16 ms·

Why does anything exist?

147 points by ZacnyLos 4y ago

Victerius 4y ago
Survivor bias. If nothing existed [1], we wouldn't be here to ask the question. It's like asking what is P(A|A). The question "Why do I not exist" has never and will never be (seriously) asked. [1] To be clear, if only nothing existed, and there existed nothing other than nothingness. [2] [2] I sense epistemologists warming their guns here, asking if the "existence" of "nothing" counts as the existence of "something". I.e. is "nothing" something?
- amelius 4y ago
  It is still possible that nothing exists. For example, if physics rules are an algebra where you start with nothingness, and nothingness is then combined with nothingness in various ways. Then, from the inside it appears as if things exist, but from the outside it seems that nothing exists. Somewhat similar to a computer game which may look like an entire world from the inside, but you see only a bunch of computer chips from the outside.
  - criddell 4y ago
    Are you talking about the mathematical universe hypothesis where everything is just mathematics?
- mecsred 4y ago
  You say this like it's a solved issue, but you're still debating with yourself in the footnotes.
- dibujante 4y ago
  I don't think so. There has to be a plausible survivor for survivorship bias. Living forever is advantageous to being a member of a survival cohort, and yet survivorship bias hasn't discovered any immortal people. Is there a plausible reason for things to exist that would explain why existence survived as an outcome?
- gnulinux 4y ago
  Isn't it the opposite of what you suggest? If there was nothing, there would be nothing to investigate; but now that we now the universe exists, it does make sense to ask why is that something exists rather than nothing.
- captainclam 4y ago
  Doesn't this just completely dodge/dismiss the original question? If I asked how biology worked, you wouldn't say "Survivorship bias: if biology didn't work, you wouldn't be here to ask the question."
  - Victerius 4y ago
    I see what you mean. But with biology, every organism has a different biology. I can take a plant or an animal and study its biology as an external and impartial observer. With respect to the question of the existence of everything, I can't take the Universe or a Universe and study its properties as an external and impartial observer. If I was the only organism in the Universe, I could still try to study my body and reach limited conclusions, like we do with physics, but I couldn't go further without dissecting myself or injecting myself with potentially hazardous substances, which would kill me. And I certainly would never be able to answer the question of where I came from if I didn't know about the concept of gender, sex, and reproduction, which I couldn't know about if I was the only organism to have ever existed from my point of view. So I am dismissing the original question.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  Stephen Hawking famously confused gravity for "nothing" when he said “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing." He was an incredible intellect, but not everything he said is going to be a winner.
- xnoreq 4y ago
  Anything exists because of survivor bias? That's backwards logic / you've missed/evaded the question. It's not like asking P(A|A), it's not even asking why P(A) > P(N). It's asking why P(A) > 0, which it evidently is. Statistically, one could make the argument that there are infinite possibilities of A(nything) and just one of N(othing), so the odds are stacked infinitely high against nothingness.
  - User23 4y ago
    > Statistically, one could make the argument that there are infinite possibilities of A(nything) and just one of N(othing), so the odds are stacked infinitely high against nothingness. This reminds me of the classic joke that all probabilities are 50/50. Either a thing happens or it doesn't.
    - xnoreq 4y ago
      In frequentist statistics it's either 1 or 0 after the experiment (dice roll, card flip or universe creation). Either it happened or it didn't.
- ptmvp 4y ago
  I don't get what point you're trying to get across with this comment. The question at hand is essentially one of causality, but you seem to be avoiding it? Addressing your points one by one: >Survivor bias. If nothing existed [1], we wouldn't be here to ask the question. Survivor bias leading to the question is not the reason anything exists, in the same way you being alive to ask this question is not the reason you're alive. In both cases existence is simply a pre-requisite to asking the question, but it does not answer it. >It's like asking what is P(A|A). No, that is misinterpretation of the question. The question is not "What is the probability that anything exists, given that anything exists?", it's asking "Why does anything exist?", as per the title. >The question "Why do I not exist" has never and will never be (seriously) asked. Haven't given much thought to this, and at face value, yes, you're right. But "seriously" is ambiguous and there are some interesting questions here regarding the possibility of an evil demon like entity, or, more interestingly, GPT-3 posing this question.
