>>18470455
>so why wouldn't I just prefer the one that doesn't require me to posit some additional thing?
Well that's exactly what the cosmological argument is pointing out - if you don't have an infinite regress then you have to have something that started all else, and if we examine what that thing would have to be like, you get God: it has to be able to create from nothing so it's omnipotent, it can't be made by something else so it must have logically required existence, it made a world with change so its desire must be limitless, and so on.

The cosmological argument takes this question and says "Yes. Exactly!"

>>18470500
>what that thing would have to be like, you get God
When the premises of the argument is such that the only thing that can unfuck it, is a guy with the superpower to do anything
maybe it's your premises that are false

>>18470455
All that this argument really does is to prove that determinism alone can't explain everything. The universe is nondeterministic. This isn't exactly shocking.

>>18470506
determinism is not falsifiable

>>18470502
Not so - unless there's an infinite regress, there _must_ be an omnipotent being. If there's no infinite regress then there was a specific beginning point of time, Time 0. At that point, nothing had happened yet. So the only things that existed, or even were true, were things required to be such by the laws of logic themselves.

The laws of logic don't change, so nothing that existed at that time was changeable. So whatever thing with logically required existence made the first changeable thing at that point, it can't have done so by changing something else. Its first act must have been one of wholecloth creation, bringing something directly into existence without rearranging or transforming anything else to do so.

And if you can create from nothing, then you can create anything.

So your options really are limited to either infinite regress or omnipotence.

>>18470500
But the argument doesn't establish you can't have an infinite regress, that's just taken for granted because it's counterintuitive. But I have the exact same counterintuition against an eternal/atemporal agent.

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>>18470545
Infinite regressions are logically impossible since they involve and actual infinity. We can tell actual infinities are logically impossible since they lead to logical contradictions.

Say we had a contest between two people. The contest is going to last one minute. One of the contestants, Person A, wins if there are an infinite number of objects in the stadium after one minute. So after half a minute passes, he makes ten objects, each labeled with the numbers 1 through 10. Once it reaches half of the remaining time, he makes ten more, labels them 11 through 20, and continues this process every time it reaches half the remaining time.

The second person, Person B, wins the contest if he stops the first person and there are not infinite objects at the end of the contest. So each time the Person A makes ten objects, Person B destroys the lowest-labeled one. So in round 1, he destroys the object labeled 1. Round 2, he destroys the object labeled 2, and continues this every round.

Once the minute has passed, how many objects would be remaining?

The answer is that it must simultaneously be ∞ objects and 0 objects.

Every specific object would be removed, yet at each round there would always be more objects that had not been removed.

There would be no object about which we could say “this one was not removed”. Object 1 was removed in the first round, 2 was removed in the second round, 10 and 15 would have been removed in the tenth and fifteenth rounds, and so on. You could always say “this number was removed in that round”.

Yet, not all the objects can have been removed from the group. At each round, the amount of numbers in the group grows. It increases by ten, yet only one is removed, so each round the amount of objects that have been added is greater than the number destroyed. So after that is repeated infinitely, there would have to be an infinite amount of numbers in the group.

So you simultaneously must have infinite objects and none.

1. It's irrelevant if universe had a beginning or was truly infinite or is a lifeform that is cyclical in some way
2. God should be thought of as a concept and not a singular being.

>>18470549
10-1 = 9

The number of objects increases by 9 when half the remaining time elapses, assuming there are no physical limits to this experiment as in our universe.

After the time elapses, infinity becomes less a number and more a concept. If you instruct a computer to divide 1 by 0, it will add 0 over and over until it reaches 1, which is never, since no matter how many times you add 0 to 0 it will still be 0. Or perhaps it has some mechanism installed to detect 0 and respond with n/a or somesuch.

It depends on what method you are using to divide one number by another. Understanding infinity means going back to elementary school and the raw basis of our mathematics. If you understand division to mean how many times the divisor fits into the dividend then there is no answer.

A better question is what if the first person adds 1, the second person takes away 1/10 of this, then the first person adds 1/10 and the second person takes 1/10 of that 1/10 and so on. You will get

0.999999999...

As their battle nears infinity it approaches 1. Likewise if there was another experiment where 1 is divided by 3, again requiring a computer to work infinitely to calculate that it is 0.333... The figure 0.333 was then multiplied by 3 which comes to 0.999... Is this 1 also? It is of course. So how can the previous 0.999 = 1 when the second person keeps taking away 1/10 from the first person's figure?

Well if we interrupt the calculation between the first and second we get 0.9 + 0.1 in other words we arrive at 1, then the second person removes an infinitesimally small 0.000...0001 from it and we repeat. Kind of a chicken and the egg thing.

So this is infinity, an egg.

>>18470570
Sounds like you're seeing the picture: it's impossible to get an actual infinity. They are fundamentally, inherently, by definition, wrong and self-contradicting.

So we can rule our infinite regressions, and all other completed infinities. Leaving us with only one other option: a beginning, and hence, an omnipotent being.

