Estimating the age of the Universe, and getting it all wrong

[The_Doc_Man]

A tardy reply from me...


As I have been saying all along.


I did explain the precise reason why your conclusion from your spreadsheet was erroneous because of the allocation of "counts" rather than the allocation of "probabilities". If you re-read what I said through the prism of my reasoning, as opposed to yours, it may give insight and understanding. You may disagree with my reasoning, but my reasoning does lead to the correct empirical results.


Disagreeing with reality is up to you. The alternative is to view this as a learning experience that indeed probability can be counter-intuitive and can catch anybody out.

What I will say is that it was good of you to conduct your own mini-scientific experiment since it shows your quest to find the truth of the situation, by following the well-proven utility of the scientific method.

After further review, here is the problem: The word problem glosses over the fact that TWO sets of probabilities simultaneously apply, depending on WHEN you consider the choice. It is another "forest vs. trees" situation.

IF you consider the long-term choice (the entire game starting from before the "reveal") your odds are in favor of switching, following the Bayesian prediction. Roughly 66% in favor of swapping after the "reveal").

If you consider the short-term choice (what is left of the game after the "reveal") your odds are even because you are now betting on a different (shorter) game with only two doors. I.e. to your eyes, the game has changed because you only have two choices, not three.

The wording of the problem disguises the fact that there are TWO choices to be made at the same time, but because they overlap, it obfuscates the presence of two decisions. This is where the counter-intuitive result comes in.

The first decision is for the long-term choice to stay or swap within the context of the whole game. There, the odds favor "swap." The second decision is for the short-term choice to stay or swap based on there being only two doors left. There the odds do not favor either "swap" or "stay" for a win.

My presentation bears out this fact when you make the 2nd choice randomly. There, the odds WERE 50-50. But that 2nd choice is ALSO part of the "outer" game which is still on-going. And since you have to make only one choice at that point, you have to play for the long-term game even though what you see is the immediacy of the short-term game. It is an alteration-of-attention situation.

This is my attempt to explain the counter-intuitive issue. It is counter-intuitive because it APPEARS that after the reveal, it is a new game - but it is not.

 

[Jon]

I just had a thought. If the Universe is infinitely old, can you actually pin an age to it? It's like infinity is intangible, and therefore you cannot pin anything to it! If something is finite, you can say, "There, that's the age!" But that brings up something else: if you try to pin something to a specific age, the increments of time are infinitely small and you get the same problem. By the time you say its X age, it has already moved on, and therefore you can never pin an age to anything. It is like trying to hit a moving target.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Some of the more recent findings from the James Webb Space Telescope have suggested a major issue in the most distant objects, for them being entirely too well-formed for objects so far away that we should only be seeing primordial light. The question is whether that 13.8 bn year age estimate is WAY off from the actual beginning - or whether the whole MODEL is off because what we call the Big Bang was localized rather than global... 'scuse me, universal.

 

[Jon]

I am interested to know what the scientists think after a couple of years browsing the Universe with their new telescope. I'm sure we will get a few paradigm changes along the way.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

There is currently a kerfuffle dealing with the value of the Hubble Constant as computed by two different methods - red shift method and cepheid variable method. JWST has revealed issues such that they appear to be diverging. However, there are other methods that show that whatever is the real value, the divergent methods are not THAT divergent.

 

[Harrybrigham]

I find the lectures on youtube fascinating. I don't pretend to understand it all, but the facts and figures are mind-blowing.

 

[Isaac]

I am a person of relatively little faith. It takes too much faith for me to believe that the universe magically started from nothing to something, without something (or someone) being infinitely pre-existent.

See the problem is, no matter how far back you keep going, you're stuck with a fairly simple result. Eventually, you'll have to claim something came from nothing.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I am a person of relatively little faith. It takes too much faith for me to believe that the universe magically started from nothing to something, without something (or someone) being infinitely pre-existent.

See the problem is, no matter how far back you keep going, you're stuck with a fairly simple result. Eventually, you'll have to claim something came from nothing.

Which leads to the question, from whence came God? Your "something from nothing" and my "something from nothing" have different referents, but are still the same question.

 

[JonXL]

I am a person of relatively little faith. It takes too much faith for me to believe that the universe magically started from nothing to something, without something (or someone) being infinitely pre-existent.

See the problem is, no matter how far back you keep going, you're stuck with a fairly simple result. Eventually, you'll have to claim something came from nothing.

That assumes something outside the system. When concepts such as cause and effect are understood as properties of space-time itself, it becomes unnecessary and even meaningless to ask the question of what 'caused' the existence of our space-time.

 

[Isaac]

That assumes something outside the system

Of course. The only possibility.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

I look around me and I see curtains, ceiling, walls, bookcase, a monitor! All these things made from atoms and then I realise that the atoms are made from energy waves. There isn't really anything solid. It's like I'm on the hollow deck of the Star Trek Enterprise. If I shout "Exit" loud enough will the portal open? I walk out and meet Captain Kirk and he says:- Denny Crane Denny Crane Denny Crane...