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- JoshCole 4y ago
  Is this really a dismissal? You say "it is like asking what is P(A|A)" but that is just another notation for the logical proposition A. Saying something is like someone asking questions about logical propositions generally isn't considered bad form: logic actually has more to recommend it than probability theory - logic is when probability theory suggests certainty and probability theory is what you get due to logic applied to hidden information. Logic is therefore always more certain and stable than probabilistic claims: it is what you have when certainty exists. I don't find the statement which translates to it being like reasoning perfectly to be particularly strong as a dismissal. It doesn't even seem to merit the rank of disagreement - the article does go into discussion of logical propositions and has it very near the fundamentals. So saying it is like it is effectively just a repetition of what the article states, but using different words. You appear to me to be stating premises within the text and implying that the existence of logical reasoning means you disagree, but that doesn't quite make sense to me. To dismiss the argument would require that you first disagree with it at least once, which you haven't done, and probably ought to have a stronger foundation that the rejection of logical relationships. After all, if you reject those, then you've also rejected probability theory - with it your reject observation, which is related to both logic and probability via sampling. The rejection on the basis of being like logic has corollaries of claiming to be both blind and incapable of coherent reasoning. This isn't a very strong basis for dismissal.
humanistbot 4y ago
I liked the table comparing many disciplines' default instance of nothing: Physics: No energy: the vacuum Geometry: No dimensionality: a point Set theory: No elements: the empty set Arithmetic: No magnitude: zero Information theory: No information: zero bits Then they ask: "There is an unlimited number of possible theoretical systems. Does this mean there are also unlimited conceptions of nothing?"
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  I would answer that there is surely a single supreme nothingness, such as Wuji[0], which would contain all sets of nothingness. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuji_%28philosophy%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuji_%28philosophy%29
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > I liked the table comparing many disciplines' default instance of nothing: > Physics: No energy: the vacuum And not being aware of the difference can lead one to dumbly misunderstand the question with confidence (e.g. some physicist explaining how the universe could have arisen out of "nothing," when they're really explaining how it could have arisen out of a vacuum, which metaphysically is definitely a something).
  - voxl 4y ago
    Can you, metaphysically, define nothing? I ask because I wager you can't, and I am highly suspect that metaphysics has philosophical value.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > Can you, metaphysically, define nothing? I ask because I wager you can't, Are you saying that you can't define "absence"? But asking me is silly and pointless: I'm no philosopher. And even if philosophers have trouble, that doesn't mean there's no merit to the concept: it just means its difficult. > and I am highly suspect that metaphysics has philosophical value. I'm pretty sure you meant the exact opposite of what you actually said, and I strongly suspect you're wrong.
funwie 4y ago
Because everything else exist
atwood22 4y ago
I had a shower thought the other day: clearly conservation of energy is just a guideline and not a fundamental law. Otherwise, how could anything exist?
- Victerius 4y ago
  A former physics professor of mine said that energy was not in fact conserved in the Universe because the expansion of the Universe consumed the energy. The total available mass-energy in the Universe is decreasing over time.
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- ryandvm 4y ago
  Well... conservation of energy is just a law within our universe. Everything in here is energy, e=mc^2 and all that. But the creation of our universe definitely involved some process that dumped a shit ton of energy into a very small space about 14 billion years ago.
  - awb 4y ago
    Or, a prior universe collapsing in a "big crunch" and then re-exploding back into existence. Or two objects colliding. But those theories just push the moment of creation back farther in time and the question is still relevant where those objects came from.
lordleft 4y ago
To generate value for the shareholders, silly.
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jpeter 4y ago
Does somebody now what the author is up to now. I have been waiting for a new article for over a year
- 93po 4y ago
  Assuming his LinkedIn isn't full of hot air, he's probably retired. I don't see any online presence in the past year though.
