Editorials by Bob

There are numerous theories on the origin of the universe, but for the most part they fall into several categories. I'll take a look at them, both the categories and the few that don't fit into any, roughly in ascending order of likelihood and good sense.

Ahead of time, though, I think that a disclaimer are in order (in addition to the one in my Blog description, about not being an expert in anything).

I'm fully aware that my summations of the theories discussed here are simplifications, and in some cases oversimplifications. I've tried to avoid oversimplifying any point affected by one of my counterpoints, but I'm obviously not perfect and I admit that I probably missed a spot or three. I apologize for any such oversights. Still, I've done what I could to find what actual experts have to say about these things.

With that out of the way, let's look at the theories.

1. No Cause At All

This is the only theory that I'm going to outright ridicule, mainly because it's ridiculous. No logic is involved in it whatsoever.

Seriously. It's simply incredible that anyone at all, much less anyone with a background in science, has been taken seriously once proposing that the universe popped up out of nothing with no cause whatsoever.

I'll put this into perspective: the answer of "it just happened, for no reason" would not be acceptable for any other question in any field of science whatsoever, ever. Not in physics, chemistry, biochemistry, psychology, sociology, or anything else. Any scientist in any of these fields, or any other, would not be taken seriously after proposing it. The first time the answer was suggested, it would likely be taken as a joke; the more the theory was pushed the less seriously the scientist would be taken -- not just in the question at hand, but in general.

For reasons that I hope are quite obvious, the phenomenon of something happening without cause has never been observed, nor has it been duplicated in a laboratory. Not only has it never been proven scientifically, it cannot be. It's not even possible to try using any conceivable method. It's a logical contradiction to try to cause something to happen without a cause. Thus, it cannot -- literally, absolutely cannot -- be arrived at by the scientific method.

Any time something has happened without apparent cause -- and I've never seen so much as a hint that there's ever been an exception -- scientists have never simply accepted it as "well, it just happened, for no reason." They've always tried to find a cause.

So, why should the universe as a whole be a special exception? Do the laws of logic break down at that scale, for some reason? I seriously doubt that; certainly nobody's ever tried to illustrate why that would be.

Essentially, the "No Reason" theory doesn't even rise up to the standards of pseudoscience; it's just a made-up excuse to not believe something else (generally the last item on this list). It's an atheist's way of just throwing up his hands and saying, "well, it just happened, is all." Anyone proposing it immediately loses any credibility whatsoever in claiming "logic and reason" or "the scientific method" as a guide. If it's promoted by someone with scientific credentials, then those credentials should be reexamined and perhaps considered for revocation.

2. It Doesn't Matter

This is basically the same as #1, minus the stupidity... well, most of it, but there isn't enough left over to be derisive about. It's more of a "you missed a spot" kind of thing.

It does share at least one trait with the "something from nothing" theory: it wouldn't be an acceptable answer to any other question in any scientific field whatsoever.

To be fair, in certain circumstances a person on a study team might ask a question, and legitimately get "it doesn't matter" as an answer -- meaning that the question doesn't matter in the context of that particular study. Any question does matter at some level.

Responding to the question of the universe's origin with "it doesn't matter" basically dismisses the entire field of cosmology, and rejects the scientific method. The only people that I've heard support this response have seen the arguments narrowed down to only the one that they're not comfortable with -- it doesn't answer the question, but avoids it.

3. The Universe Created Itself

The late Stephen Hawking once proclaimed that "because of gravity, the universe can and does create itself." I'm not aware of anyone else embracing this, but it does deserve to be addressed.

Unfortunately, the theory is quite poorly thought out. There are at least two major problems in the logic behind this.

First, and rather obviously, is this simple fact: Before the universe existed, the universe didn't exist. Something that doesn't exist simply cannot be the cause for anything, including itself, for reasons rather like those outlined above.

And, of course, every theory about gravity that I've seen holds that came into being after the start of the universe (by about 10^-36 seconds), and didn't exist beforehand.

