The Philosophy of Outer Space | Cosmology | Part 2

[@Pfhorrest]

Cosmic inflation doesn’t involve anything moving through space faster than light, it just involves space itself growing such that even relatively nearby objects get farther apart faster than light could traverse between them. Even in the universe as it is today, sufficiently distant objects are growing farther apart faster than light could keep up with, but that doesn’t violate relativity. Under inflation “sufficiently distant” is just much smaller because space is expanding much faster.

[@Overonator]

Yeah I was going to say I think that was incorrect in the video.

[@ksastrophy]

Wanted to write a comment about this myself, but then saw yours. You're absolutely right

[@InventiveHarvest]

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

[@redsparks2025]

It's good that you brought up the probability issue. We can say that the probability of a universe existing may have been infinitesimally small but it was non-zero. Why non-zero? Because our universe exists. But then how does one update that probability when the sample size is only one? Quite a conundrum. Or is it a paradox that probability creates when the sample size is only one since the same probability issue can also be applied to one's own existence? We can say that the probability of YOU existing may have been infinitesimally small but it was non-zero. Why non-zero? Because YOU exist. But then how does one update that probability when the sample size is only one? Again we are stuck. And yes it will also depend on how someone defines "YOU", i.e., the "Self".

[@chrissidiras]

Why does not bayesian statistics work? Also, the past and future (and future and past) assumption being unstanciated is well know for a couple of centuries, but did not stop us from doing science. If it is not a problem for all science, it should not be a problem for cosmology. Off course someone might argue that it is for all of science, but this is a different discussion. But I agree that cosmologists are making indeed some very wierd claims.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

The problem isn't Bayesian Statistics, it is Bayesian Epistemology: m.kzbin.info/aero/PLz0n_SjOttTdIqlgDjdNFfLUFVrl5j1J4 The unique problem for Cosmology is the unfalsifiability of its assumptions. If it is the case that other parts of the universe behave importantly different than those we can directly interact with we would have no way of drawing any conclusions about those places. The only way to do cosmology is to assume the same laws apply everywhere, but we can never falsify that assumption, only take it on faith. For the problem of induction, yes we have been aware of this issue for a long time, and it does not stop us from doing science,but it should stop us from thinking the conclusions of science are certainly true, instead of the best provisional theories we have now that might change with more evidence.

[@DeathbyKillerBong]

haha i found an error (the conan bit), 13:00 prokaryotes to eukaryotes happened ~1.8 BILLION years ago, not 2.5 millions.

[@Overonator]

Yeah it's billions not millions.