I forgot to mention that I only use the Casimir Effect as proof of the fact that Quantum Vacuum Fluctuations are not infinite in the true mathematical sense, regardless of the fact that QM equations use infinite sets. From this follows empirical evidence that there is no instantiated infinity in our physical world (or any multiverse for that matter) – including the realm of observed QM phenomenon.

I am going to stick to this fallacy I see in all multiverse or instantiated infinity arguments. To work from you argument; Why would you disallow any particular sub-set or model it only according to our own universe (as a clone), the Boltzmann Brain or the Spaghetti Monster?

It is certainly not rigorous to be arbitrary about the sub-sets you prefer to actualize without giving an empirically testable set of rules that can bound your preferred sub-set. The only empirical evidence my consciousness can demarcate as a sub-set is my own reality an it only includes the stuff I observe and think. In fact for your argument to go anywhere you will need a consciousness that can observe everything at every possible instance in order to bound the sub-set you postulate in such a matter of fact way – You need GOD to make your sub-set viable and if you have this all inclusive consciousness i.e GOD why can’t He just as well control the nature of everything.

That is why I maintain that there is no such a thing as an instantiated infinity and talking about it crosses human rational boundaries.

I like your article and think I understand/share most of the notions mentioned. It has great explanatory value as well.

I only would like to see “eternal” time better grounded than simply being in our minds, but I think you implied this in any case.

What is Time? Depending on who you ask you will get two seemingly different answers. If we ask a philosopher what time is he will tell us time is a river flowing past us. If we ask a physicist what time is he will give us an elaborate answer that would probably leave the average person more perplexed than when he first asked the physicist. I like the philosophers answer to what time is. It is simple and straight forward. Time does indeed seem to be a river flowing past us. Yesterday turns into today. Today turns into tomorrow. Yet we seem to be standing still as the river of time flows past us. As beautiful of a description as this is we still have need to borrow from the physicist so that we may have a better understanding of what time actually is. So please bear with me while I lay the foundation for our understanding. I will try to be as simple as possible.
Let’s start with Einstein’s famous relativity equation (e=mc2) which gives amazing insights into exactly what is subject to time and what is not. The two basic physical components of the equation are energy and mass. Energy is usually referred to as light in the equation, but is actually the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum of which light is only a tiny portion. All the energy of the universe is weightless and is proven by many experiments not to be subject to aging as mass is in this universe. Mass is anything in the universe that can be measured as weight, such as all of the constituents of solids, liquids and gases. All mass has weight and is proven to be subject to the entropic time base we measure with. It may be said that all mass has weight and all mass ages. It may also be said that all energy is weightless and all energy does not age. Thus for our purpose we can now divide everything in this universe into two categories of what is subject to aging and what is not. One category is mass which has weight and is subject to aging. The other category is energy which does not have weight and is not subject to aging.
Energy is proven by special relativity not to be subject to the entropic aging of this universe. Energy at the speed of light is often referred to as timeless since it does not age according to the time base we use to measure it with. This is a somewhat misleading, because energy is not really timeless in the strictest sense of the word. The reason for this is, for energy to have a reality at all, it must be based on some sort of “real” time. It must be based on a different type of time we have not, to my knowledge, mathematically defined yet. If energy were truly timeless in the strictest sense of the word, it could not possibly exist for it would have absolutely no time to exist in. This is similar to saying that energy could not exist if it had absolutely no space to exist in. (Mullerpr, This could be the absolute time you are refering too in your post, but I also point out that a absolute space would be required in the proper mathematical definition for the absolute time).
The only discernible reason energy is not effected by the physical time we measure with is because it has no weight and is not part of the space/time (gravity) fabric of this universe. Only mass which has weight is subject to the physical time of this universe. This is because mass has weight which makes it part of the space/time (gravity) fabric of this universe; This is exactly what makes mass subject to aging. Though a light beam may be bent by the gravity of a massive star which is part of the space/time (gravity) fabric, light itself is a passive part of the space/time (gravity) fabric of this universe and therefore escapes the aging process of physical time that mass is subject to. Our bodies which are made of mass have weight and are subject to physical time for they are part of the space/time (gravity) fabric of this universe. The consciousness of our brain is at least a energy based phenomena and may be proven to be either a energy/spiritual base or a pure spiritual base once the evidence is in. Yet even at the energy level base consciousness is proven to be weightless. Because of this weightless quality for consciousness, I argue it is not subject to the space/time (gravity) fabric of this universe. And also because of this weightless quality, I also argue that consciousness is not subject to the entropy of aging as our bodies are. (Amazingly, even the memories we acquire during our lives and use in our thinking consciousness of our brains are proven to be stored in the “spiritual” realm and not the physical realm, by Transcranial magnetic stimulation studies(Van Lommel)). Thus, time as we have it defined (seconds, minutes, hours and days) is not the only time basis we should be looking for in answer to the question “What is time?”. There are at least two very different and distinctive types of time we are looking for in our relationship with our present reality. One time is the basis of the physical aging of our bodies and of all the mass of the universe. This time basis is the flowing river that the philosopher is talking about. There is at least one other basis of time we are looking for that is the “real” time of our energy/spiritual based consciousness. This time basis we are looking for should be of the same nature as the “eternal” time basis for light since our consciousness is, at the very least, an energy based phenomena. We are looking for a somewhat unchanging and constant foundation of time in our consciousness. This constant time is what the flowing river of mass based time is actually flowing past in our consciousness. The question we should really be asking for our topic is, “What is the true nature of time that our energy/spiritual based consciousness is built upon ?” This basis of time we are looking for is something that has been with us all along which we haven’t completely given credit to nor definition to. This seemingly constant and unchanging time we are looking for turns out to be our concept of “now”. The answer is right under our noses and has been with us all along; “now” is constant to us, it changes not. The days of the week change; the seasons of the years change; but “now” always stays the same to our minds. It is always “now” to us no matter what hour of the day or day of the week it is. Has time ever really been anything other than “now” for you? I know for me,, if I am honest with myself, it hasn’t. The mass based time of this world always flows around this tiny island of “now” we have in our minds. The time basis of “now” does not change with regard to the time basis we measure the matter of the universe with! This happens to be the same exact relationship that energy and mass have in the relativity equation! IF it is true that this time basis for our consciousness is not properly defined mathematically (an absolute time?) then science will be very limited in its ability to develop a “Theory of Everything” since a proper definition of time (and space) is required for the basis of many of the mathematical equations I am familiar with.
So, if you are still with me, I think we are ready to superficially answer the question of our topic. What is time? Time is at least two very different and distinct things that exist side by side in our brain. One time flows and ages all elements of mass that are subject to it. The second time we are aware of is constant unchanging and does not age those elements of energy (and spirit) that are subject to it.
The philosopher can amend his statement to say … “The world’s material time is a river flowing past our stationary little island of “eternal” time we each have within of our minds.”