That's what the Cosmological argument is getting at. I definitely agree that some people just try to handwave away infinite regressions by taking "it's not intuitive, bro" and that's about all they've got, but it can for sure be definitively proven that they aren't possible.

>>18470549
Consider a hypothetical infinite set of all the natural numbers {1, 2, 3,...}. Now imagine a guy who takes away each number one a time at an accelerating pace over the course of a minute similar to your thought experiment. So at step 1 he takes away 1, at step 2 he takes away 2, at step 3 he takes away 3, and so on. But at every step, he still has infinitely many numbers left to take, so by the end he must simultaneously have infinitely many left to take and none! Contradiction?

>>18470579
It is not self-contradicting. It just has no explanation within conventional mathematics.

Infinity just means it goes on forever, there is no end. It has utility, for example 1/3 requires an understanding that the 3s in 0.333... go on forever. It is just that we can only understand 0.333 in conventional terms as 3/10 + 3/100 + 3/1000 and so forth.

We are humans not calculators. We can definitely incorporate infinity into our thinking, but as previously mentioned it is an error to assume 1/0=∞, it certainly sends a computer into a recursive loop, but it is not infinity.

Likewise 0/0 can equal ∞, but any number of 0s fit into 0, so it is just one possible answer.

1/∞ is arguably 0, but then so is 2/∞ and 3/∞, so the calculation is not reversible, information is lost.

Black holes do not represent infinity either, they may have physical features that approach infinity, but it never quite reaches this mathematical concept in the flesh. There may in fact be physical limits to how small a singularity can be.

>>18470565
>God should be thought of as a concept and not a singular being
It's always so odd to me people treat the idea of god with such wishy-washy terms.
It really waters down the meaning.

>>18470527
Case in point
when you've backed yourselves into a corner with premises like these

consider that your premises are false, rather than suppose a superpowered ghost fix them
seriously

>>18470601
it really filters the midwits who tend to overthink something so trivial, which is a good thing, they all belong in hell

>>18470596
>It is not self-contradicting.
Then answer the question I asked about the contest. How many are left at the end?

>Infinity just means it goes on forever, there is no end.
That's not so. Plenty of infinites are said to end. Such as:

(...-3, -2, -1, 0)

They can even both begin and end:

(1, 1.5, 1.75...2)

>>18470549
do you think Zeno-style thought experiments establish that motion is impossible

>>18471268
No, since they depend on the assumption that time and space are infinitely divisible. Remove that assumption and use a finitist model where time and space have base units and Zeno's paradoxes vanish.

>>18470549
I think the contradiction here comes from carrying out an infinite sequence of tasks within a finite amount of time. But isn't the point of the infinite regress explanation that time is infinite?

>>18470527
>Not so - unless there's an infinite regress, there _must_ be an omnipotent being
Not him but theres no "Not so" since nothing in his post says otherwise. I cant believe people argued with you for an entire thread on this topic when you cant even be bothered to read 2 measly sentences of what someone is saying. I couldnt have coped with that

>>18471288
You can run something equivalent to this with anything involving an infinity since it emerges from a fundamental contradiction within infinities. They are, ostensibly, what you get by a sufficient quantity of successive addition. But no quantity of successive addition can actually get you infinity.

For infinite time, say you walked through a portal to an infinitely old universe where this contest had been going on for an infinite amount of time. Out of surprise at your arrival, the contest stops when you come. Who is the winner?

>>18471299
Hm? I said "not so" in regards to "maybe it's your premises that are false". My response is that the premises can't be false, the bit he quoted/responded to: "if you don't have an infinite regress then you have to have something that started all else, and if we examine what that thing would have to be like, you get God: it has to be able to create from nothing so it's omnipotent" _has_ to be true and _cannot_ be false no matter what, since it's really a direct result of the law of non-contradiction.

>>18471302
>For infinite time, say you walked through a portal to an infinitely old universe where this contest had been going on for an infinite amount of time. Out of surprise at your arrival, the contest stops when you come. Who is the winner?

I don't see how this changes anything because the contest still "stops", which is where the contradiction comes from

>>18471311
>I don't see how this changes anything because the contest still "stops", which is where the contradiction comes from
Infinites are said to stop/be completed. If someone talks about ℕ or R they describing something static, unchanging, not something experiencing growth. It's easy to talk about infinities that end like the set of all negative whole numbers:
(...-3, -2, -1)

The set of all real numbers between 1 and 2, inclusive, both begins and ends:
(1...2)

So this is no issue when talking about infinities.

But however we modify the scenario, we will always get a contradiction, since it's emerging from the very definition of what an infinity is. Let's say the contest doesn't end. It's still ongoing when you arrive in the infinitely old universe. You get a glance at one of the objects. As you recall, all of them are being labeled as they are made. What is something the object you get a glance at could be labeled with?