EMM_386 4y ago
If you like questions like this, you'll probably enjoy the Closer to Truth series. All of its episodes since 1999 are on YouTube. With regards to "why something rather than nothing", here's an article on the "levels of nothing". Even if there were to be no universe, no laws, etc ... could mathematics still exist? https://www.closertotruth.com/articles/levels-nothing-robert-lawrence-kuhn https://www.closertotruth.com/articles/levels-nothing-robert...
xylifyx 4y ago
Why does something exist? There is an easy answer: Because it can. Similar to the many world interpretation of quantum mechanics. All possibilities exist. Both a something and a nothing.
- 93po 4y ago
  Why can something exist?
a-r-t 4y ago
Because even the concept of nothing is something.
- pineconewarrior 4y ago
  That discussion is among the largest cans of worms.
silent_cal 4y ago
>So long as we operate from a theory of geometry, we can’t define nothingness as anything less than a space of zero-dimensionality. >This leaves us with a point. That's still not nothing.
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  What interests me is that if there is only the point, there's no external system for reference. So the point has no coordinates, no observable properties... right?
  - silent_cal 4y ago
    You said "there is only the point", which means there is something. That's not nothing.
    - soulofmischief 4y ago
      To observe something, you need another reference frame. Without an external reference frame, there's no extrinsic information about the point, and if the point is dimensionless, then there is no intrinsic information, either. What you are left with, is the notion of a point, with no way to describe or observe it.
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vehemenz 4y ago
As a philosopher, I recommend that anyone read up on ontological anti-realism before they get too invested in the answer to questions like these. Carnap and Quine (to say nothing of Kant) wrote extensively about the problems that arise when treating metaphysical "existence" as a predicate. There are strong reasons to adopt ontological anti-realism. I'm amused when folks muse extensively in the ontological mode without addressing the elephant in the room—most of it is likely nonsense.
- tobrien6 4y ago
  I see how your response makes sense in terms of questions like "why does an electron exist", but what about the general notion of existence? It seems self-evident that there is something, even just experience. I interpreted the question as more "why something rather than nothing" which seems coherent.
  - vehemenz 4y ago
    I don't really follow. I interpret "there is" and "something" as quantifications, not predicates. What would be the predicate here? The general notion of existence, at least in natural language, seems to be a shorthand for quantification or negation. I'm not sure what it would mean for "existence" to exist, short of adopting Platonism or some bizarre metaphysical system. The "something rather than nothing" question, if stated coherently, would likely be beyond the scope of human knowledge. Although ultimately I don't think it can be stated in a way that makes sense.
    - tobrien6 4y ago
      Experience exists. Whether the contents of the experience are "real" or "not real", it is not coherent to claim that there is truly nothing at all -- what could even cause one to come to that conclusion if there's nothing at all? Platonism is one of the few (only?) games in town in terms of potential ability to furnish answers here (a Popperian scientific method has well-defined boundaries on the scope of explanatory power) -- and the more indications we get that physics can be derived from number theory and combinatorics, the more seriously I think it will be taken as a research topic. A more formally developed Platonism would also potentially be able to address the "something rather than nothing" question. Why do you think "something rather than nothing" question doesn't make sense?
ctrlp 4y ago
Good book on this topic by Jim Holt: "Why Does the World Exist? (An Existential Detective Story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Does_the_World_Exist%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Does_the_World_Exist%3F
photochemsyn 4y ago
I suppose this kind of thing is fun to think about, but this kind of claim, which appears to be the main one, is metaphysical, not scientific, in that it appears to make no testable predictions, as far as I can see: > "Mathematical truth implies the existence of all computations. The existence of all computations implies the existence of all observers. The existence of all observers leads to a quantum mechanical reality populated with all possibilities and ruled by simple laws." Extra points to the author for including a link to Eugene Wigner's "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" (1960). For convenience: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf
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Tycho 4y ago
In a vacuum with no matter or radiation, presumably the laws of physics still exist, and therefore it will be emptiness forever. As King Lear said, nothing will come of nothing. But if the laws of physics themselves did not exist, then nothing could indeed come from nothing - what’s to stop it?
