slappyjenkins

You should really read up on the basics. Start with grade school science and progress to some basic physics. Nothing you've said here or in your previous posts is correct and furthermore has nothing to do with the question the thread poster started with.

Practing being a douche that interrupts a conversation and offers nothing to the conversation. How did I do?

But seriously bud, it doesn't seem like you have a clue what you're talking about.

Face

Trolling......failed!

What would you like to do?
1. Try again.
2. Stop.

slappyjenkins

I can't tell if you are talking to me, or pointing out how you respond to and handle topics being posted here on MB.

In case your attention deficit is really that bad, this is not my thread, so you have not said anything that opposes my thoughts at all.

And you're talking about a particle moving around in infinite time/space. How is that going to oppose anyone's thoughts? I stick to what I said earlier....you seem lost. Read up on the basics.

My bag of troll food is running out fast, so say what you need to say face.

slappyjenkins

Here let me try to directly respond to what the thread starter asked...

If you have a particle that exists in an infinite number of universes and exists at every point in time then said particle could move about space/time infinitely. But if entropy and decay have a direct effect on that particle then it would be constrained by the space time continuum of only the one universe that it exists in and disregarding the infinite multi-verse. But if optimus prime and santa claus bring robocop to old detroit then nothing I'm saying has anything to do with the question Bane asked.

There how was that?

In case you can't remember the original question it looks like this....

He also specifically asks if any philosophers have views on this kind of concept, and you're talking about a particle? That can move around if it wants to? Bravo my friend!

Face

You win.

Because I have lost so badly, I will no longer respond to your posts in order to hide my shame.

PoorOldPo

A friend of mine proposed this to me recently. I find it hard to conceptualize but theoretically, if there is an infinite amount of time and space, then yes, literally anything imaginable is possible. Now if you believe that our entire universe is a product of it being observed in the first place, by our conscious minds, then anything is possible. If something has to be looked at to actually exist. This leads me to the question, what is reality? Is it the individuals need to give the chaotic life they find themselves in some kind of consistency and order, a set security. What if nothing is real, and everything visualized in your head, including the words you are reading right now, are a product of your mind trying to make sense of what is really there, what if everything that you see right now isn't what is actually looks lie, but a human interpretation, or even just an interpretation made by pure conscious thought, human or not.

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Guybrush

This is an old idea and one I think just about everyone somewhat reflected stumble upon at some point in life, typically in teenage years when you start reflect on reality a bit more. This philosophy is often found in the basic foundations of fantasy fiction like the role-playing game Mage: The Ascension, Neil Gaiman's Sandman or Terry Pratchett's Discworld (fiction many teenagers read).

One could argue that if the world really was like that, then all our assumptions should consistently be proven true, as long as it is believed by the majority of people. Yet we've often found ourselves to be wrong. F.ex when Copernicus relaunched the heliocentric world view, most people in the world believed in geocentrism. Christians in Europe believed in geocentrism and I believe the same went for f.ex most of China so I'm guessing the vast majority of people believed in geocentrism. Still, all evidence explored by Copernicus and others pointed towards a heliocentric world. If the world is created only in your head, how can you imagine a scientist working with ideas contradicting your own that eventually spread to become popular in your fantasy? And if the world is made up by a sort of collective fantasy of what people believe, why would the minority ever be right about anything? And rules seem to apply to the universe that we still don't understand. How can such rules exist if we can't even fathom them? Wouldn't this idea create a universe we can fully understand?

But of course, it's ultimately impossible to say whether or not it is like that, just like it's impossible to tell whether or not the world you live in is entirely a product of your imagination. After all, changing what you believe in the present would then alter what had happened in the past so one could argue that there was no Copernicus until people believed there was a Copernicus. Of course you'd still have the problem of explaining where the initial seed for the idea about Copernicus would come from in such a universe if it's not found in history, but I'm sure you can come up with some explanation for that as well if you try hard enough.

My personal feelings is that it's standard, cheap, philosophical BS of course

By the way, a comment on your friends idea of infinity; an infinite universe in time, space and matter doesn't necessarily mean anything imaginable can happen. It means everything which has a probability of happening should happen. In order for everything imaginable to have a probability, you would have to have physical laws that at some point allow everything imaginable to be a probability, but you probably don't (right?). At least I don't believe that so f.ex I doubt there would ever exist a marshmallow the size of a thousand galaxies because the probability of that event taking place is 0 as far as I'm concerned.

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Neapolitan

But I heard there was an exo-planet that had the density of a marshmallow. So it's still almost possible, but probably not probable.

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Guybrush

^Haha, lovely

Unfortunately, a marshmallow the size of planets wouldn't be a normal, fluffy marshmallow right through as gravity would highly condense its core.

Other things I can imagine could be a knitting club where intelligent black holes get together to knit socks and talk about the books written by the Bronte sisters. Or a planet where natural history has made it so that every joke from Gary Larson's The Far Side Comic is accurately reproduced.

edit :

To the question posed in the title : In a universe of infinite space and time [and I would add matter], is it possible for something to happen once?

The simple answer is : Yes, if the probability that the event happens more than once is zero.

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Face

Anything isn't possible given an infinite amount of space and time if there are constants/laws governing it within it. The four fundamental ones being gravity, electromagnetic, strong and weak forces, whose laws do not change given infinite time or space.

You can have an infinite amount of possibilities without including everything conceivable being possible. An infinite amount of time and space does not mean any thing you can imagine, such as a person being smaller than a single atom or that light stops reflecting, will happen.

I agree. For example, if all the universe contained was a bomb, and it detonated then no matter how much time and space you give it, those particles will never meet again, let alone undo irreversible reactions into a re-formed bomb.