>>18471319
>Infinites are said to stop/be completed. If someone talks about ℕ or R they describing something static, unchanging, not something experiencing growth. It's easy to talk about infinities that end like the set of all negative whole numbers:
>(...-3, -2, -1)
>The set of all real numbers between 1 and 2, inclusive, both begins and ends:
>(1...2)

But these are atemporal senses of "stop/complete".

>Let's say the contest doesn't end. It's still ongoing when you arrive in the infinitely old universe. You get a glance at one of the objects. As you recall, all of them are being labeled as they are made. What is something the object you get a glance at could be labeled with?

It would depend on what round they're at. Where's the contradiction?

>>18471309
The problem is that "Not so" is immediately followed by something he doesnt object to and then you never addressed the point of his mockery. You agree the universe works with infinite regress but you arent satisfied with it because you NEED to add giga superman into this, this is very silly
You are silly

>the inception argued a given that it's created
>argunent is basically infinite vs. the ultimate imaginary friend

>>18471350
>argument is further infinite not so big vs. it's infinite

>>18471340
>But these are atemporal senses of "stop/complete".
I don't quite see what the "but" in this sentence is meant to imply. Could you elaborate?

>It would depend on what round they're at.
Round א0 if you want to follow Cantor. Round (1) (grossone) if you prefer Sergeyev. Round ∞ if you want to use regular parlance. There have been an infinite number of rounds, and once you have an infinite, it no longer grows in size with successive addition, so all rounds are now identical.

>>18471345
>You agree the universe works with infinite regress
I very very much do not, I've been denouncing that idea this entire thread

>>18470549
One angle for dealing with certain supertasks (an infnite sequence of processes performed in finite time) is to say that the state after they're done isn't fully specified by the task itself, which is slightly different from saying it's impossible. For example with the Thompson's lamp thought experiment, where you turn a lamp on and off faster and faster over a minute: at the end, is it on or off? You could say the absence of a clear answer proves it's impossible, but you could also say that the end state just isn't determined by the information given.

It's like if I have a sequence involving some natural number n that goes: n + 0.8, n + 0.9, n + 0.98, n + 0.99, n + 0.998, n + 0.999,... and I ask whether the last digit of the number that is the limit of the sequence is going to be even or odd. Every number in the sequence has a clearly defined even or odd last digit, so I should be able to say whether the limit number has an even or odd last digit too, right? But in fact I can't, because it depends on the number n, which hasn't been specified.

Likewise you could say that the end-state of the world in your thought experiment isn't quite fully determined. Maybe in a world where the laws of physics allowed supertasks like Thompson's lamp or increasingly rapid magical object creation and deletion, God would just have to institute a specific law of physics for dealing with them. Maybe the law of physics for Thompson's lamp is that at the end of its supertask, it's going to be "on" every time.

And maybe the law of physics for your thought of experiment is that at the end there are going to be "none" despite the discontinuity it creates. As the world gets filled with increasingly many objects increasingly quickly, the laws of physics will declare that after all that it just resets to zero.

>>18471354
>if you don't have an infinite regress then you have to have something that started all else
>Not so - unless there's an infinite regress, there _must_ be an omnipotent being
Im flabbergasted. You cant just say shit like this if you dont think infinite regress doesnt solve the problem. Its like saying "my thing is only necessary if infinite regress wasnt a thing"
This is my misunderstanding but good God, you have to squint and use a mirror for it to mean you dont actually think its possible

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>>18471378 (cont.)
However I do think "none" is the most natural solution if you have to choose by comparison with this simpler situation >>18470584 The fact that there are infinitely many numbers left to remove at any finite point in the process just doesn't clearly imply that there should still be infinitely many numbers left to remove at the end. For every number you can say at one point it's going to be removed, so what would the numbers left over at the end even be? Someone would have to slip weird non-numbers into the set like !, ?, or @ for there to be any left over, and that would be even weirder. There might be a discontinuity in that respect, but it isn't much different from the discontinuity in picrel.

>>18471340
>>18471354
Correction it would actually be round ω per Cantor, aleph nought would be the quantity of rounds

>>18471380
People use "unless" with things they consider impossible all the time. Like if there was a conversation like:
"You're going to be late?" "Yeah unless there's a rocket that could give me a ride". It seems like a normal way of speaking to me. But at any rate, I'm glad the misunderstanding has been cleared up

>>18471380
Yeah, and meanwhile there's no problem with omnipotence. Like "the omnipotence paradox."

>>18471394
>People use "unless" with things they consider impossible all the time
I dont mean to drag the issue but its almost always used for things people believe are extremely unlikely rather than logically impossible. The rocket could give him a ride, its just extremely unlikely theres an available rocket nearby that is capable of safely transporting him a couple kilometers

I cant think of a better example but it would be like hearing "we cant afford this unless both of our one dollar notes equalled 3 dollars". It almost sounds like the person believes that 2 one dollar notes could equal 3 dollars in some strange hypothetical

>>18471378
>you could also say that the end state just isn't determined by the information given
Not here since you can prove that every single object must have been destroyed. But you can also prove that at each round the number of objects remaining grew. So you can prove two contradictory things: there must be no objects, and there must be infinite objects.

