Everything is free

DanielP

Everybody, what if everything is free? Meaning by that, there are no absolute rules, limits, or boundaries for anything. Even objective scientific laws are free, meaning they do not hold everywhere at all times (good evidence for this in the universe with laws like gravity not applying in different galaxies, requiring mathematical plugs such as dark matter and dark energy to work). Just as us humans think we have a unique component called free will, free will likewise is an attribute of everything around us, allowing different life to flourish, different matter to exist.

Logic and truth likewise are free. The basic premises or logic can be freely agreed upon or freely disagreed upon, leading to the different logic on display everywhere. This would explain the cropping up of "alternative truths" everywhere around us. There always has been "alternative truths" because truth is free. Truth changes depending on the situation, perspective, etc. Truth in a way has a mind of its own, it can freely evolve.

Another amazing implication of everything being free is that everything becomes one - not a closed, finite one - but an alive, organic, infinite, open one. Everything being free means everything sooner or later interacts with and crosses boundaries with everything else, causing everything to be this vast, complex, free one.

I posited this question months ago more along the lines of, what if our world is infinite? Similar concept, but this time a free world seems like a bigger concept than an infinite world.

Anyways, what do you guys think about everything being free?

Nils Loc

Anyways, what do you guys think about everything being free? — DanielP

It's scary as f.

All the free worlds are amorphous goop domains. I am one with the goop but am still afraid of dying and embarrassing myself.

Death's goop door beckons but I'm not ready to walk through it yet.

P.S. You can't have my pizza slices even though you are one with them.

Outlander

I see you have no physical disabilities then and take mobility for granted. Arguably there is little that can be done to instill to you it's value.

apokrisis

Another amazing implication of everything being free is that everything becomes one - not a closed, finite one - but an alive, organic, infinite, open one. Everything being free means everything sooner or later interacts with and crosses boundaries with everything else, causing everything to be this vast, complex, free one. — DanielP

Think it through. If everything is free to happen in one way, it is also free to happen in the other. And the outcome is that you have two freedoms that cancel each other out.

So "freedom" must be asymmetric. If everything can be the case, then everything is symmetric and self-cancels to zero. You actually wind up with nothing.

Pfhorrest

(from Existentialism at the Beach)

Outlander

↪Pfhorrest

Great. Until you get drunk and take your dog skateboarding while flying a kite playing loud music and get hit by an ambulance you couldn't hear and now not only you but everyone inside the ambulance dies. lol

unenlightened

Everything can happen, but on average, what does happen is pretty average, most of the time.

A Seagull

what if everything is free? Meaning by that, there are no absolute rules, limits, or boundaries for anything. — DanielP

The world is free. There are no absolute rules.

Pfhorrest

There are no absolute rules — A Seagull

Not even that one?

GTTRPNK

↪Pfhorrest

I would argue that is an observation and not a rule. There isn't anyenforceable factor at play.

Pfhorrest

I would argue that is an observation and not a rule. There isn't anyenforceable factor at play. — GTTRPNK

There are descriptive as well as prescriptive rules, such as the laws of nature.

DanielP

↪Pfhorrest

Arguably the only absolute rule being, there are no absolute rules.

such as the laws of nature. — Pfhorrest

Laws of nature - or observations? What laws of nature have stood up across all time and space fully? Why are we continuously writing and rewriting laws of nature?

DanielP

↪apokrisis

If everything is free to happen in one way, it is also free to happen in the other. — apokrisis

If freedom were merely binary, then it would cancel itself out, yes. But what if freedom had no limits, was far more than binary? Would it still cancel out?

DanielP

↪Outlander

THere are some things I would like to learn - like backflipping and front flipping without landing on my head and paralyzing myself - but beyond that, pretty mobile. And yes would like to fly, but can't do that. But it's not about my freedom, it's about the freedom of everything - that allows for all things.

A Seagull

↪Pfhorrest

That is not a rule.

A Seagull

Laws of nature - or observations? What laws of nature have stood up across all time and space fully? Why are we continuously writing and rewriting laws of nature? — DanielP

Yes, the so called 'laws of nature' are man-made descriptions of nature.

A Seagull

THere are some things I would like to learn - like backflipping and front flipping without landing on my head and paralyzing myself - but beyond that, pretty mobile. And yes would like to fly, but can't do that. But it's not about my freedom, it's about the freedom of everything - that allows for all things. — DanielP

But you are free to try, if you dare.

apokrisis

If freedom were merely binary, then it would cancel itself out, yes. But what if freedom had no limits, was far more than binary? Would it still cancel out? — DanielP

That is rather the point. Freedom without limits has too much symmetry. Once you make everything equally possible, then its own negation is just as possible and you wind up with nothing. Your freedom self-cancels in binary fashion.

So there has to be some asymmetry built into this business of freedom somewhere. There in fact has to be some limitation in play to have freedoms that are defined in terms of the "everything else" that is the forbidden. To have a figure, you need also the ground.

This is a deep issue for current fundamental physics. A naive quantum calculation of what should exist tells us either nothing (as all quantum possibilities add up to self-cancel), or instead an equally unhelpful infinity (if every quantum possibility instead just sums and results in an "ultraviolet catastrophe).

The world we observe is the result of critical freedoms in fact cancelling to just about zero, and yet not quite. There is just enough asymmetry in the underlying symmetries of quantum spin, for example, to mean that a tiny bit of matter avoids being annihilated by all the anti-matter also produced during the Big Bang. The CP violation phenomenon.

So what I'm saying is that your OP ain't silly. It is an issue that is central to an understanding of fundamental physics.

