What Would an Infinite Cosmos Mean? | Episode 1107 | Closer To Truth 

man... this channel is like having a detox from all the garbage media we're bombarded with.

I always love Closer to Truth. One of the best and most accessible science and philosophy presentations around!

Closer to Truth: my gratitude is infinite. I’ve watched hours and hours of your episodes. I’ve read all of Sean’s books. Thank you, truly and deeply. This work is meaningful, wonderful and profound.

The idea of a never ending universe is more palatable to my mind than a finite one.

"I speak with Sean Carroll." Its already a classic in this universe😀

The sheer wonder and questions posed somehow grabbed me in ways no other program has. I've watched EVERY video on astronomy, and space and time (get the joke?). This guy's voice, style of interaction, content......I f*'ing love this. And no editing with clips never longer than 5 seconds that EVERY youtube uploader does in order to keep attention in a subliminal way. This is so amazing, thank you, and for the first time ever, I would donate to keep you producing!! Let us know when/where/how please sir, and keep up the great work!!

I am not sure if it is the interesting information, or just the sound of his voice. But I find myself very relaxed while listening.

CTTT is the show that doesn't just blast out the current accepted explanation promoting the scientist that is presently popular. Bob Kuhn has questions that we all want to ask but don't have access to the many learned people he has. Many of the shows required me to watch two or three times just to make sure I wasn't hearing things. That's because many postulated ideas are right out there on the most insightful leading edges. He's not confined to one mindset or topic having a wide variety of disciplines discussed. Thanks Robert!

4:55 Great answer This is what science is all about. Knowing or not knowing. Never guessing or wanting.

The music at 6:00 is absolutely beautiful ! Well done, brilliant productions. Thank You all

The camera and lighting on this series has gotten so much better!

The most interesting playground we will never fully explore. I’m bummed

Of all your episodes Robert, this may be to most profound. Especially for those of us who have a broad understanding of concepts, if not the math or an anything close to an Ed Witten intellect. This program is a conduit to a layperson, such as myself, to wade deeper into contemplation and across the biggest questions and subjects including most importantly, the Hard problem of our consciousness. Thank you Robert. You need to begin your own AMA! I'll gladly add a subscription.

The thought of something finite becoming infinite is a very difficult concept. The thought of the universe being infinite in time and space is equally as mind boggling.

I like option #4. Time and space are infinite - the universe has always existed and is infinitely large. Perhaps the Big Bang is just something that happened in our observable region of the universe.

I religiously watch / listen to your show, thank you for producing it… regardless of how depressing I find the intro music.

If I'm never going to reach the end of it, and I'm never going to live long enough to see it end, then to me it _is_ infinite and will remain forever.

So, there's a copy of Robert L Kuhn that doesn't wear turtlenecks?, unbelievable.

Just found and subbed. Very excellent Channel! I love the concept of Infinity. If I think about it hard enough, my brain feels like it's going to explode and I like that feeling.

Wow!! What a tremendous program. Very instructive, despite the implications of the difficult topics dealt in this lecture. These concepts of space- time and many others, are not easy to assimilate in normal minds. They are so complex to digest honestly. 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

An infinite cosmos means you are at its center. As well as everything else.

A discussion of infinity - and yet it's over after less than 30 mins! Mindboggling :)

I agree with Sean Carroll's position. That we just don't know yet and we prefer that space and time are infinite. Love CTT.

like the universe, my curiosity continues to grow with each episode. thank you

To my mind both an infinite cosmos and a finite cosmos are utterly incomprehensible. I think I'll have a beer.

In our universe Robert is still trying to get "closer to truth," but in the infinite cosmos many "Roberts" have found the truth.

The implications of infinity are simply unfathomable

i love this chanel, especially with a lack of mobility and on my sleepless nights

"What do I mean by mean?" This is such an interesting remark, and it highlights an idea. Is language a limiting factor in our scientific endeavor to understand the Cosmos? If we had a vocabulary of 100 words in the English language, we would be able to communicate, but it would be very limited. It would mean that we had only identified 100 things to put words to, and there are many more than 100 things in the Cosmos, let alone the need for words that aren't nouns, but are critical to language. We certainly wouldn't be able to do science with only a 100 words. If we had a 1,000 words in the English language, then the same would apply. We might not even yet have the word 'infinity', so how could we even conceptualize 'infinity'. There are an estimated 170,000 words in the English language, but who's to say that this is even enough. Do we, for example, have enough words to describe, and understand, all the different types of snow. Other languages have more, so maybe we don't. Robert later says... "Perhaps, the universe was always infinite, whatever that may mean, or perhaps the universe became infinite over time, but could something finite become infinite?". This again, 'might' suggest that our words are letting us down. We have a specific definition for the words 'finite' and 'infinite', but maybe the Cosmos doesn't abide by the lexical rules of our language, and for words that were coined long before we had truly come to understand the enormity of what we might one day need to apply them to, scientific exactness. Interestingly, a synonym for 'infinite', is 'cosmos', one definition being 'inconceivably vast'. Other related synonyms are 'impenetrable' and 'unfathomable'. These all highlight, not necessarily a limit in understanding, but rather that we simply don't have the correct words to conceptualize the nature of the universe. The words 'finite' and 'infinite' are simply not precise enough, not good enough, not scientific enough, to describe what it is that we are trying to understand. Just thoughts...