Google Search

www.google.com

 

[conception_native_0123]

Make sense?

NONE. =)

 

[JonXL]

Of course. The only possibility.

Why?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

This is from JonXL's post: "When concepts such as cause and effect are understood as properties of space-time itself, it becomes unnecessary and even meaningless to ask the question of what 'caused' the existence of our space-time."

This is a case where Zen philosophy applies. The most common fallacy asked at this level of religious philosophy is "WHY did this happen" and the answer usually involves some variant of "works in mysterious ways" or "we are not meant to know why." The problem is that these answers claim certain knowledge of what is essentially a non-answer. People ask "why" when the correct line of thought is "It is what it is. Now what do I have to do about it?" They are looking for reasons where there IS no reason, because "stuff happens."

In Zen you first ask the question "Is there a reason" - BUT you can accept the answer "NO" at which time you ask if there is anything to be done. It is possible for this answer to ALSO be "NO" in which case it is time to move on.

Saying "we aren't meant to know the reason" is poorly-hidden mysticism for "I don't know either." But because of the mysticism tradition, some folks just can't say that. Like Einstein vs. Oppenheimer, Al said "God doesn't play at dice" because quantum mechanics, Oppenheimer's field, would remove strict causality. For Oppenheimer's QM, there WAS no First Cause. Stuff just happens.

 

[JonXL]

Interesting stuff there. If understanding your explanation of Oppenheimer correctly, it's not really that causality is a property of space-time but that it's a property of how we interpret space-time.

So the question of First Cause isn't just irrelevant outside of (='before') space-time, but it's irrelevant simply outside of us.

 

[Jon]

The assumption is that causality is a required property of the Universe without exception. But there could be an exception, that is the birth of the Universe. Because we always find cause and effect within the Universe, that is not to say the same rules applied the instant the Universe was created, if indeed it was created rather than having always existed without a birth.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The problem, Jon, is that cause-and-effect is a MACRO-level phenomenon but a lot of the macro effects are due to MICRO-level issues. For instance, the infamous gas law, PV=nRT that interrelates pressure, volume, temperature, and the number of molecules (P, V, T and n). This can be derived from simple statistical math starting from the infamous (almost a joke at this point) "assume a spherical molecule." Since any one of Neon, Argon, or Krypton ARE in fact spherical molecules, they make good test cases. You start with spherical gas molecules that do not interact with each other. For the gases I mentioned, "spherical" works and "don't interact" works at normal temperatures. Then you assume random motion of the gas molecules following only Newton's Laws of Motion. (Move in a straight line until something interacts to change that.) You assume inelastic (i.e. non-deforming) collisions. Then it is a matter of some spherical trig and a consideration of what happens when you add heat to the plenum in which the gas happens to be.

Causality is NOT required in QM, only in classical mechanics. "Spontaneous pair production" is an example. Radioactive decay occurs according to a distribution, but there is no way to predict when a given atom will transition in whatever decay mode works for it so causality doesn't seem to have a strong link there, either.

For that matter, rolling dice in a gambling den is an example of a non-causal relationship. Money disappears if you bet on the wrong result, which is (hopefully, if it's an "honest" pair of dice) random. But the dice have nothing to do with the disappearance. It is your choice that makes the money disappear. Thought affects the physical universe how?

 

[Jon]

It is your choice that makes the money disappear.

Or the illusion of choice. Perhaps what you think is a choice was in fact preordained.

Do the physicists in fact say the Universe spontaneously came into being because out of nothing can come something? I think this is some quantum effect, where even in a vacuum, the definition of a vacuum is a little antiquated because it is not nothing, it only appears that way on first observation. There is all sorts of quantum mechanics stuff going on in there.

If cause and effect is a macro level phenomenon, and randomness is a micro level event, then the fact the macro level is built from the micro level means that the macro level is not indeed cause and effect, but probabilistic. Otherwise, the domino effect of randomness is randomness, regardless of which scale you look at.

However, we can conclude that since we know quantum mechanics is based on probabilities (e.g. there is a distribution curve of the likely location of the electron), we cannot therefore conclude that at a macro level things are cause and effect. In fact, we can only conclude that they are cause and effect with a high degree of predictability rather than certainty.

Imagine this...A cue ball on a pool table is going towards a number 8 ball. The direction of the impact will predetermine the direction the number 8 ball will move. However, at a micro level, by chance, once in a blue moon, all the electrons in that ball might shift slightly to the left, since their position is just based on probability and not certainty. It is possible this could happen, even if not probable. So, given that, the number 8 ball will be hit at from a different angle than expected. Therefore, at the macro level the cause and effect equation breaks down because of a freak positioning of the electrons. Thus, there is no real cause and effect, only probable cause and effect.

[Note, I don't actually know if it is the electrons that have a distribution curve of their location or if it is the other particles. I just think its probably the electrons, from memory.]

 

[The_Doc_Man]

So, given that, the number 8 ball will be hit at from a different angle than expected.

You have just accurately described what happens when I play 9-ball or 15-ball pool.

Darn those jumpy electrons!

 

[Jon]

You read fast Doc!