But how about retrocausality? After all, the phenomenon of the effect of something happening before the cause, in terms of time, has actually been proven in the laboratory. Why couldn't this be the case with the universe?

That's an improvement, but it doesn't quite work either. It runs into a phenomenon called a causal loop, or "bootstrap paradox." One famous illustration (yes, from Doctor Who, of all places) is that of a young time-traveler who is such a fan of Ludwig van Beethoven that he even has cosmetic surgery to make himself look just like the composer. The traveler takes copies of the music back to Beethoven's time, only to discover that he doesn't exist, so he passes himself of as Ludwig, publishing all of the man's music in his name. So... where did the music actually originate?

In this way, the answer that "the universe created itself" is actually no answer at all. It sounds good on the surface (which is why it's not worthy of the scorn and ridicule I gave the first answer), but it doesn't actually answer the question.

4. It's All A Computer Simulation

This is a theory, called the "simulation hypothesis," that's been gaining some surprising traction lately -- to the point that at least one physicist calls it a "50/50 chance."

The idea is that some "posthuman civilization" somewhere is running a high-fidelity computer simulation of the entire universe, exploring detail from the tiniest subatomic particle to every galaxy within view. At the very least, the simulation is run with details filling in whenever one of us needs to witness them, and extrapolating the rest. The purpose for such a simulation isn't clear -- at least, not to me, but there could be a good one so I'm not going to criticize it on that basis other than to point out that, after all, there may be no such purpose.

(In fact, generally speaking, philosophical objections to hypotheses are pretty useless. Accepting an idea as true because it appeals philosophically, or rejecting one as false because it doesn't, is hardly the work of a logical, reasoning mind. It might work as a starting point, as it obviously did for me with my first item above, but if that's all your argument has going for it then you don't actually have an argument. A hypothesis is either true or false on its own; deal with the philosophical implications after that's determined, not as a way of determining it. For that reason, even though I have enough philosophical objections to this theory to write another article of this length, I'm keeping them to myself, at least for now.)

There are a number of problems with the idea, though, not the least of which is: if this is all a computer simulation, where's the computer? Okay, it's obviously not within our own universe; it's in another universe. So... where did that universe come from? Is it another computer simulation? How far back does that go? From there we start to get into the problems with a recursive universe-creating mechanism (below).

The idea has other problems, such as the physical limits to computational power. There's only so much matter, energy, and time in existence, even in a hypothetical "higher" universe; so how much computing power is actually needed? At one extreme, tracking every quark and lepton in the observable universe could take more matter and energy than exist in said observable universe. That particular extreme may not be the necessary one, but it does at least partly illustrate the computing-power problem.

Then there are points of nature that have yet to be adequately explored, such as the currently-ongoing debate of eternalism versus presentism (that is, whether the past, present, and future are essentially the same or have special qualities that separate them from each other).

In short, this is generally a quagmire of unknown properties. Over time, those properties may become clearer, moving this item further down the list until it approaches or even joins the list of universe-creating mechanisms... but, as will be shown there, I don't think it'll ever go past that.

5. The Big Bang Created The Universe

The only person I've ever heard publicly forward this explanation made no claim to be a scientist or logician, so I'm giving him a pass for not quite understanding the problems with it. (Between that and him being still alive, I'm not going to identify him, though some readers may already know who he is. Please respect my decision there, and don't spill the beans in the Comments.) Still, I think it should be addressed, because there are a few people who subscribe to it.

The theory is that the Big Bang isn't just the event through which the universe was created, but was itself the primary cause. And it has numerous problems.

The biggest problem with this theory is that the Big Bang isn't an eternal force; it's not something that exists outside of time, but rather was the first event to happen within time. There's no question but that it had an end, and it clearly also had a beginning. And, if it had a beginning -- as I've already discussed -- it must have had a cause.

And, because the Big Bang happened within time, it's also a part of the universe's history, which goes back to all the problems of the universe creating itself.

