[Zolomon]

I guess an easy idea to escape this is that it's a cycle of events that repeat forever.

For example, imagine the sequence of events `A, B, C`. After `C`, imagine that the cycle repeats with the beginning of `A` again, ad infinitum.

[jliptzin]

But what got the cycle going in the first place?

[bawolff]

That presumes that the cycle isn't the ground state and something had to start it.

Also,i feel there are no satisfactory answers here. See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover

[rubicon33]

What you are describing is infinity. For infinite time, this cycle has existed.

That concept is easy to say, but very difficult to mentally accept. We’re too accustomed to thinking of time linearly since we’ve never had examples to the contrary.

[bawolff]

I disagree.

For starters, linear things can be infinite too (e.g. integers). Being cyclic and being infinite are separate.

Second, I do not know if time is finite or not, but i do know it lasts longer than i do, and anything that does is essentially infinite from my perspective.

Is a time crystal a counter example? Guess its not something we would normally encounter anyways.

[yadingus]

How would you know if you had in front of you an example of the contrary?

[JackFr]

Aquinas and Aristotle knew: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover

[laichzeit0]

Negation. The negation of nothing is something.

[b4ke]

precisely, there has to be nothing for there to be something. also above someone mentioned our conceptual framework for modeling such an understanding as lacking, but it works well enough, it’s more difficult to accept that the entirety is a comics soup and this is what our limited sensory capacity can contrive of it. time is an excuse for this reality.

[DonHopkins]

Cosmic Comics Soup!

[twangist]

"Nothing" is not a proposition; you can't negate it. You can take it's complement, which is everything.