On Thu, May 3, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > Why would focusing on one issue be a distraction from the other?
Because Human Beings do not have infinite time to deal with, so time spent focusing on issues that Krauss correctly describes as sterile (not leading to new ideas) is time not spent focusing on profound issues that are quite literally infinitely more likely to give birth to new knowledge. There are several ways to define "nothing" but if you insist it means "not even having the potential to produce something" then contemplating the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" is a obviously a complete waste of time and does nothing but inflict needless ware and tear on valuable brain cells. However it now looks like if we work very hard science may actually be able to answer questions like "why there is stuff and not empty space, why there is space at all, and how both stuff and space and even the forces we measure could arise from no stuff and no space". Those are enormously deep questions and that is where we should be spending our limited time, not "impotent and useless" navel gazing. > Is there some threat of the international science budget being siphoned > off into philosophy? > Yes. > > If the nothing of a vacuum is really full of potentials, If you insist on the strictest definition of "nothing" which is not even the potential of producing anything, then even God Himself could not produce something from nothing; and this line of thought is quite clearly leading precisely nowhere. > how is it really different from stuff? > You want to know how the potential is any different from the actual? As Krauss says in his book (which you have not read) that's like asking how the potential human being any random male and female have of producing together is any different from a real flesh and blood person. Your problem is that your brain is caught in a infinite loop trying to figure out how a nothing without even the potential to produce something can nevertheless produce something. If you're too busy spinning your wheels to read Professor Krauss's book your only hope is to at least try to squeeze in a little time to read the 2 articles I mentioned in my last post and repeat below for your benefit, they're a sort of readers digest condensed kiddy version of the book, but that's far better than "nothing" by any meaning of the word. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-p... http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-mad... John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
