The concept of "before" the Big Bang is often considered "meaningless" in the context of our current scientific understanding, primarily because the Big Bang marks the beginning of space and time as we know it. According to the prevailing Big Bang cosmological model, including inflationary cosmology, the universe started from an extremely hot and dense state and has been expanding ever since.
However, our understanding breaks down when trying to describe the state of the universe before the Big Bang because the laws of physics, as we currently understand them, do not apply at that point. The concept of time, as we know it, emerges from the expansion of space during the Big Bang, so asking what happened "before" the Big Bang becomes meaningless in the traditional sense of cause and effect within time.
To understand the "North pole" analogy, consider the surface of the Earth. The North pole is a specific point on the Earth's surface, but asking what lies "north of the North pole" becomes nonsensical because the North pole is defined as the northernmost point. Similarly, when we talk about the beginning of the universe at the Big Bang, we are referring to the starting point of space and time. It is analogous to the North pole, beyond which the concept of "north" loses its meaning.
That being said, there are various cosmological models and theories that attempt to address the nature of the universe before the Big Bang or propose alternative scenarios, such as the concept of a multiverse or cyclic universe models. These ideas are actively researched and debated in the scientific community. However, it is important to note that our current understanding is limited, and definitive answers about what may have preceded the Big Bang are still elusive.