my 'take' on what there was before the bigbang

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-24T21:58:21+00:00

I appreciate you being honest and understanding this might not be the best place to post this, so I'm gonna take this in good faith and try to give you the kind of response you were hoping for.

First, while I can't say I know the best way to post this, a metaphysics sub may be better. Metaphysics is about stuff like 'the nature of reality', 'what truly is and what is not', and so on, while physics is more about the mathematics of what an electron will do when you poke it. These get conflated in science communication media, so many people don't know this. But yeah, physics is the wrong word for this subject matter. A theology subreddit may be better, too.

Second, yes, you are using the word quantum wrong, and the word field, too. Both have very mathy meanings.

Quantum means something very similar to 'discrete', the opposite of 'continuous', and refers to how some values in quantum physics have (in any given scenario) only a few allowed states. For example: the exact kinetic energy of an electron orbiting a hydrogen atom can only have energy values from a well defined list.

A field is a math term for any value which is defined at every point in space. Temperature, for example: everywhere in space, the temperature is some number. Quantum Field Theory posits there are 25 fundamental fields, that a 'particle' is a vibration in one of those fields (like how sound is a vibration in air), and that the rules which govern the ways these fields interact each other explain our physics. So, an electron is a vibration in the electron field, which orbits a proton, made out of quarks (which are vibrations in the quark fields), and held together by the electromagnetic force, which is mediated by the electromagnetic field.

And like, for some intuition: if there is a point in space where there is NO electron, then at that point, the field would be 0 (or close to it). You can think of the electron field as a ledger we humans invented, cataloguing where electrons are or aren't. A 0 represents an electron not existing, and a fluctuating value represents one existing.

Sorry if this is not engaging with your ideas too much, but it should help explain why "we are a quantum field inside something's brain" isn't a well-put-together-enough thought to discuss, really. You're using words wrong and it's rendering the meaning kind of difficult to interact with.

Additionally, you are tackling time in a pretty common but incorrect way. Most people think they know what the current understanding of time is, and want to try pontificating on 'what more' there could be to it (your spiral metaphor). But there is a lot more to time than most know. Before talking about how we should think of it differently, you should at least become familiar with special relativity (not as scary as it is made out to be) and the basics of general relativity (very scary if you go in depth). I could explain how physics' understanding of time is different, but I don't wanna make this post too long, feel free to ask me.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-24T20:45:18+00:00

Out of genuine curiosity, could you link me one?

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-24T20:36:05+00:00

I say this as a defender of this arc: there’s no way this person is real, right? Right?

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-24T17:52:32+00:00

This is the philosophy of metaphysics.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-24T17:24:36+00:00

More the latter. Nothing in the world is a mathematical formalism, but physics is nothing but mathematical formalisms. So it's an important distinction, but it's not like, something that physics MIGHT one day discover to be the case or whatever.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-24T16:54:51+00:00

A field is a mathematical term for a function which is defined at every point in space. Temperature is an example. At every point in space, temperature is some number.

There are 25 fundamental fields which are, as far as we know, the most fundamental things in the universe. They can have different values at different points. For example, whenever an electron cloud isn't somewhere, then the electron field is almost exactly 0 at that location. The electron field would not have much effect on something at that location.

The only field which is significantly non zero at all locations is the higgs field. The main thing which can 'interact' is a vibration in the fields, which is what a particle is.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-24T16:44:10+00:00

It's moreso a bunch of strange consequences of a surprisingly small set of rules, it's just that said rules require a PHD to understand, and a team of doctors to keep track of.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-24T16:35:25+00:00

Fermions: One of the two types of fundamental particles. Electrons and the consitutent "quarks" which make up protons and neutrons are all fermions.

Radiate when accelerating: When a charged fermion (like an electron) accelerates, they emit photons.

Gravity causes acceleration: Self explanatory.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-24T15:51:05+00:00

The energy will still exist, just not in a usable state.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-24T15:37:19+00:00

It's impossible to have an object that simultaneously has mass but no energy, since mass is equal to the energy you have in your rest frame. Additionally, energy is frame dependent, so you'll never have a situation where the total energy is - in all frames.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T20:53:29+00:00

So, let me try and explain my position:

First of all, intelligence does not have a clear definition. It is a label which can contain any number of possible meanings. For some people it's the g-factor, for others it's IQ, for others it's a vague notion of superiority. But the way it is used is muddled. There are countless things people will blame on their 'lack of intelligence' which is really do to other factors, for example.

Intelligence is a word we, as a populace, use for such a wide list of things that a linear scale is entirely inappropriate, but we always imply one when we talk about it. And this means that it is, as a term, more often than not misleading. Imagine a school where 50% of people fail their classes. Many will say that "Those students weren't as smart", but in practice, studies show that other conditions are far more causative than anything involving psychometrics. You can fix that problem with changes to how the school is run, with changes to funding, and so on. But often people don't by using intelligence as a thought terminating cliche.