>Maybe in a world where the laws of physics allowed supertasks like Thompson's lamp or increasingly rapid magical object creation and deletion, God would just have to institute a specific law of physics for dealing with them
That would of course require God, or something to similar to God that it amounts to the same thing, to exist. So in a strange roundabout way this would still vindicate the cosmological argument

>As the world gets filled with increasingly many objects increasingly quickly, the laws of physics will declare that after all that it just resets to zero.
We can always - always always - modify the scenario to yield the contradiction. It doesn't need to be happening in a physical space, that's just to make it more fun to picture and talk about. We can examine an abstract algorithm that adds the ten numbers to a group and then removes one for each half-point between 1 and 2 and ask what the state of the group is at 2.

>>18471383
>However I do think "none" is the most natural solution
At which round did the quantity of objects decrease?

It never did. But we have none. So the number never went down. But it is lower at a later point than an earlier point - the definition of going down. So this, too, yields a contradiction.

>but it isn't much different from the discontinuity in picrel
Irrational numbers don't actually exist so there are no perfect Euclidean circles is the solution. The proof that a number is irrational is actually a proof that it would be contradictory for it to exist once you look at what it's really saying

>>18471396
The solution to the omnipotence paradox is that God can use his omnipotence to create a stone so heavy he can't lift it. Every million years or so since he created the universe, he's gotten bored enough to do something along those lines, and it's been slowly etching away at his power. God is currently an immortal ant crawling around somewhere in Shanghai, China after an especially unfortunate boredom-induced self-limiting exercise.

>>18471431
Proving that at each finite step in the process the number of objects remaining grows isn't quite the same as proving that at the end there must be infinite objects. The mistake that it is the same is analogous to the "proof" that pi = 4. I'm pretty sure that with a clever enough fractal-producing algorithm, you could make the perimeter go to infinity while the curve approaches a circle, and that wouldn't prove that pi is infinity either.

>>18471450 (cont.)
Even if you don't believe in irrational numbers, it still doesn't make your proof about what happens at each step into the process into a proof about what the end-result of the infinite process should look like, so you haven't actually produced a contradiction. It's just balking at a counterintuitive possibility.

>>18471435
Luckily, before doing that, he created a magical stone with the power to return his full omnipotence, and he hid it in a random place on earth. So hopefully he'll find it eventually before the heat death of the universe sets in.

>>18471450
>Proving that at each finite step in the process the number of objects remaining grows isn't quite the same as proving that at the end there must be infinite objects
At the end of the first round, nine objects remain. Does this, at any time in the minute, decrease?

>The mistake that it is the same is analogous to the "proof" that pi = 4.
Well yes. Yes exactly. There are no infinities. π is as impossible a number to really have as ∞ is. There are no perfect circles, everything must be step-wise to some extent. The irrationality of pi proves this.

You're 100% that the exact same issue is at play: if we assume logical contradictions, we get logical contradictions.

>>18471459
>it still doesn't make your proof about what happens at each step into the process into a proof about what the end-result of the infinite process should look like
This is a matter of basic definition. If something never decreases then it never goes down.

>sugar isn't a cake
>sugar mixed with butter isn't a cake
>sugar and butter mixed with flour and a few other ingredients isn't a cake
>sugar, butter, flour, etc. mixed in a pan and put in the oven isn't a cake
>suddenly after baking it in the oven for a while it's a cake
Obviously the idea that you can not have a cake at every step until suddenly you have a cake is absurd, so cakes can't exist.

>>18471516
This is an exceptionally poor argument, frankly. If we define "cake" as "sugar, butter, flour, mixed in a pan and baked in the oven", then I can point to exactly which step we get cake.

Which is the issue here: we can show that for all steps, none of them include a decrease. It would be as if we had the ingredients sitting in completely causally separated universes from one another so they could never be brought together and in a multiverse that had experienced a complete heat death so the very concept of heating anything in an oven was an absolute physical impossibility. We could then know that, no, these will never form a cake.

>>18470509
It gets falsified by the Munchhausen trilemma. There's no ultimate solution that is consistent with determinism.

>>18471531
You can show that for all finite steps, none of them includes a decrease. However the thought experiment involves supposing that there's something after every finite step. You seem to take as axiomatic that a property shared by every finite step should also be shared by what exists after every finite step, but that isn't logically required. You could say that, at the minute mark, all matter in the universe is replaced by a single monkey floating in space. There would be no contradiction. The state of the universe would be well-defined at every point in time before and at the minute mark.

>>18471533
Don't really understand why you think the Munchhausen trilemma falsifies determinism
Regardless, that's super silly

Determinism also gets "falsified" by presupposing indeterminism!
Of course things stop working if you grant premises they are incompatible with

>>18471555 (cont.)
The question is only whether there's an answer about what should be at the minute mark that doesn't require introducing an extra arbitrary supposition about what should be there, and I vote for none. If I take the set {1, 2, 3...} And I remove 1, then 2, then 3, for infinitely many steps, even though at every step there are infinitely many numbers left to remove, the most natural set to put after all the steps is the empty set. Because for every number, you can say that it's been removed at some step prior to the state we're supposing exists after every finite step.