Possibility

↪apokrisis

What if this asymmetry is only assumed, rather than ‘built in’? If equal quantities of matter and anti-matter are produced, it only takes an initial entanglement between matter and matter (manifest as quantum spin), as opposed to matter interacting with anti-matter and cancelling out, to tip a ‘localised’ balance of potentiality towards matter.

apokrisis

↪Possibility

It has to be the case that the matter~antimatter symmetry couldn’t actually cancel away, and so some latent asymmetry exists. This has been confirmed by a number of examples - under the banner of the quest to solve CP violation - and there are theories about uncovering more.

So understanding the question is a live one and has started to be solved. It has to do with the way that nature in fact has to break down multiple possible such symmetries, and then different breaking processes get snarled up in each other in ways that introduce asymmetries.

The famous case is how Higgs symmetry breaking creates an asymmetric breaking of the electroweak SU2 symmetry. Three of the bosons gain too much mass and become the weak force. The photon is left to emerge as the massless boson underwriting electromagnetism.

So everything might be trying to cancel to zero and then one process hangs up another process. You get the world we see as the outcome.

At least in the short run. In the long run, the Heat Death says all the crud matter left floating around will get swept up into black holes and evaporated away as the simplest possible matterless particles - a quantum sizzle of photons.

So matter will join anti-matter via a further natural process - black hole evaporation. The end will be an arrival at maximal nothingness. The blackness of a completely generalised 0 degree K thermal cosmic “glow”.

Janus

Not even that one? — Pfhorrest

It's not a rule, but an absolute absence of rules. :wink:

opt-ae

The singularity "Black Hole", consumes stars, potentially the most crucial phenomenon to all existences of our simulation; he/she who is capable, of anything, can do anything.

In context, yes, everything is 'free', but I ask "what is everything"?

We don't have unlimited funds and the simulation is not a shopping centre; it's different kind of 'free'.

Congau

↪DanielP

To say that something is free is not quite the same as saying it has no rules and boundaries. To be free is to be able to move according to one’s inclinations without any external impediment. If there were no laws and no limits, everything would be arbitrary, and there would be no way of predicting what anything could lead to. In that case, any choice and any action would be meaningless, and there would be no freedom at all.

A person is free if he is able to do exactly what he wants, but that requires rules so that it is known that what is done actually happens. If I want to raise my right arm, the laws of nature, neural system and gravity, must be in place. If everything were arbitrary the outcome of my simple action could be just anything, I would have no control and thus lack any freedom.

A thing is free if it can continue on its path and develop according to its own system as opposed to being manipulated by outside forces. But without rules there would be no system and the thing would not have a particular path that would be its own, and consequently it wouldn’t make sense to call it free.

Banno

And yet, when the kettle is put on the fire, the water boils.

TheMadFool

Everybody, what if everything is free? — DanielP

There seems to be a very positive view of freedom, born perhaps from how much we had to struggle for it - oppression seems to have been the normal state of affairs for much of human history.

The struggle for freedom is something many can relate to; even young people who've never experienced slavery or oppressions of other kinds get it. Freedom is important.

However, if one digs a bit deeper you'll begin to notice something odd. The struggle wasn't/isn't about an absence of freedom; rather it's a struggle against an overabundant presence of freedom. The quintessential oppressor(s) is one whose freedom is absolute and unbridled and it is against his/her/their freedom to do whatever they like that people rise up against.

DanielP

↪A Seagull

The freedom of a paralyzed person is real. I have wanted to sit in a chair or bed for 24 hours a day and watch news, just to get paralyzed with fear and blow up with anxiety. Free to feel anxious I suppose. But then again.

Freedom without limits has too much symmetry. — apokrisis

Good response. It is interesting trying to explain the missing anti-matter. Maybe it's tucked away somewhere we can't detect yet. I mean, have we truly explored the whole cosmos yet?

Here's a question though about freedom having too much symmetry. Absolute freedom would have a dynamic symmetry. Think about it, just as soon as a system gets balanced out, a new area pops out freely. And despite all attempts at achieving perfect, static symmetry, absolute freedom would prevail and push out in a new direction. So our ground would always be shifting in an absolutely free world. This could also explain the missing anti-matter.

DanielP

The struggle for freedom is something many can relate to; even young people who've never experienced slavery or oppressions of other kinds get it. — TheMadFool

I view freedom as being an absolute characteristic of the world. Everything is absolute free, just as I am absolutely free. I don't struggle to be free. I know I am absolutely free because I am part of an absolutely free world.

The quintessential oppressor(s) is one whose freedom is absolute and unbridled and it is against his/her/their freedom to do whatever they like that people rise up against. — TheMadFool

That's a good analysis of oppressors, usually they are acting more freely and trying to suppress other's freedoms. But ultimately, everything is absolutely free. We are even free to take to the freedoms away from other people, although all attempts would ultimately fail.

DanielP

In context, yes, everything is 'free', but I ask "what is everything"? — opt-ae

Perhaps everything is absolute freedom, absolute potentiality and fulfillment of that potential. Take freedom to the max, no limits, no holds.

apokrisis

Here's a question though about freedom having too much symmetry. Absolute freedom would have a dynamic symmetry. Think about it, just as soon as a system gets balanced out, a new area pops out freely. And despite all attempts at achieving perfect, static symmetry, absolute freedom would prevail and push out in a new direction. — DanielP

It is indeed possible that our current vacuum state is a false vacuum.

So everything may have hit a generalised balance and yet some fluctuation - a local disturbance arising by chance - may indeed kick everything down to some new level of balance that is even more fundamental.

There are other arguments for believing our current vacuum is fundamental. But physics certainly takes this kind of possibility into account.

The simple reason for vacuum stability is that a disruptive fluctuation would require some local energy density. And the colder and emptier spacetime gets, the less there is to drive any flukey local accident, even if we want to hang it on a quantum field fluctuation of some kind.

Everything is free

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