My head hurts. In a good way. I love this channel 😁

Infinite gratitude where it is due. Thank you for quite possibly the most intriguing infodoc I've ever seen.

Thanks for the documentaries!

Only Eternity can fully embrace Infinity.

My favorite episode so far!!

Each one was worse than the last, culminating in an absurd moral argument. The star of the show is Kuhn.. 1/ for asking intelligent questions to which he receives no intelligent answers; and 2/ for refraining from laughter. They tie themselves in knots with the terms 'infinity' and 'probability'. Carroll came closest to an honest answer... "We don't really know what we are doing". To which I would add... nor do they know what they are talking about.

This the best one yet..all my heroes!!! And the king of em all..sean carroll!!:)

To me the infinity makes the here and now and you more special then ever. If the universe is infinite, and there is an infinite number of me and you, and there is nothing you can do to change the total amount of goodness, then doesn't it make us, here and now the more special and important? This though just puts me right in my own shoes and helps me realize how important you are ❤️

Great episode!… But missed some big possibilities entirely. There was no discussion of Douglas Hofstadter’s, “ Strange Loop”. (The Morbius Strip, the Klein Bottle,… Godel’s theorem . No contemplation of Penrose’s , infinite regression and/or progression. What is now see from my human perspective and all of the incredible interactions the make my human life so unique and peculiar… Exist ONLY due to my unique perspective as a human entity in a limited time and space. However, the gut microbes in my GI tract are dealing with an entirely different realty. And of course, we can continue down all the way to the Plank Constant(Lol), but we can also imagine that vast structures of our observable are simply parts of a comprehensive structure taking place at an entirely different cosmological perspective. We see ourselves as part of the fundamental building blocks of reality. But we are only fundamental to the building block we perceive. And this includes in an infinite regression and infinite progression that can be perceived by the open eye of humans or the experiences of those entities experiencing those micro or macro perspectives . - [ ] A organism exists within our gastric fauna to execute a specific function. - [ ] I hold that every observable galaxy, planet, black hole, pulsar, supernova are all totally normal function is different aspects of reality not observable for our perspective .

Infinity is very large, especially towards the end

I really liked this episode! I’ve often thought about the connection between infinity and morality. If everything that CAN happen DOES happen, then there’s nothing you can do to prevent any evil. Let’s say you see someone about to kill someone else. Do you stop them? If you do, then there’s an alternative universe where you don’t. If you don’t, then there’s an alternative universe where you do. Your choice will never change any outcome; it will only change which universe it happens in.

Wow! We really are closer to truth... knowledge is power!!!

If a finite cosmos then you can always ask 'what's beyond that? And then, what's beyond that?' Positing an infinite cosmos takes care of that problem.

A fractal when viewed externally has a defined edge but from the inside it is infinite. We're on the inside.

Awesome! ✨

Infinity within infinities makes me happy. I love it ! Life is merely a dream within a dream. Reminds me of Poe.

Keep going and stay with us to memorize the endless hidden arts.....!!!

This video is inc... Really incredible.

The _vampire_ cosmologist at the begging of the documentary really knows his stuff.

Great Content

Way understated channel

Infinite possibilities!

Trying to understand eternity whether it's time or space is a fools errand. I believe there's an end to matter but no end to nothingness.

Compared to nowadays science, religion sounds rational and is a true haven for one's peace of mind LOL. Love the series.

i love this channel it’s a hit

This question to me was always infinitely more troubling than the question of why there is something rather than nothing, which has an anthropic interpretation.