>>18471555
>You could say that, at the minute mark, all matter in the universe is replaced by a single monkey floating in space. There would be no contradiction.
I already addressed objections about physical constraints or results at >>18471431. We can run this in a completely abstract mathematical way.

>>18471575
So once again you get a contradiction. Simultaneously it does and does not decrease.

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>>18471643
Discontinuities are not contradictions. They are just not the same thing.

>>18471654
There is no discontinuity. It behaves the same at every single half-point to the very last. It's a consistent, predictable algorithm.

>>18471567
How do you solve the problem of the first cause in determinism? If there's one, then it wasn't caused by anything, therefore not deterministic. If there isn't, then there's an infinite regress and you can't ever reach the present.

>>18470549
These "proofs" against actual infinities never work because they posit specific scenarios that are deliberately set up to create a contradiction. They don't show that an actual infinity is impossible just that their specific scenario leads to seemingly absurd conclusions. This scenario doesn't apply to, say, an infinite timeline.

>>18470655
The first has no beginning, it still "goes on" forever. The second does not end in 2, it tends towards 2.

>>18471661
>they posit specific scenarios that are deliberately set up to create a contradiction
Well exactly. If there is any world (in the modal sense) in which something leads to a logical contradiction, then it is not part of any possible world (again in the modal sense). If you can ever say "With X, Y would be logically possible and Y is a logical contradiction" then you have shown that X is part of no possible world.

>This scenario doesn't apply to, say, an infinite timeline.
This was already addressed in >>18471302

>>18471659
>then there's an infinite regress and you can't ever reach the present.
Nta, however an infinite regress doesn't mean there's a point infinitely far in the past so that you would have to wait an infinite amount of time to get from there to here. Instead every possible time is only finitely far in the past, but there happens to be no beginning, no first time.

>>18471669
>The first has no beginning
...And? The issue was ends, and that one does.

>The second does not end in 2, it tends towards 2.
To be brutally honest you sound like someone who is vaguely remembering something from pre-calc a long time ago and throwing the terms at the wall here to see if they stick. Yes it most certainly does end in 2, by definition.

>>18471672
Your false assumption is that your highly specific scenario appearing absurd means all actual infinites are absurd, but you haven't demonstrated that. Why does it apply to all actual infinities? The post you linked to is just using the same highly specific scenario again.

How about we imagine the infinite timeline as the number line and assume time isn't quantized. In the time travel scenario, there is no contradiction in saying you arrived at time 0.786 and that there are infinite real numbers either side of it. I'm not saying that's how time works in reality but it's a trivial thought experiment with an actual infinity and no absurdity

>>18471677
>every possible time is only finitely far in the past, but there happens to be no beginning
This is contradictory. If it's finite, then it has a set value, meaning you can simply go back far enough to hit a limit.

>>18471689
>Your false assumption is that your highly specific scenario appearing absurd means all actual infinites are absurd
You didn't respond to my reasoning on this point. Isn't it so that if something makes a logical contradiction possible that the thing must be logically impossible?

>Why does it apply to all actual infinities?
You can run this with all actual infinties. Absolutely anything someone says is actually infinite you can run this on, since you can do it in a purely abstract mathematical way as >>18471431 describes.

You can just abstractly flag and unflag individual members of anything to get this exact same scenario.

>there is no contradiction in saying you arrived at time 0.786 and that there are infinite real numbers either side of it
Well sure there is. Run the contest until the next minute in this timeline. You run into the contradiction.

>>18471695
No it isn't. There are infinitely many times all of which are finitely far in the past. Like the set {...-3, -2, -1, 0}. There's no number in the set which is infinitely far from any other number, but there's also no lower limit on the numbers.

>>18471696
>You didn't respond to my reasoning on this point. Isn't it so that if something makes a logical contradiction possible that the thing must be logically impossible?
You're using "something" a bit vaguely here. I think the something that allows the contradiction is the specific type of scenario, you haven't demonstrated that it applies to all conceivable actual infinities. Your other post is about the exact same type of scenario, it just has a computer adding and substracting instead of the contest.

>You can run this with all actual infinties. Absolutely anything someone says is actually infinite you can run this on, since you can do it in a purely abstract mathematical way as >>18471431 # describes.
No, you are are describing similar scenarios. You misunderstood my counter thought experiment. I'm not saying your contest is even happening. In my thought experiment, the timeline behaves like the real number line. There is no contradiction between being at 0.789 and there being infinite points of time before and after.

If the universe is infinitely big, how do I traverse an infinity and get to my chair over there?

>>18471743
>You're using "something" a bit vaguely here.
To clarify, I mean it in the broadest sense. Absolutely anything that makes a logical contradiction possible must be logically impossible.