(There are a couple of other problems with this theory, but they're more relevant to some of the theories that follow, so I'll discuss them there.)

This is a step up from the universe creating itself because it's not actually no answer at all; but like that answer, it simply shifts the question rather than really answering it.

6. The Universe Always Existed

Unlike the previous theories, this one was actually the going belief for many centuries: the universe was always here; space and time had no start. If there were gods, they spawned out of the universe, not the other way around.

The first person to record anything different was, in fact, Moses. The "Steady-State Model," is it's come to be called, was the assumption in all other cultures, and was the accepted view from Aristotle until the mid- to late 20th century.

It was in 1964 that Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation started to be observed and measured, beginning the demolition of the Steady-State Model. Various propositions were made to try to satisfy both models: that the universe continually expanded and contracted in an infinite repeat; that time was actually circular, and the "Big Crunch" at the end of time coincides with the Big Bang; that the universe is in a perpetual state of renewal from "mini-Big Bangs"; and a few others. All have been disproven, if not outright discredited, either mathematically or through observation.

There are a couple of problems with Steady-State that go beyond that, though.

One relates to entropy. Physicist Paul Davies put it most clearly that "the universe will eventually die, wallowing, as it were, in its own entropy. This is known among physicists as the 'heat death' of the universe... The universe cannot have existed for ever, otherwise it would have reached its equilibrium end state an infinite time ago. Conclusion: the universe did not always exist." (From God and the New Physics, 1984)

My own way of looking at it is this: because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Principle of Increasing Entropy, the universe will one day reach a point of absolute entropy: the above-mentioned "heat death." Logically, therefore, it at one time was at a point of zero entropy: the Big Bang.

There's also the related theory, that the universe experiences a periodic series of "mini-Big Bangs" to sustain itself. It does have some logical sense to it, but it's been disproven by practical physics.

7. "Fluctuations in the Quantum Foam"

This is sort of a "special case" theory between the Steady-State theory above, and the collection of theories that comprise #6 below. It does at least accept the universe's finite past, which makes it a tad better than Steady-State, but it has some other very fundamental problems.

The idea is that the universe grew out of "fluctuations in the quantum foam" (sometimes it's phrased a little differently, but that's the most common form I've seen). Those submicroscopic folds in space were just floating along, and suddenly one of them just happened to achieve the right state to blow up into an entire universe.

As far as that much goes, it's not a bad story. But it does have some severe flaws.

The main flaws that I see come out of the word "fluctuations." That word necessarily implies that changes are happening, and that necessarily implies the flow of time. That leaves us with at least one of three problems already discussed: either that time occurred within the time that we know, making it a part of the universe and therefore ineligible to have created it; or that time exists outside our own. In the latter case, either the "quantum foam" is in a Steady State, which is untenable because of the Principle of Increasing Entropy, or it had a beginning, which brings in the necessary question of what caused it to exist.

8. There's A Universe-Creating Mechanism

I've place this one at this spot on the list because it might, in fact, be true, at least to an extent. It's just insufficient.

This item can be considered a sort of "umbrella" section for a large variety of theories, which may or may not be related to each other in any other way. The basic idea is that there's some sort of mechanism that just churns out universes, each either with random characteristics or characteristics derived from a predecessor.

That mechanism generally consists of universes spawning from other universes. There are several, but the main ones that I'm aware of are:

1. "Brane theory," which suggests that universes exist side-by-side in close proximity to one another, like microscopically-thin membranes (hence the name). When fluctuations in space-time causes them to collide, the collision spawns a new universe.
2. The "bubble theory," which imagines universes as a series of bubbles, with events in each one spawning new universes like cascading bubbles.

These theories become possible when one imagines that there are more dimensions in existence than just the three of space and one of time that we experience directly. Physicists have posited as many as six or seven additional dimensions to explain the interactions of the four basic forces of the universe (weak nuclear, strong nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravitational).

