Re:We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know
by nswest23 on Sunday August 28, 2022 @11:28AM
(#32629133)
She does apply it to the big bang as well. She says that it's just the simplest explanation we have and that it's probably wrong too.
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Re:We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know
by superposeur on Sunday August 28, 2022 @05:42PM
(#32632362)
As I read the post, she takes the fact of a Hot Big Bang (narrowly construed in the modern sense of a homogenous, hot initial state prior to which vanilla GR breaks down, not as a literal singularity) to be a fact knowable by the normal process of science. Whereas the question of what came before that — I.e. what modified description takes over at higher temperatures yet — is placed in a different epistemic category of forever unknowability.
Of course, for any theory that applies within a certain domain, there’s always the question of what happens beyond that domain (“what came before that… and before that… and before that…?”). But this infinite regress isn’t particularly noteworthy. If I understand her correctly, she is claiming to be able to draw a particular line and to say that we can know things on one side of this line but— even in principle — can never know anything past this particular line.
She certainly understands her stuff. But I respectfully disagree with her conclusions — I see no reason to think that we might not make progress on the question through the normal process of science.