention is admitted that the introduction of randomness is the only thing which cannot be undone. I shall use the phrase ‘time's arrow’ to express this one-way property of time which has no analogue in space."

Eddington then gives three points to note about this arrow:


1. It is vividly recognized by consciousness.
2. It is equally insisted on by our reasoning faculty, which tells us that a reversal of the arrow would render the external world nonsensical.
3. It makes no appearance in physical science except in the study of organization of a number of individuals.

originally posted by: Deaf Alien
a reply to: randyvs

It is difficult to understand what the OP mean. Even if time was cyclical it still wouldn't be predictable in the future.

I'm not talking about cyclical time. I just meant that we can "predict" the past, as in we can infer what happened.

I took the word, "predictable" out and replaced it with "inferable".

a reply to: smithjustinb

I am trying to understand what you really mean. Are you saying that the past has already been set in stone? Like when the first consciousness has been born it is already there. Life is already there anyway?

a reply to: smithjustinb

I'm not talking about cyclical time. I just meant that we can "predict" the past, as in we can infer what happened.

If we can infer the past, it is by perception. Now what if the perceived
past is a lie? Say, something everyone was only convinced was true? So we
can know the past, but there is a debacle between the fabricated and the
truth. The truth being what actually did happen in the past. One truth for
all to know.

a reply to: randyvs

Maybe the reason the past seems so convoluted ... is because people keep going back and changing things during our period of perception/lifetime.

a reply to: Snarl

I would identify perception as being in the top three most fragile
commodities employed by man. As they say,

"many a slip, twix cup and a lip"

a reply to: randyvs

many a slip, twix cup and a lip

LOL I always thought that mean that as you drink (when you are drunk) some are dripping from the cup.

I still do not know exactly what the OP mean.

At first I thought it was an attempt at an alternative theory to the Big Bang Theory since the future cannot be known and predictable. As it turns out, it is predictable (in the past) and life is not accident.

Maybe I am confusing myself? LOL. Maybe I am drinking a bit too much?

a reply to: Deaf Alien

I myself am still making offers in the hope that OP
provides a more concise synopsis after thinking this
over for a bit. I guess I'm entertaining his notion for now,
hoping we're provided some direction.

a reply to: randyvs

Yeah. We'll just wait and let him think this over.

To me it sounds like that old debate about time going both directions.

Here's a good read: en.wikipedia.org...

As I have stated before it doesn't matter if the future is unpredictable, the universe still follow the laws.

Are you saying that because the past has happened and it will not change and that everything that has happened since the Big Bang ( bear in mind the Big Bang is a theory ) happened in a certain trajectory that the future is also set in place?

a reply to: smithjustinb

I think, therefore I am.

I am alive, therefore your theory is correct.

S&F