Whether these additional dimensions actually exist or are just mathematical conveniences has never been demonstrated. Personally, I'm inclined to believe the former (that's a discussion that I'll probably get into a year or two from now). If I'm wrong, and they're just mathematical conveniences, then any "universe-creating mechanism" cannot exist.

As I said, this idea has enough merit that it might actually be true. It just suffers from a couple of problems as an ultimate explanation.

The lesser problem is that it can't be proven experimentally. Even the physical existence of  additional dimensions hasn't been demonstrated, much less any of these theories, and no way has yet been proposed to do so. Some future technology may develop that allows it to be tested, which is why this is a relatively minor problem in this case; it's a considerable improvement over the "no cause at all" theory above. However, that technology doesn't exist today, nor has any means been suggested using any specific hypothetical method.

The greater problem is the same as with the "quantum foam" theory above. If it's always been happening, then it violates the Principle of Increasing Entropy; if not, then it had a start somewhere and therefore must have had a cause. It becomes less of an answer to why everything exists than just a "pushing back" of the question.

But (you might wonder) couldn't the mechanism, whatever it is, exist outside of time? If time doesn't pass for the mechanism, then the Principle of Increasing Entropy doesn't apply.

That much is true. However, for a universe to have the cause of another universe, it must have time within itself. In the case of brane theory, there are two universes that must have been parallel in time for them to collide. Trying to sort out time and non-time gets messy; maybe there's some way to do it neatly, but every way that I can think of just creates more time-related problems.

(That includes circular creation, where, for example, Universe A spawns Universe B, which has its own separate flow of time in which it spawns Universe C, which also has its own separate flow of time in which it spawns Universe A. That takes us back to the causal loop problem above.)

9. God Created The Universe

As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, through his character Sherlock Holmes, once put it: "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

If physical explanations won't give us a logical, sensible origin for the universe (or multiverse), then the only option is to go beyond the merely physical.

The creating force has to be eternal, outside of every sense of time (not just "time as we know it," but any type of before-and-after), so that it doesn't have a beginning or end, and thus doesn't need an origin of its own. After all, if the force isn't subject to time, then it doesn't have to worry about the effects of entropy, thermodynamics, and other aspects of changing.

The creation also has to be non-random and non-compulsory -- it doesn't happen because certain conditions are met, or because it has to happen, but as a matter of choice. After all, there has to be a reason that just that one point in space and time (of however many physical dimensions actually exist) spawned a universe, and not all of them. Of course, choice necessarily implies consciousness, so the creative force has to have that.

(Some people have objected to that on the basis that consciousness requires the presence of a brain or other physical organ. However, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary, and I'd love to go into it, but at a later date -- it really is quite interesting, at least if you're into that sort of thing, but rather long for what's already a pretty long blog article.)

If you have an eternal consciousness with the ability to bring an entire universe into being, well, that's pretty close to the definition of God. Based on just that description, God would naturally be able to know all things, perform miracles, and do all of the other things ascribed to him. That's a discussion for another time, though; right now, it doesn't matter whether he's the God of the Bible or fits some other description.

For today, just coming to the conclusion that God cannot not exist is enough.

This post is a bit astray from my usual approach, and my usual topic areas, so bear with me.

For quite some time now I've been using online surveys to pick up a few extra dollars (it's not much, but it does cover a few little "extras" by way of gift cards). In the process, I've seen some really interesting research being done... but I've also seen some poor planning and design.

Admittedly, I think it unlikely that anyone who actually writes those surveys (especially the poorly-done ones) will ever read this, I thought it a good idea to put these tips out there. Maybe someone who writes online surveys, or will in the future, will read this and remember these thoughts. Or some AI that wanders the web for information on human thought and opinion will read it, and that will influence its reports to its owners (I know that such things do exist, and while a single blog post will only have a small effect, even a small effect is an effect).

Before I go into detail, I'd like to point out that, in the following, I'm deliberately avoiding mentioning most survey sites by name. The exceptions are if I can't find any way to contact them directly about the problem, or if I tried to contact them but couldn't change the behavior.