>Your other post is about the exact same type of scenario, it just has a computer adding and substracting instead of the contest.
You don't need something actually performing the operation, you just need something it could be performed on. Much like how 1+1= -977 would be logically impossible even in a world where nobody lived to do the math and say "wait a minute...".

>I'm not saying your contest is even happening.
It doesn't need to. It just needs to be possible.

>>18471659
>first cause in determinism? If there's one, then it wasn't caused by anything
This is compatible with determinism, if you limit the scope of determinism to causal events in the universe
which I think makes a lot of sense, right? Causal events are events in time. Time is something that is in the universe

I just think it's wild that you believe determinists have never thought about these things
like: "ooops, turns out my metaphysical thesis is falsified by some gut saying 'Munchausen trilemma'. No one ever said that to us before..."

>determinism is falsified
is a totally retarded thing to say

it would be like if I said theism has been falsified by the problem of evil
as if theists don't have things they can't say in response to that
it's not a serious thing to say

>>18471705
>There are infinitely many times all of which are finitely far
Again, contradiction. This means there's an infinite past and the present cannot be reached.

>>18471761
>Absolutely anything that makes a logical contradiction possible must be logically impossible
>Much like how 1+1= -977 would be logically impossible
(NTA) So what you're saying is that the number -977 is impossible because you made a logical contradiction with it. Or maybe addition is impossible? Equality? The number 1? Surely it has to be one of those things because you used them to make a contradiction.

>>18471768
>compatible with determinism, if you limit the scope of determinism to causal events in the universe
That makes determinism at best an effective theory AKA false, as it accepts that there is at least one thing that isn't deterministic, thus enabling the existence of indeterminacy.

>>18471771
I'm on your side but as a discussion tip, just calling something a contradiction and repeating your position doesn't cut it. You need an actual argument. Give it some mustard!

>>18471774
The proposition (in the logical sense) "1+1= -977" is what is logically impossible.

>the number -977 is impossible because you made a logical contradiction with it. Or maybe addition is impossible? Equality? The number 1? Surely it has to be one of those things because you used them to make a contradiction.
Not at all. If I say "1+1= -977" I've actually ceased to talk about addition, or 1, or -977 at all. I have used none of them. I'm merely stringing together symbols for them in a way that has the illusion of meaning to some minds.

depictions of god are embodiments of that outside force or "godness" that makes sense for humans, i think the idea that we are all god but have aspects experiencing subjective experiences is closer to reality

>>18471761
>Absolutely anything that makes a logical contradiction possible must be logically impossible.
But what's making the contradiction possible is the scenario you're positing. You haven't demonstrated that the actual infinity itself causes the contradiction, hence why I made the thought experiment of a timeline which is actually infinite in a similar way to how the real number line is infinite. Imagine a simple universe that's a single particle which has existed for infinite points of time in the past and in the future, there doesn't seem to be any logical contradiction, so why assume actual infinity *itself* is causing the contradiction when it seems it's actually the scenario you describe that causes it.

If you're claiming you can just expand out from a single example to all conceivable actual infinites, demonstrate why.

>>18471781
>just calling something a contradiction and repeating your position doesn't cut it
It would help if it wasn't contradictory for starters. If the past is finite, then what is the value of the amount of time required to reach all the way back? If there isn't one, then congrats, infinite regression, present unreachable.

>>18471775
Wow, determinists never considered any of this
determinism falsified forever!

>>18471796
>I'm a determinist, but only sometimes, and don't consider all of existence to be deterministic
Literally what is the point of the label then? Furthermore, once you allow for at least one nondeterministic element to exist, how can you guarantee that anything is fundamentally deterministic and isn't working in some other way?

>>18471799
No, you're right
you debunked determinism

>>18471793
>But what's making the contradiction possible is the scenario you're positing.
The actual infinity

>You haven't demonstrated that the actual infinity itself causes the contradiction
Well sure we have. Without an actual infinity, we can't say "all of them are removed". Without that it's just a simple increase, the number of objects is the number of rounds multiplied by nine.

It is only and exclusively with an infinite number of rounds that no number is untouched by the destruction, allowing us to not only say "it increased" but also "none are left".

>hence why I made the thought experiment of a timeline which is actually infinite in a similar way to how the real number line is infinite
And we run into the same problem. It would be possible to perform the contest during one of the minutes of unquantized time.

>Imagine a simple universe that's a single particle which has existed for infinite points of time in the past
Suppose the particle where something playing this contest and stopped right in the present, which side of the contest wins?

>If you're claiming you can just expand out from a single example to all conceivable actual infinites, demonstrate why.
Whatever the elements of your infinite set, just run the algorithm on two points that have infinite points between them. Any two, it doesn't matter which. You'll get the contradictory result. The contest is just a fun wrapper for an abstract mathematical procedure.

>>18471794
His point is that there *is no* all the way back. Your reasoning would work if he was saying time had a beginning and that beginning was ∞ years away. But instead he is denying that time has a beginning moment at all.