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- vehemenz 4y ago
  The laws of physics are true; why do they need to "exist"?
  - themodelplumber 4y ago
    They are internally true; why do ? need to physics laws?
  - fluoridation 4y ago
    Are the states of the laws of physics being true and them "existing", distinct?
    - vehemenz 4y ago
      Yes. One is a statement that describes the world, the other is an ontological claim about what "exists" (whatever that means). What is added by saying the laws of physics "exist"? Note that we already know they are true.
- victor- 4y ago
  I wonder if the first part of the statement is true actually. What if the laws of interaction between space, energy and matter were poured in along with the space, energy and matter itself?
  - Tycho 4y ago
    I suppose that amounts to the same thing as what I’m saying.
kloch 4y ago
On the similar theme of "things we don't have answers to yet": When I was five years old I asked my dad what was beyond the "edge" of the Universe. He said "There is no edge, it goes on infinitely forever. Even if there was an edge, there would have to be something beyond that, even if it was a vacuum right?". I literally cried myself to sleep trying to visualize this.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  I still occasionally cry myself to sleep and I'm nearing 40...
- dieselgate 4y ago
  Cool to see someone articulate this specific point. My dad has some grad schooling in astrophysics so we used to chat about this kind of stuff when I was young (still now but less so). I’d always ask “if the universe is expanding what is it expanding _in to_” and he’d kind of always change the subject to black holes or something. Thinking back on that it’s amazing how easy it is to “question” or “push/poke” the boundaries of known (or even knowable) knowledge. But alas guess it just furthers the point of how all people ponder these things.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  one of the only question i want an answer from smartest people on earth
frogpelt 4y ago
Steven Wright said, "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" When I told this to a friend he answered, "Everywhere."
themodelplumber 4y ago
Cool to see this. I'm interested in orthogonal models that provide different types of leverage in the same broad arena of thought. Replacements for "exist", "real", even "dream," "simulation," etc. IOW words or phrases that skip the rather prominent liabilities of those same (tired?) words/models but also work well at such a global scope and scaffold nicely. Thanks for posting.
yes_man 4y ago
Having listened to a dozen YT videos and podcasts on the subject, I am kind of an expert (just kidding). But I can relay one view a few brilliant people invested into the subject have about the issue: that reality is a set of all possible states. Of what states? Well literally anything. Imagine a wave that can at any point oscillate up or down. If it does both and splits, it eventually will create all possible states of anything imaginable. Some of the waves become more and more complex, until in very rare cases structure and rules form within the wave function itself. Akin to Conway’s Game of Life. So universes with (seemingly) deterministic laws of any kind are just extremely rare sub-trees of this wave of ”every possible wavestate”. All the peculiarities like dimensions are illusions the same way a multidimensional array to a computer is ultimately just one-dimensional, with logic to treat it as multi-dimensional. I also like the explanation that concept of nothingness is categorically invalid because there clearly is existence (or is there? Maybe this is the ultimate ”nothing”?), but the theory of all possible states sounds even better. Definitely not claiming this is true but intuitively feels like the best explanation for this existence… that this universe with all its laws is a rare sub-tree of all possible states of a simple oscillator. Other universes with other laws exist further up the tree in its other branches. In between, voids and vacuums and undeterministic universes
- themodelplumber 4y ago
  This all-states model has a lot of impact in relevance to claims like "belief systems generally have a knob you can turn to point at (and accommodate) any desired outcome/belief". It seems like a good idea to move away from such a reality model in that case. Ideally to replace it with either several good plugins or a new metamodel which can encompass its strengths and weaknesses. I.e. reality can be a helpful term to describe "I found a new and helpful perspective for looking at a thing." That's a big strength and one commonly seen as people migrate between beliefs.
