The Factory Floor

Shalvenay

00:49

hey there @Inflationary_Bubble

Inflationary_Bubble

Oh, you know I'm here. Thanks! I'm writing something that may be a bit long, so it might take a while to send.

Shalvenay

@Inflationary_Bubble how're things going?

Inflationary_Bubble

Fine, but I'm thinking about something that might be interesting for what I want to write.

This idea might be a bit odd, but I've been thinking a long time about it. So basically, I was wondering whether this could work as a sort of explanation for magic and other things that break the laws of physics as we know them. I know that well, it won't make them conform with our laws of physics, but perhaps it could be logically possible under some consistent set of rules.

So, there's the idea that the universe could start in any arbitrary state.

I believe stuff such as "Last Thursdayism," the skeptical hypothesis that "the world was created last Thursday, including all evidence that seems to show it is older," depends on this. Yes, it's not meant to be taken seriously, but the point is that technically, you can't completely disprove it.

So, if the universe is limited to some specific states it can start in, not just anything, then stuff such as these skeptical hypotheses won't work, which would be philosophically interesting, to say the least.

Shalvenay

@Inflationary_Bubble I suspect the universe is limited in its starting states (at least, if you want a result that is capable of producing enough trappings of our universe to be useful for worldbuilding)

Inflationary_Bubble

@Shalvenay That's probably correct, but I mean something as in "the world as it was Last Thursday," I'm pretty sure that would be similar to our world.

Or say, "the plate has moved one foot away" (due to telekinesis)

But if it can start in any state, what I was thinking was you can say that whenever something that breaks the laws of physics happens in the story, the universe is actually restarting in a new state where things are the same except for whatever happened, and the laws of physics go on from there.

(At least until the next "strange" thing happens)

The problems I was wondering were about stuff such as the theory of relativity (which might be difficult to remove completely and still create something consistent and similar enough to our world). Some think that due to the relativity of simulaneity, there is proof that time doesn't actually flow and the past and future do exist. I was wondering whether that would mean my reasoning is wrong about "restarting" the universe somehow.

Shalvenay

01:02

@Inflationary_Bubble that's...interesting. it'd create some issues with sort of deeper-seated laws of physics I reckon (Noetherian symmetry breaks, and what not)

Inflationary_Bubble

Yeah, I was thinking about Noether's theorem (although I'm not that great at physics). But I don't understand why the same laws of physics couldn't logically apply to, say, the plate now being a foot away, after the movement happened. If you moved it there normally, they certainly would.

Emphasis on "after."

Shalvenay

@Inflationary_Bubble I'm thinking more of things that'd disturb the energy accounting

Inflationary_Bubble

Hmm... energy would be a problem, perhaps. But would the universe would work fine with different amounts of energy in it? Also, where did the energy come from in our universe in the first place, in the Big Bang? Was that created from nothing?

Shalvenay

@Inflationary_Bubble that's a darn good question

Inflationary_Bubble

I suppose that part of this idea came from arguments I heard that energy conservation didn't apply at the Big Bang because it was a special moment of time.

I'm not sure whether that's true (I believe scientists are still debating about whether there was a singularity at the Big Bang or not - I just read about the Hartle-Hawking state and "imaginary time" and it's sort of confusing).

But it's still interesting to think about. Here's a link about the state I mentioned:

Hartle–Hawking state

In theoretical physics, the Hartle–Hawking state, named after James Hartle and Stephen Hawking, is a proposal concerning the state of the universe prior to the Planck epoch. Hartle and Hawking suggest that if we could travel backward in time toward the beginning of the universe, we would note that quite near what might have otherwise been the beginning, time gives way to space such that at first there is only space and no time. Beginnings are entities that have to do with time; because time did not exist before the Big Bang, the concept of a beginning of the universe is meaningless. According to...

Anyway, this does get into religion a bit, but someone even used the argument about the special moment to try to refute creationists claiming that the Big Bang violated conservation of energy, and so couldn't happen without God - now I wonder whether your concerns would have implications for the possibility of God performing miracles...

Shalvenay

01:15

it's definitely an intriguing viewpoint, with some definite consequences

one is that whatever magic in that world would be limited to instantaneous effects in a sense

all the magic would have to happen at once

Inflationary_Bubble

I know what "instantaneous" means, but perhaps, if the restarting happened constantly with incredibly small amounts of time between them, stuff could seem to be happening constantly.

Sorry - last "constantly" should be "consistently"

Shalvenay

@Inflationary_Bubble sort of "limit as delta-t approaches 0" approach?

Inflationary_Bubble

Ooh, calculus! I'm learning about that now, but yeah, maybe something like that. After all, humans (and most other things) have a limited reaction and processing time.

I wonder whether anyone else has thought of something like this. (Probably, it's a vast world and I'm likely nothing special).

Shalvenay

the other thing is sort of "set things up and kick the ball down the hill" marble-maze-magic if you will

Inflationary_Bubble

Sorry, I didn't understand what you meant right now.

Shalvenay

01:21

where the spell conjures a physically plausible event by magically creating the initial conditions and letting physics work from there

for instance, to create a fireball, it conjures a bunch of fuel and an ignition source and hits "play"

Inflationary_Bubble

Okay, that makes sense. That's an idea I've heard a lot before.

But I can't say all my worries have fully disappeared. I wonder whether something like this could be simulated, to prove it's logically possible.

Not a whole universe or anything, but perhaps a few particles interacting according to physical laws, then alter some code to move one particle a bit, and resume from there.

Yeah, I'm perhaps obsessed with simulations.

Shalvenay

perhaps. it's interesting to ponder at least

Inflationary_Bubble

I guess it's because I assume anything that can be simulated is logically possible, because, well, it can be done somewhere.

And I'm obsessed with internal consistency, as in, if I can't prove something is logically possible, under some set of rules, I find it hard, to say the least, to write a story about it.

That's why I joined this site in the first place, to see whether I could get answers about whether some things are coherent or not, even if they don't follow our laws of physics.

As in, for all we know, they could be happening in some alternate universe.

So I was just wondering, do you personally think my idea makes sense, or do you see fatal flaws in it?

Shalvenay