Here's a way you could refute his contention that every moment would be a finite distance in the past. Say there was a village in this beginningless universe. In this village they have The Year Stone.

Every year the chief writes another digit of pi on the year stone, unless of course pi is completed.

You just got promoted to chief. It's your turn to celebrate with the year stone. Can you write an extra digit of pi?

Most likely his noodle will cook and you'll win automatically. If he says "no", ask: how long ago was pi completed? He'll have to say an infinite number of years ago.

If he says yes, ask how long ago the fifteenth digit in pi was written on the year stone.

Either way he has to say: infinitely long ago.

That's the key with beating infinity. The more fun you're having the better you're doing!

And if I may enter into the conversation, I would indeed be interested in your answer, anon who wrote >>18471705.

>>18471860
Because the beginningless universe doesn't have a point infinitely far in the past at which the first digit of pi might've been written down on the year stone, the first digit must have been written down at some other point in time. But the only points in time available are all finitely far in the past. So when it's my turn to write down a new digit of pi, there will still be more digits to write down.

I don't see how your idea isn't the same as the other anon's idea but framed as an interesting story.
>suppose there were a beginningless universe
>now it must have begun infinitely far in the past, right?
>contradiction!

I imagine there might be some coherent argument along these lines against a temporally infinite universe being able to store infinite information, meaning that it would have to "forget" its own past beyond a certain point, and you wouldn't be able to prove from inside the universe that the universe had an infinite past. But that would be a constraint on universes with an infinite past, not an absolute disproof of them.

>>18471857
Again, you're just presenting this specific contest/algorithm but you haven't shown that actual infinites necessarily create contradictions, just that your contest does. By your logic division is impossible because you can create specific scenarios with it that lead to contradictions. e.g. 1*0 = 0 and 2*0 = 0 so by transitive property 1*0 = 2*0 and by division 1 = 2. Using your logic, "You couldn't have divided by zero without division, therefore division creates contradictions and is impossible." No, all you've shown is that division by zero specifically causes contradictions. You can't just apply that to all division. In our actual infinities exampes, what's happened is the equivalent of me saying "1/2 = 0.5 doesn't create a contradiction so division doesn't necessarily create contradictions" and your response is "Yes it does because if I introduce division by zero into your equation it creates contradictions." Do you see the problem with your approach?

>>18471880
>being able to store infinite information
*at least not in an enduring way. So a universe might be spatially infinite and store infinite information in that sense, but it would still have to forget its own past.

>>18471886
>haven't shown that actual infinites necessarily create contradictions, just that your contest does
Let it be known that I the other non-finitist anon in this discussion still don't admit that the contest scenario in itself creates a contradiction. It's the implicit assumption that there can't be a discontinuity at the minute mark that creates the contradiction.

Discontinuities might be unappealing in a model of physics, but they're not illogical. And depending on the exact rules of physics, I believe you could tame your infinities so they don't result in awkward discontinuities.

>contradiction
Who cares?
God got a superpower to do away with those

>>18471880
>So when it's my turn to write down a new digit of pi, there will still be more digits to write down.
How many years ago was the first 4 in pi's digits written?

>I don't see how your idea isn't the same as the other anon's idea but framed as an interesting story.
I confess I mostly simply couldn't resist the puzzle that anon faced: assuming a beginningless universe, prove an infinite amount of time has passed, as opposed to all points simply being a finite quantity of time in the past: prove there was some point ∞ years ago.

I think this does it. Whether pi is complete or not, the Year Stone must be an artifact from a year ∞ years ago.

>>18471886
>you haven't shown that actual infinites necessarily create contradictions, just that your contest does
There can be no actual infinity you can't run it on since you can simply abstractly flag and unflag items in whatever infinite set is in question. It works for all sets of size א0 or larger since it's simply an operation on the elements of the set. So it works for all actual infinities since they will all be sets with a cardinality of א0 or higher by definition.

>By your logic division is impossible because you can create specific scenarios with it that lead to contradictions. e.g. 1*0 = 0 and 2*0 = 0 so by transitive property 1*0 = 2*0 and by division 1 = 2.
Believe it or not, you're actually making my exact argument here! Can you spot it?
When you divide 1 by 0, or 2 by zero, you're asking: how many 0's can we pull out of 1 or 2 until there's nothing left to pull out of them? The answer is ∞.

This is why division by zero is impossible. Because it makes contradictions possible. You're illustrating precisely my point! What leads to an infinity (in this case division by zero) is impossible because it leads to contradictions like your's there.

>>18471924
>the implicit assumption that there can't be a discontinuity at the minute mark
There can't. The algorithm isn't biased towards any specific point, beyond one point being when no further iterations are run. Say the contest was exactly the same except it was going to be one and a half minutes, with just a halftime show at the one-minute mark and then they continue. Do you still get a discontinuity at the minute mark? No. So we can see that with this procedure, no discontinuity takes place at the minute mark.