- trebbble 4y ago
  Looks like an appeal to the divine, in that it doesn't explain anything but does push the question up a level. "Why does something exist?" "God did it." "Uh, ok, why does God exist?" "Dunno, just does." <- sure seems like you could have simply applied that last answer to the first question and it'd be exactly as useful and valid. "Why does something exist?" "The set of all possible wave states exists and behaves such-and-such way" "OK, but why does that exist and why does it do that?" "Dunno, just does". <- Ditto.
throwaway290 4y ago
Tl;DR > Why does anything exist? > Because necessity requires logical laws; logical laws imply incontrovertible truth; such truth includes mathematical truth; mathematical truth defines numbers; numbers possess number relations; number relations imply equations; equations define computable relations; computable relations define all computations; all computations include algorithmically generated observers; and these observers experience apparent physical realities. I'm not convinced. Does anyone follow this?
markkat 4y ago
Existence is interaction.
whoisjuan 4y ago
Our minds can only interpret the universe through a binary model, but that doesn't mean that the universe conforms to our binary interpretation of it. "Why does anything exist?" becomes a silly question if you're capable of abandoning your rational mind for a minute and humbly accepting that perhaps the universe is an absolute system with no dualistic nature.
- nathan_compton 4y ago
  My problem with this attitude is what even are you talking about? Suppose we "abandon our rational mind" for a moment and sojourn into the irrational. How the heck are we supposed to take anything back from that experience and into the world of discourse? Presumably there is much more bullshit in the endless tracks of irrationality than truth and whatever mechanism by which we choose to carry ideas back clearly can't distinguish the two as it has abandoned anything like epistemology. So what is the point of even talking about it?
  - whoisjuan 4y ago
    First, assuming that the universe is an absolute system doesn't mean we can't build models to interpret its nature through binary interpretations. In the same way that a map is not the territory, a mental model for the universe isn't the universe. So saying "abandon our rational mind" is just a rhetorical mechanism to establish that perhaps this is the wrong question, and we should reframe what we understand as absolute or relative. You're incorrectly interpreting my words as a call for irrationality. I'm just saying that our interpretation of the universe and the debates about its origins are often based on ideas that can't be challenged because they are scientific truisms. The problem is that anything that doesn't comply with our standard interpretation of the universe will be deemed esoteric and unscientific. Therefore, it neuters debates that could yield a valid interpretation of the universe.
    - nathan_compton 4y ago
      I still don't really get it. Not all ideas which disagree with or go beyond the current best scientific models of the universe are considered non-scientific or esoteric (if this were the case scientific progress would be impossible). How about this: state explicitly what strategies beyond empiricism, model building, ontology refinement, and epistemological reasoning you think can provide genuine verifiable insight about the world?
efitz 4y ago
Does "cause" exist? I didn't spend the hours reading the entire article, but after 10-15min I realized that the author has adopted a "caused" vs. "uncaused" taxonomy, without really defining what "caused" means. Does causality exist or is it simply an observational phenomenon that is a side effect of our limited perception of space-time? Kind of like "centrifugal force" is an observational phenomenon. Maybe there is no such thing as causality, and we can never know "why stuff exists" because we are incapable of perceiving the answer.
- kordlessagain 4y ago
  There is no single answer to this question as it is a matter of philosophical and religious debate. Some schools of thought, such as Buddhism, accept the existence of cause and effect, while others, such as some forms of skepticism, deny or question its existence.
- kaashif 4y ago
  I like the question 'Does "cause" exist?' because it exposes the fact that basic terms haven't been defined and axioms haven't been made clear. This kind of discussion can (and definitely has, in my opinion) devolved into meaningless rambling as a result of vague or missing definitions. I didn't read the whole article either, obviously (way too long), so I may have missed the author defining things. Even the question "Why does anything exist?" is never really broken down and defined. What kind of answers are we looking for? When dealing with philosophical stuff it's crucial to define terms very carefully. If you can't make clear definitions, you're in the realm of nonsense.
jesuslop 4y ago
There is a known old argument in St. Anslem, Leibnitz and Gödel for that in a pantheistic picture. Gödel adopted higher order modal logic, and factors the question via the axiom 'if possible then actual' (god/reality existence). I'm now pleased to discover that in 2017 someone has went through the pains of porting the thing to a proof verifier, Isabelle/HOL (they start from Melvin Fitting reconstruction of the idea in 1999). [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317956529_Types_Tableaus_and_Godel's_God_in_IsabelleHOL https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317956529_Types_Tab...
