Could there have been a time when absolutely nothing existed?

@Northwest are you certain that no dimensions can exist outside of our universe? How can we be so sure about such a claim?

@sexyjigsaw If a tree fell in a forest, and no one witnessed it, did it fall?

@Northwest of course

That's tantamount to asking if before you existed to experience the world, did anything happen before you existed?

@sexyjigsaw

I don't see it as the same metaphor.

If a tree fell, and NO ONE witnessed it, it did not fall. It only exists in a paradox of quantum superposition.

However, the state of the world, as history knows it, DOES exist, because it is DOCUMENTED. No quantum superposition here.

;-)

@Northwest so before history was there to record, was there a world? 🤔

@sexyjigsaw
If by that you mean "before recorded history", then of course there are records. Billions and billions of records. This is what geologists, paleontologists, climate scientists, and countless other professions study and record.

Unless you believe the world was created in 6 days, and the 7th, he rested, as written in one religious book.

@Northwest I agree with you. I think it is important to discuss context clues like this using observation and reason, since this universe has an observed regularity about it. The one place we differ is why a tree needs to be recorded to have fallen or else it is a superposition but nothing is a superposition before recorded history, even though both are just simply not recorded. Can't we just review simple context clues like geologists and paleontologists like we do for a tree that falls in the forrest?

@sexyjigsaw
Dinosaurs existed, and we know that, thanks to fossil records. What I don't know, is if a particular dinosaur existed. So, no one will ever know if a specific tree falls in the forest.

@Northwest the whole is comprised of subsets. The smallest subset is a specific individual. Without any specific infividual as an example, how can we accept the whole at all. Basically saying, hos can we know that dinosaurs were real if we cannot believe in any specific dinosaur? Any specific dinosaur.

And I think you'd easily be able to tell


Did that tree fall or not? What indicators would lean you towards your answer?

Edit: oh, is it merely just a superposition or is there a definitive reality, considering the picture is real?

@sexyjigsaw Someone took a picture of the tree, therefore "I saw the tree fall" so it did fall.

@Northwest uhhh, I mean, we didn't see it fall but we see the tree 😅
Paleontologists and geologists would look at something like this and then infer it has fallen. That's why I believe that if nobody was there and a tree fell, we could tell. The contextual clues left behind

Do you agree with my approach? 👀

@sexyjigsaw
There is a record of a specific tree falling, therefore it has fallen.

Here's the part you're missing: A specific tree, not just any tree.