I could not agree with you more. As an Information Scientist it is very plausible to accept that information does not have to be extended in space, however it seems as if, on some level, information is bound to material time – is it possible for an entity to be locked into time but not space, I think so. With God as the source of absolute time this is very viable. (Postulating absolute time as caused by God is certainly more probable than an infinite form of any type of multiverse.)

The work of Stuart Hameroff touches on the nano-tech stuff in the brain that supposedly interact indetermanistically through quantum fluctuation – quantum computing etc. This however is still far away from conclusive.

The Spiritual Brain also seems converge on this level of scientific observation, I still need to get my hands on a copy. The rate at which this type of study is going to open our understanding of our inclusive reality must be picking up speed.

#2 is difficult to define. How would the variation limits be determined? With infinite resources, how would we put a limit on what could occur, unless it could be determined that the probability of a given event is zero?

Depends on the “laws” guiding the formation of universes, don’t it? There might be an infinite amount of em but they might be limited in how they can vary.

how can it be 156 billion light years as stated above?

Objects in the universe aren’t moving away from each other as if from an explosion. The empty space in between them is expanding. The fundamental forces (weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravity) keep atoms and galaxies and groups of galaxies together. The best way to conceptualize this is to imagine the material things in the universe as being on the surface of a balloon. The expansion of the universe is like the balloon being inflated. There’s no speed limit for how fast empty space can expand.

Light waves travelling between distant objects get stretched by the expansion of space creating the well known “red shift” discovered by Hubble and the amount of stretching increasing with distance by a factor known as the Hubble Constant. As the light waves stretch the distance between peaks increases lowering the frequency. Red is the low frequency end of the visible spectrum so “red shift” is light shifting toward a lower frequency.

In the earlist epochs of the universe matter and energy were too dense to allow light to propagate through it. When it cooled by expansion sufficiently matter coalesced into familiar things like protons, neutrons, electrons, and atoms. The universe became transparent to light at that point (approximately 400,000 years old). The temperature of the universe at that time was predicted by theory to be about 3000K (Kelvin) so the first light to shine was that characteristic of a blackbody at 3000K uniformly distributed in all directions. In familiar terms 3000K is “red hot”. A prediction from this theory is that we should be able to observe a uniform blackbody glow in all directions. In the 1960′s researchers at Bell Labs observed the glow at 3K (microwave), redshifted by a factor of 1000 times implying that the universe had grown in size 1000 times. Back then the microwave receivers lacked the noise discrimination to find any inhomogeneity in the microwave background. As receivers got better there finally was a tiny bit of inhomogeneity detected. The microwave background wasn’t precisely the same in every direction. The source of this inhomogeneity, which is why matter in the universe today is clumped into planets and stars and galaxies rather than a thin evenly distributed fog, is perhaps the greatest mystery in cosmology. Analysis of the inhomogeneity reveals a frequency pattern characteristic of “pink noise”. It’s been shifted up into the audible range and tweaked in various ways so we can listen to it. You can find links to the audio files here. These are the sounds of creation. They might be thought of as the voice of God since that’s as good as anyone’s guess about the source.

Great stuff. The article joins my vault.

For, here we see that WD is right on the issue of the UPB as a challenge to abiogenisis in the context of the OBSERVED universe. Beyond that we are crossing over from science tpo phil and all serious options should be on the comparative difficulties table. (Whatever a “copycat” Judge JEJ III might think!]

GEM of TKI

PS: Cf my aleays linked etc for the relevant discussion.

PPS: DS, why am I now always m^o^dd^ed — is it the week plus I was offline? Or have I inadvertently fallen afoul of a policy? [If so, kindly explain, I apologise most humbly in advance.]