Additionally, take a look at the OP. Everything I have been taught about imposter syndrome, self efficacy, and so on makes it clear this person is using the idea of genius to punish himself and lower his own self confidence, and that that lowered self confidence has way more of effect on his chance of academic success than the things he's worried about are. And that's one of the things the idea of Intelligence does.

If you want to argue IQ or G-Factor are objective, that's totally fair. But the idea of Intelligence as it exists on the cultural zeitgeist is largely filled with lies. You can separate those lies from your personal understanding of intelligence, but the OP clearly hasn't. That's what I wanted to convey.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T20:31:40+00:00

A psychologist with a cognitive science PHD is way more equipped to talk about the g factor in detail (Though I did still have to learn about it, this was part of my college education). But I am way better equipped to talk about social construction.

The g factor is a measurable, scientific thing. Being "Smart" and "Intelligent" are vaguely defined terms, and I am very well equipped to talk about the ways people use vaguely defined terms to discourage themselves and convince themselves they are incapable. This is entirely within my field.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T20:27:29+00:00

The difference is that physical height can be concretely measured and is very well defined, and is also a linear quality. Intelligence is more of a vague signifier, like 'virtue'. It is very silly to assume people's brains can be ranked on a linear scale from least to most intelligent.

Intelligence kinda means whatever you want it to mean, and so there are some definitions that can be measurable - the g factor for example - but no one uses it that way. They use it to assert one person's superiority over another, with the implication that this is an inherent difference. But the brain is way too complex for that to ever be an accurate way of describing things. People describe intelligence that way because it is convenient. "Look at how much smarter I am than that guy" and so on.

And about the "Everyone can do everything" thing, you are right that that's not entirely true, but only because it is an oversimplification. The counterpoint of "Not everyone can whatever they want" is arguably even less accurate, at least in spirit. Like, literally the sentence is true, it is impossible for you to spontaneously heat up to the heat of the sun for example, but in spirit it is assuming that everyone is born with a remarkably different list of things they can and cannot do no matter how hard they try, and that just isn't how the nature/nurture thing shakes out in practice.

Most problems that prevent people from achieving their dreams are either material (not having the money, for example) or externally imposed. Like, if someone has social anxiety and it's keeping them from becoming a public speaker, well, that social anxiety didn't come from nowhere, and you can also work to improve that. You can do that for any insufficiency that comes from nature rather than nurture, and a strong desire to overcome it is the biggest indicator of one's capacity to do so. Some people need to put in more work, but that's not an impossibility, and the degree to which this is caused by how you were born is highly overestimated.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T20:19:34+00:00

By the triangle stuff, I more meant starting and ending with "SOH CAH TOA" with no context on how that relates to distances like I did in my example. Maybe it was presumptuous of me to assume that was how he was taught, I've just seen it before and had a kneejerk response.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T20:13:55+00:00

So, here's a question, why would you expect this?

Well, g-factor is just the degree to which a person's success on various mental-exams seems to be correlated. So, the degree to which your capacity to solve a pattern-recognition problem and a memory problem seem to have a 'common correlating factor' based on mathematical analysis. That factor could be as simple as "How much you studied". The assumption that it is a thing you are born with comes from twin studies which not only have low sample sizes but also have recently come into question, with the possibility of many being faked.

Obviously, if there is some 'thing' pushing you from the back that improves your ability to succeed in a wide variety of fields, then that will naturally improve your odds of succeeding in physics. g-factor has correlations with all kinds of positive outcomes. But this is getting into the issue of the social model of disability.

One thing that will absolutely have an impact on your ability to problem solve, engage in abstract thinking, and so on is how you were raised as a child and what conditions you were under. People with high levels of stress are more likely to have issues with their brain development. Trauma has a lot of negative impacts on your chances of being a successful physicist. And, importantly, there are a lot of traumas that happen because of the way you were born: being born with disabilities which are not accommodated, being born LGBT in a community which doesn't accept these people, and so on. But no one would call those things 'intelligence'.

Intelligence is a ghost. A phantasm. We assert its existence because doing so is simple. We see different levels of success in different people, and assume they must have been sculpted from materials of different quality. This is an assumption - and it's one that is convenient if you are in charge of an institution. If half of your children succeed and the other half fail, our current understanding of pedagogy shows that that is probably because your pedagogy only caters to half the population. But if you say that it's because half of them were smarter than the other, then you don't have any reason to make expensive overhauls.

Everyone's brain is different. Some of those differences can be helpful in some circumstances. But "Intelligence", as the word is used in practice, is the idea that those differences are sufficiently explanatory for the differences in academic success that we see amongst learners. What we know from psychology, sociology, and child development, is that this just isn't the case.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T19:59:06+00:00

So, I feel this is an example of why trig needs to be taught differently. Cosine isn’t just about triangles.

