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CellBioGuy comments on Stupid Questions September 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Which probability do you assign to the big bang having actually occurred? After all, we are extrapolating from a single point in time and only in the visible part of the universe in which we see things flying apart. Perhaps the movement is much more complex than that (e.g. a pulsing motion).
That there was a finite time in the past in which all matter was squeezed tight and hot enough to undergo primordial nuclear reactions, and that the universe has expanded since, is pretty dang incontrovertible at this point. The nature of that event is still up for debate. Examining the fine details of light of different ages continues to reveal things, like the expansion appearing to initially slow followed by accelerating which is currently best explained by a dark energy model which is also favored for reasons relating to physical models of space I am unprepared to examine.
Couldn't it still be just a local region that was temporarily squeezed as a result of an event on a much larger scale than the visible universe (sort of like a turbulence in a liquid like substance)?
It absolutely could be. But we've seen no evidence that distinguishes such a scenario from the big bang theory, and so we prefer it by Occam's razor.
There's a similar scenario for explaining Big Bang in string theory: the ekpyrotic universe.