# Do you comprehend Infinity/Nothingness \[started by a SOCK\] **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 2, 2021, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784 "2021-10-02T17:22:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Icantdance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ce73a5/32.png) [@Icantdance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icantdance)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/21 "2021-10-02T22:54:13Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Take a piece of paper; fold it into a paper plane. Where did the plane come from? > Unfold it and iron it flat. Where did the plane go? It is a piece of paper. The human concept of a paper airplane doesn’t negate that paper exist. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/22 "2021-10-02T23:00:23Z")
That’s not an answer to the question I asked. There was a plane, now there is no plane. Where is the plane? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/23 "2021-10-02T23:05:22Z")
There’s a difference between using words to define something, “you get into a spaceship and keep going forever”, and actually conceptualising it. First of all, I only really need to imagine a _big_ universe to be able to visualise it never ending no matter how far I go. That’s because I can’t really conceptualise keeping on going _forever_, I can only conceptualise going for a long time. > [@Icantdance](#): > > How do conceptualize the “nothing” the universe is expanding into? It doesn’t expand into anything. ---
**Author:** ![Icantdance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ce73a5/32.png) [@Icantdance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icantdance)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/24 "2021-10-02T23:07:57Z")
The plane only exists in our human conception of what a plane is. And I would argue that a folded up piece of paper that floats in the air for a few seconds is not a plane. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/25 "2021-10-02T23:08:03Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > It doesn’t expand into anything. It also doesn’t expand into _nothing_ - it just… expands. ---
**Author:** ![Icantdance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ce73a5/32.png) [@Icantdance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icantdance)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/26 "2021-10-02T23:09:24Z")
How do you comprehend the nothing it expands into? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/27 "2021-10-02T23:10:15Z")
> [@Icantdance](#): > > The plane only exists in our human conception of what a plane is. > > And I would argue that a folded up piece of paper that floats in the air for a few seconds is not a plane. You’re just evading the question; the plane is real - it’s a plane - but it’s a temporary configuration of the paper. (if you must, then substitute it with a real jet plane made of metal - where does it go when it is scrapped and melted down?) Just like you and I are a temporary configuration of matter; when the paper is unfolded flat, the plane doesn’t _go somewhere_ - it is _unmade_. When we die, we are unmade. It doesn’t ‘go black’ - it doesn’t _go anything_ ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/28 "2021-10-02T23:10:26Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > > [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > > > It doesn’t expand into anything. > > It also doesn’t expand into _nothing_ - it just… expands. Yes, so saying “there is nothing” outside of the universe can be misleading, because many people tend to think of “nothing” as emptiness waiting to be filled up with “something”, but it is not. There is no “outside of the universe”, at least in models where there is a single universe. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/29 "2021-10-02T23:12:28Z")
> [@Icantdance](#): > > How do you comprehend the nothing it expands into? Asking the same question over and over again **[after it’s already been answered](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness/951784/20)** is considered poor form on this board. There are even names for that tactic. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/30 "2021-10-02T23:14:16Z")
There isn’t a “nothing it expands into”. It’s ok, it’s outside of human experience so anyone will struggle to truely conceptualise it seeing as there isn’t anything to conceptualise. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/31 "2021-10-02T23:15:06Z")
To be fair, it’s a hard concept to come to grips with. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/32 "2021-10-02T23:17:02Z")
True - these are some of those classic non-intuitive philosophical things that have been discussed and argued about forever. ---
**Author:** ![Icantdance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ce73a5/32.png) [@Icantdance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icantdance)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/33 "2021-10-02T23:19:30Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Asking the same question over and over again **[after it’s already been answered](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness/951784/20)** is considered poor form on this board. There are even names for that tactic. Ok. I am sorry the existence of the infinite universe has been answered. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/34 "2021-10-02T23:29:55Z")
> [@Icantdance](#): > > Ok. I am sorry the existence of the infinite universe has been answered. Great. An attempt to helpfully answer your questions is met by sarcastic snark. Plus the fact that you apparently missed the “not infinite” answer. There are some phenomena, like gravity, that can appeal to intuition through rough and imperfect analogies. Others, like the isotropic nature of the expanding universe, can be partially analogized. Others still, like the Higgs boson, are analogized so poorly that it’s worse than useless. But some cannot be analogized at all to appeal to intuition. They are mathematical models backed up by substantial physical evidence, but have no analog in our everyday experience. _ **Demanding** _ an everyday-experience explanation for cosmic phenomena that have no such analogy is extraordinarily simplistic and myopic. ---
**Author:** ![Icantdance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ce73a5/32.png) [@Icantdance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icantdance)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2021, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/35 "2021-10-02T23:35:56Z")
I am simply asking if other people have a difficult time with the concepts of infinity or nothingness. I understand you don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2021, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/36 "2021-10-03T00:24:47Z")
I think you get to a point where you do don’t bother trying to conceptualise some things because it is not possible to conceptualise them. Nothingness can’t be imagined because there is literally nothing to imagine. If you’ve imagined something then you’ve got it wrong. Some infinities are easier to conceptualise than others. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2021, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/37 "2021-10-03T00:43:41Z")
> [@Icantdance](#): > > If the universe is infinite, what is outside the universe? Since this is IMHO, and the question is just as philosophical as scientific, my answer is simple: We don’t know, we likely _cannot_ know, and at some level it’s comforting. After all, maybe there is more out there than we have ever imagined. This is what I find fascinating as an agnostic - the hubris to be sure of _anything_ in a world that may never be fully knowable. > [@Icantdance](#): > > If things just go black when we die, how do we know they are black? This statement is unhelpful. Are we talking about ‘going black’ as a metaphor for the ending of our ego/id? Are we talking about some literal darkness at the end of the tunnel? Because saying ‘how do we know it’s black’ seems specific to a post-life experience. Sticking with the first point - I again, find a complete cessation of, well, everything, for lack of a better word, hypothetically pleasant. Sure, I don’t want the world that is ‘myself’ to end, but since we are darn unlikely to have biological immortality in the 3 or so decades I have left, there is the point where I will absolutely want an end. As for an afterlife, again, no way to know experimentally, and for that matter, we have countless theories, religious, and cults all competing for truth. I am not particularly fond of the Abrahamic and similar faiths where a deity gets to chose the consequences all merely by virtue of being first. So the egalitarian option that all entities start, exist, and end at some point seems fair enough to me. I close with what I always return to when I -do- have doubts about the universe and life: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LAwDWZoETk4/hqdefault.jpg "Monty Python - The Meaning Of Life (Official Lyric Video)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAwDWZoETk4) ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2021, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/38 "2021-10-03T01:28:21Z")
The OP has been consigned to the infinity of nothingness. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2021, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/39 "2021-10-03T10:32:01Z")
The language of mathematics is an essential and effective tool physicists use to comprehend the universe, philosophical difficulties notwithstanding. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2021, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784/40 "2021-10-03T11:10:23Z")
Going black is a metaphor, take metaphors literally at your own risk. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-comprehend-infinity-nothingness-started-by-a-sock/951784.md?page=3)