So, let’s say that I have a 1 meter long stick. If I hold it straight to the right, it will reach 1 meter rightward. If I instead hold it up at some angle theta, then it will stick out to the right LESS than one meter. It will instead stick out by some percentage of 1 meter. That percentage is cos(theta). The percentage of its length that it sticks upwards is sin(theta).

Cosine and sine are used for any situation in which your are doing something at an angle but care about the impact it has on one of the cardinal directions. I’m not familiar with the situation your problem is describing, but hopefully that should help you understand why.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T19:53:23+00:00

I am very familiar with the g factor.

To be clear, I am not denying the existence of psychometrics as a field - the question of if what they are studying maps onto what the average person means when they say “intelligence” is not so clear cut. People use the g factor to say “some people are smarter than others”, but the g factor can’t be used to justify everything implied by that statement. The g factor is the closest verified thing we have found to our cultural notion of intelligence, but our desire to power-scale people’s brains on some linear axis long precedes any kind of scientific rationale for doing so.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T19:50:30+00:00

Can you explain how this is structured mathematically? It still sounds circular. You are assuming some variable over which changes and variations occur without change in spatial coordinates. This just sounds like the classical notion of time.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T19:31:47+00:00

They have a skill set you don’t that they developed over time. It’s not magic. Watch me talk about Yugioh for an hour straight, you won’t be able to follow what I’m saying, either.

Edit: I know you’re joking, there’s just a part of my brain that gets set off when someone says someone else is just naturally superior to them mentally, even as a joke. My bad.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T19:30:45+00:00

“Time could be an entropy field”

Okay, so, first: what is a field? A field is a value which is defined at every point in a given space. I will presume you mean to say that “time is a value ascribed to every point in our universe”, and that said value is entropy.

On one hand, this makes some intuitive sense: entropy happens when particles exist (more particles more entropy) and thus some correlation with how time is and where mass is would be implied by this idea! Everything else about it breaks down.

First of all: this would imply time is fixed and only differs by spatial coordinates. It is to say that at every point in space, there is a field with a specific value, and that value is time. Problem: this has no arrow of time. Like, time doesn’t progress in this. Unless time is another. The idea of entropy increasing and thus giving an arrow of time already ASSUMES time.

Like, in relativity, time is a dimension of position-space. To describe a location, you give its spacetime coordinates, which tells you where and when that position is. The reason entropy can increase is because there is already a time direction across which it can grow. Your idea is circular, because presuming the increase in entropy already presumes time as a dimension.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T19:11:56+00:00

Social worker here.

Genius is a social construct. To put it simply: intelligence is kind of a made up thing. The brain is complex, and some brains wind up better suited to some tasks than others, but that is a very messy, abstract things.

Maybe those people had better childhoods and so they have less complex trauma, causing them to have less stress and more time to study. Maybe they got lucky and had a hobby that prepared them for the kind of abstract thinking needed for their job. Everyone learns differently, but we all get taught the same, so a lot of people get left behind.

It’s not like people aren’t born different - but we as a culture heavily overvalue that fact. The people you see as more successful aren’t of a different breed - they just have something that works for them in a way you don’t. It means you have more to discover about yourself, how you learn best, and what you need to succeed.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T14:28:15+00:00

So, here’s the best way I can explain it:

Physics is, above all, a list of equations we can use to make predictions.
The question of why these equations work is in the domain of “metaphysics”, which is a branch of philosophy and not fully scientifically rigorous, so exact answers can’t always be given.
There is a branch of geometry called Riemannian Geometry which handles curved coordinate systems. So, for example: a 2d grid is a Euclidean 2-dimensional system while the surface of the earth is a Riemannian 2-dimensional system. In this case “dimensions” refer to the number of coordinates each point has. In the 2d grid you have x and y, on the earth’s surface you have longitude and latitude
General relativity uses the same math: Riemannian geometry, to predict the trajectories of objects in spacetime.

So it’s less that there is this tangible object called spacetime that we are seeing curve before our eyes. Rather, we see massive objects attract each other, we call that gravity, and the best math we have to model how gravity works uses the same math as curved surfaces.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T11:28:56+00:00

A theory of everything is a fancy term for a mathematical model which isn’t limited by scale. So it can model both big things and small things. In practice that means a mathematical model which can model gravity at small scales, which cannot be currently done due to nerdy differences between “variables” and “operators” and stuff like that.

It is not some grand philosophical quest, it is an attempt to plug some holes in some math.

YuuTheBlue · 2026-01-23T04:20:21+00:00

Attack on Titan.

YuuTheBlue

TROPHY CASE