@Hornyaboutdeath I was close. Very close to "making it" but at the same time, I was far away. My life had involved a lot of coincidences that made things turned out the way they had for me. I was getting physically fit and close to finishing my STEM degree before my catastrophe. the "it gets better" charade actually does happen for some people as hard as that it is to believe. Yeah I know I know, life is meaningless and all that shit, but so is getting high but it doesn't make it feel any less good.
@worried_to_death I think I know the problem we're having here. Let's subtract all of the abstruse scientific theory and let's see this from a more simplified view in order for you to see where I am coming from.
[Pure Nothingness] > BIG BANG! > stuff happens > Heath Death > [Pure Nothingness]... and that's it. That just makes no sense.
There had to be something that preceded the big bang, even if it is something seemingly minute as particles popping into existence, eliminating each other and then subsequently popping out of existence at the planck scale -- it could be anything, it doesn't matter. As well, before what preceded the big bang something else also would need to precede that, too, and then something else would need to precede that and with this a pattern begins to form -- something necessarily eternal. If this multiverse, universe or whatever-the-fuck is eternal, and if this universe has already happened once (non-zero chance), then at some point, even if the timespan it needs to take is 10^10^10^10^1.2 years long (probably shorter than that, not like it matters from our PoV), a ludicrous amount of time to us but absolutely nothing within the scale of an eternity, what makes it impossible to recur for another time and then some more? Subjectively from our point of view, we will not be able to experience death as it is the complete lack of experience, so should we be born under the same rigid pre-determined circumstances, our subjective consciousness will be re-created exactly as before and then things will play out from there.
So, where is the flaw in this thinking?
There are just too many unknowns and assumptions to get to the eternal recurrence scenario you seem so intent on getting.
"[Pure Nothingness] > BIG BANG! > stuff happens > Heath Death > [Pure Nothingness]... and that's it. That just makes no sense."
--
something making no sense to someone is no argument against it, unless you are taking the meaning of 'sense' to be semantic or logical. Semantically '
raspberry blueboys whistled silently within the inner confines of the rings around saturn' makes no sense. Logically
'the triangle which was also a square was yellow all over but also blue all over at the same time' makes no sense. So I assume you mean 'makes no sense existentially or ontologically' or something.
Something 'making sense' in this sense is subjective and resolves nothing. It makes perfect sense on a theistic view, for example. So who gets to decide who is right?
"There had to be something that preceded the big bang"
-- I don't know. This sounds like an unfounded belief mixed with intuition. Physicists have models and hypotheses, and theologians/philosophers have their metaphysical postulates, but no one really knows.
All known physical laws and spatio-temporal concepts like causality break down pre-big bang, so there is just no way of knowing if your statement is true or meaningful, or what it could possibly mean or imply if it is true. Anyone who claims to have such knowledge is not speaking truthfully.
"something else also would need to precede that, too, and then something else would need to precede that and with this a pattern begins to form.."
--this ad infinitum reasoning doesn't necessarily follow. In fact any argument which leads to an infinite regress is usually considered to be a bad argument because it doesn't ultimately explain anything. An infinite series or set of universes makes no more 'sense' than nothing>bang>stuff>heat death>nothing, which you rejected because it makes no sense to you.
You can ask why either scenario is the case rather than just eternal non-existence. The most profound philosophical question 'Why is there something rather than nothing' can just be extended to include the infinite regress.
To illustrate the non-necessity of a regress of causes, there is nothing contradictory in the idea of a first cause or uncaused cause. This is the cosmological argument and has a long history in theology and philosophy. William Lane Craig has defended the Kalam version of it
- Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
and thinks that it demonstrates the existence of a necessary uncaused God. I'm not saying he's right, but I've not seen anyone refute the argument yet.
what makes it impossible to recur for another time and then some more?
--Any number of things. I think what you're asking ultimately is is there an argument or data which logically contradicts the eternal recurrence idea?
I don't know the answer to that.
If this universe is unique and the big bang was preceded by something incomprehensible to humans and the universe expands forever and heat death is the end of everything at least for the reality of this universe, then I see no logical reason why eternal recurrence would follow from this data alone.
Maybe the many worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics is a good working model but doesn't actually describe reality. If MWI is false as a description of reality, then that's one less reason to believe in eternal recurrence (as well as the fact that poincare recurrence wasn't designed to apply to open chaotic systems like the universe).
Many physicists think MWI isn't actually true (they think other worlds are unreal rather than real) because it's unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. They see it as a heuristic device to make sense of data without the possible worlds realism which they consider superfluous.
There are many other interpretations of quantum mechanical data like
Bohm interpretation, copenhagen interpretation, information ontologies (J A Wheeler's 'it from a bit' theory. Wheeler actually had this to say about time and existence: "
Time, among all concepts in the world of physics, puts up the greatest resistance to being dethroned from ideal continuum to the world of the discrete, of information, of bits. ... Of all obstacles to a thoroughly penetrating account of existence, none looms up more dismayingly than 'time.' Explain time? Not without explaining existence. Explain existence? Not without explaining time. To uncover the deep and hidden connection between time and existence ... is a task for the future."),
consistent histories interpretation, von neumann-wigner 'consciousness collapse' interpretation, even a
quantum darwinism interpretation which would in fact rule out infinitely many universes, just as biological darwinism rules out infinitely many existing species.
As I said at the beginning, there are so many unknowns, and so many assumptions and axioms that you have to accept if you're just looking for an algorithm to churn out eternal recurrence as an output, that belief in it looks like an article of faith rather than the result of a logical deduction. And by the way, any credible scientific theory about reality can never just be the result of a logical deduction from self-evident axioms. It always has to fit the data or correspond to observation, so in this sense eternal recurrence is not a scientific theory, it isn't falsifiable. So any strong belief in it is not a case of 'proportioning belief to evidence', and is therefore not rational, to quote Hume.
I can't logically rule it out in the same way that I can logically rule out the existence of a squared circle, because I just don't know enough about anything, but I'd rather not torment myself with 'what ifs' and metaphysical scare stories, when I could be worrying about other things instead. lol
p.s. I can totally understand your fear of it though. It's terrifying as a concept, isn't it
