Gib. Good points.
"At the risk of taking too seriously a comment made in jest ... I don't see that infinite time implies infinite possibilities of events. I can imagine a universe that simply runs down and becomes static for ever. Not that I see this as a likely outcome. I'm attracted to the idea of recurrent big bang - expansion - contraction cycles."
I think that's one theory, that if the universe has less than adequate mass it will continue to expand and cool forever. But what if space was curved and there are no straight lines in space, all trajectories lead back to their origin eventually? Would the cycle not continue? And for an infinite number of times, including an infinite number of minute variations and possible combinations??
"These kinds of outcomes and probabilities are incalculable. You have to start thinking in more precise terms about infinity - countable vs noncountable infinity, for example."
Contemplating the size of the word "infinite" is hard to do, because it isn't a number that we can count, so it's not really a number. So yes, if the probability of something happening is not "0", then it will happen, like I said, if you believe in infinite time. All you have to do is wait long enough.
In other words, we find ourselves here in this exact moment of time because all moments in the past have led directly to this moment right now. The odds of this moment here and now happening is obviously not "0" so this moment here and now will happen again if the cosmic dice is continued to be thrown.
"Another thought: Is the number of events occurring, say, on this planet, in, say, one second, infinite or not? I suspect that these concepts are not well defined."
I would say the number of events in the universe are not infinite...they are large, but they have a number. I'm not saying the size of the universe itself is infinite, I'm thinking time is infinite, or rather, the passage of time, or the transfer of energy, is infinite, never ending.
But of course, this discussion takes us to the realm of the pseudoscience called Cosmology where all is conjecture, including my post here!! Forgive me if I have misunderstood any of the points you made. |