For clarity, I use a survey portal that sends me to various other sites for the actual surveys. I'd identify them (they're really good), but I'm not sure how they'd feel about me sharing that information, so for purposes of this blog post I'll just call them Survey Portal.

Keep It Together

Two or three survey sites that I go to insist on opening the actual survey in a new window. This is an inconvenience for me, as I prefer to keep just one browser window open, with simultaneously-open pages in different tabs.

At least all but one of those sites are courteous enough to return me to my original tab once the survey is done (either successfully, or through disqualification). However, that once exception (affinnova.com) just keeps things going in the same window, with the tab handles disabled; if I want to transfer back from the window to a tab, I have to copy-and-paste the URL.

Is there a reason that the survey has to be be in a new, separate window? If not, then please let me stay in the same one, ideally in the same tab.

Weird Times To Disqualify

I've had a few surveys that will ask questions that seem like they should be easy, but then immediately disqualify me. I'll give a couple of glaring examples.

It's natural that a marketing survey would require a non-disclosure agreement, especially when it involves an upcoming advertising campaign, packaging design, television content, or anything similar.

So when I'm asked something along the lines of, "Do you agree to keep the information you're about to see in this survey confidential, and not share or discuss it with anyone?" and answer "Yes," I think I'm quite reasonable to expect to not be told next that I didn't qualify. (A couple of surveys from FocusVision's Decipher survey platform have even followed that up with something like, "Do you understand that, if you share any of this material, you could be subject to legal action?" And yes, when I answered "Yes," I was disqualified.)

Similar to that is questions like, "Do you agree to pay attention to the questions in this survey, and provide meaningful, thought-out answers?" That's another thing that shouldn't be followed by being told that I don't qualify.

The other example is with a couple of open-ended, text-answered screening questions. When I'm asked to write detailed text about a certain thing, and I write out a lengthy paragraph with the requested amount of detail, I definitely don't expect to see a "you're disqualified" page a half-second after pressing the "Continue" button. Someone reading the answer later might decide that they don't like what I wrote and nullify my responses, but that quickly? It doesn't make sense.

Also on the topic of "weird times to disqualify," there's one that's downright aggravating: to disqualify me after I've spent 5-10 minutes answering opinion questions. It seems like just common sense, as well as common courtesy, that anything that would disqualify me from a survey (other than an offense such as missing an "attention check" or "robot check" question) should be asked up front, not after I've gone through several dozen pages of responses.

(I've also had several cases of being disqualified without answering any questions, though I assume that has more to do with the interface between Survey Router and the survey host than with anything the host is responsible for.)

Stop Assuming!

Sometimes I get a question like, "How many people work in your organization?" without even asking first if I have an "organization" for people to work in. (I don't.)

This is just good sense: Before you ask me about my organization, my children, my pets, my car, or anything else, first ask if I even have those things. Even if 99% of people do, there's still that 1%.

A similar thing that happens much less frequently is a question that starts with, "You mentioned earlier that..." followed by something that not only isn't true of me, but also wasn't discussed before -- sometimes because this is the first question on the survey. This may be a coding problem rather than a writing problem, but it still should be addressed.

"None of the Above" and "Other" Are Your Friends

Not everything fits into neat categories, even things that intuitively should. Here are a few actual questions I've seen recently -- some mainly for illustration, though others as the worst offenders in this area -- with their answer choices:

Which email domain(s) do you use for personal purposes (eg. online shopping, ride-sharing apps, etc.)? *This question is required.

Forward and Back

I don't know how others feel about this, but I find it a little disturbing when a survey automatically moves to the next question as soon as I click on an answer. What if I mis-click, and hit the wrong answer? I like to pause for a second or two before moving forward to make sure my answer is correct and complete. And, if I realize my mistake after I've moved forward -- such as if the wording of a later question clarifies an earlier one for me -- it's very helpful to have a "back" button on the screen (since using the browser's "back" button kind of screws up the survey's functionality) so I can correct it.

