| Well, let's see. I don't have much time to spend on this, and I'm well aware that I'm an amateur anyway, but... One point, at least. I see no reason why a theory being difficult to test should count even slightly against the probability of its being true. Sure, it's inconvenient -- and there's something to be said for focusing on ideas that can be tested -- but since when was nature ever constrained to convenience? As to your other questions... I'm not sure where the 'infinite past' comes from. There's a single slice of space-time that needs to be constrained; everything else can flow from there, in both directions. If it's a low-entropy constraint then causality would naturally flow away from that slice. The two sides should be mirrors of each other, though. As to the far future... that's harder. - My intuition is that, when you're trying to guess at which of many possible universes you actually live in, the amount of "runtime" the theoretical universe spends on computing you (that is, some form of life, at least) should matter. But that's problematic, since it seems to predict higher complexity of the physical laws in exchange for a universe that's denser with life, and it's not what we see. - More realistically, perhaps, the big rip might be a thing. Recurrence could fail to happen because the far future doesn't allow for structures complex enough to have thoughts, not even by random chance. I prefer to punt on the question, though. I don't know enough to have an informed opinion. |