Now say they still stopped at the minute mark. but then decided to extent it to a minute and a half later. Does this change the answer?

>>18471963
>There can be no actual infinity you can't run it on since you can simply abstractly flag and unflag items in whatever infinite set is in question.
But isn't that just abandoning the thought experiment and substituting the actual infinite with an abstract infinite set for you to manipulate? The whole point is to say something about universes. You're saying "Ok but what if I ran this algorithm on the infinite points on this timeline as if they were an infinite set, hey presto contradiction!" That's not referring to anything real in the universe I posited. It's a single particle with infinite points of past and infinite points of future, there is no real algorithm being run on those points, none of them are actually being flagged or unflagged in that universe.

And the false operation in my parody argument was 0/0 = 1, nothing about infinity.

>>18471768
>it would be like if I said theism has been falsified by the problem of evil
anon, I have some news for you.

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>>18471963
>When you divide 1 by 0, or 2 by zero, you're asking: how many 0's can we pull out of 1 or 2 until there's nothing left to pull out of them? The answer is ∞.
I think if you define it specifically as "until there's nothing left to pull out," even most notions of infinity wouldn't fit the bill. An infinite sum of zeroes still has a limit of zero. You can introduce an element to correspond to the reciprocal of zero like in the Riemann sphere, but when you've got a single "infinity" that connects the far end of the positive numbers with the far end of the negative numbers, you're not really talking about infinity as a quantity anymore.

>>18472024
To clarify by "actual infinity" I don't necessarily mean one that physically exists, I mean in the sense that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_and_potential_infinity talks about. So for example ℕ would be an actual infinity (broadly speaking) even if it doesn't physically exist anywhere

>there is no real algorithm being run on those points, none of them are actually being flagged or unflagged in that universe
It's not the actual performance of the operation that makes something logically impossible. The operation only highlights the the contradiction so that you can see it.

Let's look at another logical impossibility: right Euclidean triangles with equal legs of rational length that have a hypotenuse of rational length. These must have a hypotenuse of irrational length as a result of the Pythagorean theorem, we would both agree.

That's not made to be so because of any operation someone performs. We could talk all day about how the math forces this to be true and the contradictions that come if it isn't but you wouldn't say that such a triangle could exist just so long as nobody did those calculations, right?

It's the same with actual infinities. It isn't the performance of the calculations that makes them logical impossibilities. They inherently are, the calculations are just how we can see and prove this.

>And the false operation in my parody argument was 0/0 = 1, nothing about infinity.
And fundamentally, division by zero doesn't work because it equals infinity. To divide by zero is to introduce an infinity. Interestingly this is demonstrated by old school calculators, which go infinitely and never stop when you tell them to divide something by zero: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1opaj2m/this_is_what_happens_when_you_divide_by_a_zero_on/

So your example is an argument for my exact point! Infinities and logic are fundamental enemies

>>18472066
0/0 doesn't work because it would be the solution to the equation 0x = 0, but in that equation x can be any ordinary number you like. It's more indeterminate than infinite.

>>18472050
>>18472072
Right ultimately an infinity just means "you can keep going and going and going and going". If we dispense of the nonsensical notion of some actual completed amount that is ∞, it just describes potentially endless processes. It's a signifier of "you have something that doesn't need to end at a specific point".

>>18472107
My point in both of those posts was that problems around division by zero aren't especially for or against actual infinity as it's usually understood.

>>18472124
Well yeah. If they were especially against it then that's what I would be using as my go-to. But here, his very own example still depended on problems with infinity.

>>18472138
It didn't though. Dividing zero by zero is problematic because it's indeterminate, not because it involves infinity. It's like how you can't go from 2^2 = (-2)^2 to 2 = -2 by undoing the square root. When dealing with integers, you have to be mindful that there are two different numbers with the same square, just like how dealing with plain numbers, you have to be mindful that every single number multiplied by zero is zero, so you can't just undo multiplication by zero and expect equalities to remain valid.

>>18472161
It's indeterminate because it involves infinity. You can divide anything by zero an infinite number of times.

I'm talking about division in the natural way as quotition. This should be obvious from my words. You're discussing division as an inverse of multiplication and conflating your meaning and my meaning. It's as if I'm saying "bats are mammals" and you reply "that's not true I saw bats in Yankee Stadium and they weren't even alive".

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>>18472169

>>18472066
You don't explain your analogy but I assume you're suggesting a description of a right triangle with sides that don't have the proportions they should is contradictory. That's right because it would be a contradiction in terms, it wouldn't be a right triangle. But my scenario where the points of time are analogous to the real number line is not a contradiction in terms, no one would ever say the real number line is self-contradictory because you can run an algorithm on it that produces a result that seems weird (not even creating a contradiction mathematically, just seeming weird). So no, your objection doesn't work.

And about division by zero, your "quotidian" explanation was that division by zero equals infinity, which it doesn't unless you're speaking very informally about a limit or using an unusual number system, which you weren't, you used quotitive division with basic arithmetic.