Amazing vid. Left me with some thoughts/questions. Aguirre's infinity was the divisible infinity, something Caroll mentioned too, where you can divide and divide forever. So as Aguirre says if we look at it that way then this 'bubble' universe is already infinite. My question then: In my hand exists infinity. Is it safe for me to assume there are no copies of me in the infinite space inside my hand? I would say yes, as a copy of me would need to be my size at least, and therefore any copy (even if it did exist) would be disqualified from being my copy. We can then say there are different kinds of infinity, many of which do not contain all possibilities. Atoms would also need to rearrange themselves to be my copy, on the smallest of scales we would have no atoms to form copies. So we can indeed conceive of an infinity (space and even time) where just because we have an infinity does not mean every possibility could/SHOULD occur, there are indeed limitations. If this is the case then, how do we reconcile this with a universe infinite in an outward sense? I think the concept of a 'boundary' in time/space is a human notion. And as much as I hate the idea, I think that the Universe is indeed infinte, but as with the infinity of my hand - somehow, infinite spacetime does not necessarily have everything - everything in this case being exact copies of entitities/instances. I think that's more easily digestable than infinite copies of me, that sounds ridiculous, that's even before we deal with the 'measure problem'.

Many world's interpretation should have it's place in this topic.

im pissed that no one mentioned Roger Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmos Theory

It looks to me that when people start talking (philosophying) like this they are getting farther from the truth, not closer.

To see the world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite. William Blake.

Thanks Robert it’s mind boggling . It seems the big questions are unanswerable at least until we humans have complete unification and have the entire population asking the same question all at the same time . Solutions will appear and then work on the next big question

A definite meaning would be difficult to produce for an indefinite cosmos!

"I'M ALREADY...GETTING...DIZZAY"

Because of this channel, it's make me see and think outside of my bilieve

Love this channel when I'm high.

The perception of it being infinite in the universe but finite outside the universe blew me away but actually makes perfect sense

Here is my take on it as I contemplated the universe as a teenager. By its very nature space is infinite, because it is nothing. Nothing goes on forever. It can never end. If it does end at a wall, well that wall is encroaching in space. There will be nothing on the other side. Mater, by its very nature, is finite. It cannot exist without empty space to be in. Mater needs empty space, which is nothing so to speak, where it exists. There cannot be mater without space, or nothing. Mater needs space but nothing does not need mater. Space cannot be destroyed because it is nothing. It is also infinite. Nothing cannot be destroyed because there is nothing there to be destroyed. You can also call it ether or time as cosmologists have done. They have also speculated that ultimate power dwells in it. It is eternal and infinite. Cannot be destroyed. Has not been created. Can withdraw itself to create mater. Some have called nothing God. What do you think?

WOW! An infinite number of everything! I like it.

Perhaps Socrates, was correct, when he humbly admitted; ' I only know, that I don't know'.

Very interesting

An infinite universe. It sure puts things in perspective.

I was enthralled

Another simpler way to deal with infinity, is to say that you do have a beginning, which would be 1 reference point but have never reached the other reference point, which would be the end. Infinity refers to an incomplete process, but by no means, means there isn't an end. Infinity simply cannot exist. If anything has a beginning, it must have an end, or the beginning itself doesn't exist. One cannot exist without the other. Likewise if something has an end, it has to have a beginning, or else the end by itself makes no sense at all, and that's simply because both of them define each other and makes it possible that they exist. Something viewed as infinite really means that the beginning is the end, and the end is the beginning, which is a situation that cannot exist, or if it did nothing would exist. The same thing applies to eternity. Also numbers. When they say there cannot exist a largest number simply from fact that if you add 1 to it, it no longer is the largest number, means that there is no infinitely large number and one cannot exist is because at the very minimum, the only largest number that exists is the number 1. Every other number is a multiple of 1,and as long as 1 exists, no other number can be larger than it is, since it is itself repeated over and over

Thanks for so many great interviews. You ponder the questions many of us have. It's disturbing to think slightly different versions of ourselves might commit atrocities. To be known that way isn't good. Oh, to be "God" for a day. To know. But maybe all-knowing grows old. No more surprises? No more newness. Could this be the Bane of existence? When there's nothing new under the sun... existence fades away.

Time doesn't physically exist. We are not sure if it's passing. We have just assumed it to be moving forward, maybe it's moving backwards and the big bang was actually a big crunch. I think our existence and the universe's reason is the field I would love to work upon. *ITS AMAZING* 😵😵

Finite or infinite, both are equally impossible to imagine.

I love Sean.

last guy was like a weird science willy wonka XD

It’s interesting to me that unbiased science is the obvious sub-message here and that our own preferences should be (no matter how rational we think they are or otherwise) put aside for the truth that science is supposed to give us. If only mainstream scientists would do this more often. I’ve seen a great deal of evidence for the propagation of many things outside, or just outside the mainstream scientific view that are immediately rejected with great prejudice. Not because of conflicting theories, or evidence for the counter, but just because “it just can’t be true”. Is a scientist not supposed to be an explorer? Daring to question and explore all possibilities. I appreciate this channel because it does just that, and though some bias is implied, it’s never taken as more important than the truth it journeys to uncover!

