{"id":15370,"date":"2013-12-01T05:18:21","date_gmt":"2013-12-01T10:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=15370"},"modified":"2013-12-01T05:21:14","modified_gmt":"2013-12-01T10:21:14","slug":"why-does-the-world-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2013\/12\/01\/why-does-the-world-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Does The World Exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an online conversation with MardyS, he recommended a book,\u00a0 Holt, Jim (2012-07-16). Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story<\/strong><\/a>. Liveright. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n

I found the book to be a very interesting and erudite discussion that was focusing on the question “Why is there something instead of nothing?”\u00a0 The author seemed to be quite knowledgeable in physics, discussing Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, The Big Bang Theory, Quantum Gravity, and the like.<\/p>\n

The following statement in the book broke the mood completely.<\/p>\n

To begin with, nothing in the concept of causation says that a cause must always precede in time its effect. Think of a locomotive pulling a caboose: the motion of the former causes the motion of the latter, yet the two are concurrent in time<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To say that “the two are concurrent in time” shows an abysmal lack of understanding of elementary physics.\u00a0 It also shows a lack of knowledge about how to run a train.<\/p>\n

I finally found a definition of Slack Action in WikiPedia<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

In railroading, slack action is the amount of free movement of one car before it transmits its motion to an adjoining coupled car. This free movement results from the fact that in railroad practice cars are loosely coupled, and the coupling is often combined with a shock-absorbing device, a “draft gear,” which, under stress, substantially increases the free movement as the train is started or stopped. Loose coupling is necessary to enable the train to bend around curves and is an aid in starting heavy trains, since the application of the locomotive power to the train operates on each car in the train successively, and the power is thus utilized to start only one car at a time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, clearly, on a\u00a0 macro scale, the motion of the engine and the caboose are not concurrent in time in starting and stopping.\u00a0 This can be generalized to any change in speed.\u00a0 If there is no slack when the train tries to accelerate, then you may have to look to the “draft gear” or look at the microscopic level of stretching of the physical components of the train.<\/p>\n

I leave it up to you to think of what The Second Law of Thermodynamics has to say about whether a cause precedes its effect in time.<\/p>\n

The quoted selection from the book Why Does The World Exist?<\/em> is not the first one that casually dismisses an idea with reasons that are unwarranted.\u00a0 So while the book is interesting to read, I stopped looking for a definitive, scientific or philosophical answer to the book’s main question.\u00a0 Sadly, I just stopped reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an online conversation with MardyS, he recommended a book,\u00a0 Holt, Jim (2012-07-16). Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story. Liveright. Kindle Edition. I found the book to be a very interesting and erudite discussion that was focusing on the question “Why is there something instead of nothing?”\u00a0 The author seemed to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15370"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15375,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15370\/revisions\/15375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}