And worst of all is automatically moving forward with no option to go back. Doing that is practically guaranteed to skew the survey's accuracy, especially in the early questions when participants may not be aware of this "feature." It'll only be skewed a little bit, but why not make a survey as accurate as it can be?

Like I said, I'm not sure how others feel about this; I could be the odd person out on this. (That is to say: I could be wrong!)

How Did We Do?

This is one item that's been a quite positive surprise for me. Several surveyors finish their surveys by asking things like "How was your experience taking this survey?"

In the best cases, there's been a question like "Do you have any feedback for us?" or "How could we improve?" followed by a box for typing in an answer. I've used that box to offer suggestions and corrections, and even seen some of these sites make improvements in some of the above areas (especially the "None of the Above" type).

It's kind of like how there's a Comments section here, where people can tell me how I did. I've probably missed a few things, or perhaps been overly harsh in one or two spots (I hope not), so anyone who happens to be reading this can tell me how I did and I can do better in the future.

So... how did I do?

In 2005, the time of my last post, I decided that I was tired of the blogging game, and so just went out. (My apologies to anyone who was following at that time and felt left out cold!)

Now, in 2020, I'm finding that there are some issues that need to be discussed in ways that few if any others are. Most of them affect the nation and the upcoming elections. While I doubt that a huge number of people will see the posts, let alone be swayed or inspired by them, I feel the need to write stuff out based just on my sense of civic responsibility. And maybe someone will, after all, be swayed or inspired.

Posts will be highly irregular, and will go up as I finish them. These are important matters (well, most of them), and I want to get my facts straight and interpretations right, as well as I can.

I do have a couple specific matters of discussion, related to current events, that I hope to be able to post by the end of February.

Labels: returning

So you've gotten old. Some day, we all will (if we're fortunate). And maybe you're not as satisfied with your life as you'd like to be -- you'd like to keep going.

BrainTrans, Inc. has the solution!

Okay, seriously, the above web site is a piece of fiction. I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be comedy, speculative fiction, or something else, but the science there is currently the realm of science fiction.

But that might not last forever. Apparently there's been some research lately suggesting that a brain transplant -- more accurately called a "whole-body transplant" -- may be possible.

As shown in an article in Current Science from last December, there's been some interest in the ability to transplant a person's brain from one body to another for quite some time. Much of the hesitation has come from the inability of nerve damage to heal properly, and as I reported in this blog entry even that may be a thing of the past.

The new body would come from one of two sources: either someone with a healthy body has lost use of the brain (though there's been some suggestion of using death-row inmates), or the original person has a clone made with no brain in the first place (it's kept going by life-support).

Most scientists agree that the recipient's behavior is based on the brain, and not on the body. This study, perhaps the most successful brain-transplant work to date, supports that view.

As earlier blog entries at The Burning Question and Shots Across the Bow (and probably a few others) indicate, there are many ethical and logistical questions to sort out on this as well. Some are easy to sort out, while others are less so.

The main ethical issue, of course, is the status of the "body donor." In the case of a donor who is legitimately brain dead, we will need to have that status more clearly defined than we have now. If the person isn't truly dead, removing the brain prematurely could (at least morally) constitute murder. On the other hand, the idea of creating a full cloned body (sans brain) could easily be seen as creating a human being for purposes of being killed. Either has overtones of human sacrifice.

Mind you, I'm not against the use of this technology. I think it has fantastic potential. If it exists when I'm old and infirm, I may even look into taking advantage of it myself (not so much for a second chance at life, but a second chance at a life -- though more on that some other time).

Another intresting issue to consider is what the person's legal age would be after the operation. If I'm 84 and I have my brain transferred to a 14-year-old body, am I legally 84 or 14? Personally I think such a person should be considered 84 for most if not all purposes; after all, it's mental and emotional development, not physical stature, that really matters. But others might disagree.

Personally I'm going to keep my eye on the Wikipedia article on the topic, and any other news I can find, to track progress on this procedure.