By definition, if there is no finality, there can be no beginning

Between now and one second from now, there is an infinite set of instants. If you consider a tiny portion of that second, you can always divide it in half, and that will never end. It's infinite but... it's already gone. We can't perceive infinity adequately, it doesn't make sense in our minds, but it's there nonetheless. And if infinity exists, the universe doesn't need a beginning. Its existence can go back to infinity.

Finite is simply a definition of confinement

The whole cosmos is bounded by space, time and causation. So, it is infinite in time but finite in space-time like waves of an ocean. As long as we have physical body and mind we can never perceive which is beyond space, time and causation. The absolute truth is beyond any type of dimension or dimensions but supporter of everything. It is really miracle.

Numbers provide the perfect example. No matter the number, it can increase

This maybe the best concept of infinity Ive heard (also it Independently coincides with what I believe although stated much better). 8:34

Very interesting topic and waaaaaaayy too short a discussion!! Or...the complete interviews are only available through a subscription, eh??

I enjoyed the conversation between Kuhn and Rees - especially when the latter said "whatever our preferences are we should accept that we just don't know" .... "remember that our preferences count for nothing and we must accept the universe as it is" - I became concerned when Kuhn was interviewing Aguirre and the latter said "you will agree" (why ? - this cannot be matter of fact) and "but its true" (when there is no evidence to support what he speaks about)

The Stuff-Side is Infinite, the Life-Side is Eternal, the Beings is Eternity.

Personally, I believe that infinity does not exist in nature. That's because infinity is a syntactical concept, which we humans give semantics to and project onto the universe we see. In other words I believe infinity is a pitfall of our language-based form of intelligence: infinity does not truly exist, it is actually the recursive application of a generalized pattern. Our minds are well trained at detecting patterns by means of two operations we constantly perform: generalization and unification. Without delving into the details, the two are strongly connected and accurately trained in our brains due to the heavy use of language by our species. We therefore learn to generalize even the process of generalization, which leads to recursion: recursion is the indefinite re-application of a generalized pattern. When we observe something, we are capable of imagining an arbitrary amount of repetitions without actually counting or imagining all of them. We just suspend the iteration of the pattern and treat it as an entity on its own, at an intuitive level. Think at natural numbers: they are infinite. Why? Not because anyone ever proved that by counting them all or by writing them all down somewhere, but because we know the recursive mechanism for producing the successor of any number, starting from zero. Numbers are syntactical entities, like everything our mind manipulates and thinks. The symbol of infinite in mathematics (the rotated 8) is just a fancy lexeme for expressing any entity we could syntactically produce by applying the successor an indefinite amount of times, starting from zero. We basically gave a name to a process, not a thing. The notion of nothing is purely linguistic too: it is just defined as the inverted semantics of something. The inversion of semantics is a language mechanism, it does not have a counterpart in the world. Our mistake, in my opinion, is that we project these language constructs into reality, thinking that the universe must somehow correspond to them, though that's not the case. In my opinion the universe is finite, matter is finite, spacetime is finite, bacause it had a start and it is made of something, pixels of spacetime that we call planck units, and there cannot be an infinite amount of them. Even if there are extra dimensions that would be finite anyway. Because infinity, in my opinion, is just a mechanism of our brain for handling the concept of an indefinitely repeatable pattern, that's not a real thing.

Mr.Kuhn standing by a giant telescope: "I want to know now how to deep dive into reality of space and time". He goes into some hotel, full of weird people drinking wine and talking about stuff.

After you put so many zeros before or after the decimal point, my puny human brain can't handle it.

What would it mean to me? in the time I have left it means absolutely nothing, the universe ends for us when we die,..unless reincarnation is true, otherwise it really doesn't matter if it's infinite or not.. .

A big part of the challenge is that we cannot comprehend infinite or final (end)

Wowwww 11:16 I love you Rob !

Closer to Truth is the true spiritual successor to Cosmos by Carl Sagan

The final words... And how he put the question... "am I any.. Closer to the truth"

Not only will we never know the nature of existence or infinity but we CAN'T know it. But that doesnt mean we shouldn't be looking for it. I mean most people will stop looking and just live their lives. But scientists and philosophers can't help but look. That's what makes them scientists and philosophers.

Regarding the segment at the end about morals; you can have different sizes of infinities. So if we start with 50/50 on good/bad choices morally, but progress to 60/40, that would be a bigger infinity for good. The goal would be to keep progressing and creating a bigger difference in the ratios.

The sheer apparent size of our environment to me I can ssume that everything is possible and therefore imaginatively present

7:44 “The way it works in some sense is that suppose I take some nugget of stuff and it starts growing and I let it grow for an infinite amount of time; OK. Then you’ll agree that this thing has grown into something with infinite space-time volume." Sure, I’ll agree to that. However when will that actually happen? Answer: never.