- jesuslop 4y ago
  EDIT: axiom -> lemma
nathan_compton 4y ago
This is a lot of ground to cover to get to what is, in my opinion, a very bizarre conclusion which is epistemologically extremely lugubrious: that all structures expressible mathematically also exist and we are (obviously) a subset of those structures. Frankly, this doesn't even feel like any kind of knowledge to me. Its operationally meaningless! In any case, I think the author has the cart before the horse: numbers (and other sorts of mathematics) do not pre-exist reality. Numbers are abstractions of regularities we see in nature. Mathematics is nothing but the observation of regularities in certain sorts of elaborate rituals involving making markings on paper. Many of those rituals are inspired by and correlated with regularities which exist in the world, but its difficult to me to see any reason to believe that they have an independent existence.
- crdrost 4y ago
  Yeah I had to skim through it as well. I think the author probably has written something that has passed peer review, but has either written so many such things that he has gotten sick of terseness and getting to the point, or so few things that he has not learned to value it in the first place? Like the writing is not god-awful like a lot of the crackpot takes, but it's definitely tortuous. As a theory goes, I don't think this one is successful. It probably either implies that time is an illusion or that we are all Boltzmann brains, and I would take it as a baseline desideratum that our fundamental understanding of the universe does not come in either of these shapes. (Both essentially state “actions don't exist” in different ways, and if the universe is the place where activities occur, the place where things happen, then the idea that nothing is really happening in there appears to fail hard.) Of course is a Christian and a mystic, my understanding of my own answer is that it is also carefully calculated nonsense, nonsense in service of some sort of artistic goal, so I'm not in a great place to really criticize. He can struggle with his mythos and I can struggle with mine, haha.
  - nathan_compton 4y ago
    Why believe anything about this question at all? I feel quite strongly that the proper mental posture towards many questions is "I don't have a very compelling reason to hold a strong opinion on that." This feeling it buttressed by the fact that there are a great many tractable scientific and philosophical mysteries which are as yet unresolved. It seems premature to tackle this particular one, perhaps because I fundamentally disagree with the author that we are at a stage in history where it can be tackled "scientifically."
forty 4y ago
Is there a clear distinction in English between "why" and "what for" ? In french it's literally the same words ("pourquoi" vs "pour quoi") My 5yo daughter asked me "why do we exist". I answered the why as in some events that happened that led to our existence, but finding a reason is a bit tougher :)
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Not a completely clear one, but "what for" is more precise than "why", which can be asking "for what purpose" or "due to what cause". "Why are you in my room" is obviously asking the former, "why are the cookies burnt" fairly obviously the latter (unless you really did deliberately burn them to achieve some particular further goal...).
breuleux 4y ago
I think it's kind of silly to expect that a satisfactory answer to that question exists. Given that there is an infinite number of possible ways the universe could have been ("nothing" being just one of these possibilities), pretty much all of these possibilities are vanishingly improbable, including whichever one them eventually obtains. So I think that "it is what it is", or "it is arbitrary" is a perfectly reasonable answer to why our universe exists. To put it a different way, I don't see why existence couldn't be necessarily arbitrary, or what is repugnant about that notion. I only skimmed the article, but from what I can see they advocate the mathematical universe theory. To me, that's just a metaphysical choice that does not really add any useful information: it is arbitrarily solving the issue by making every consistent universe exist with probability 1, which strikes me as little more than a parlor trick. If there are 100 balls in a box, I draw one, and it has the number 23 on it, I don't think "there are 100 parallel universes, one where I draw ball one, one where I draw ball two, and so on" is a more compelling explanation than "there is one universe and I happened to draw ball 23". I would still want to know why I am in universe 23. Maybe (probably) there is no answer, except that it is what it is.
jawns 4y ago
If you like the question of "Why does anything exist?" then an obvious next question is: "What's stopping things from not existing?" In philosophy, there is a distinction between things that must be (they're called necessary) and things that may or may not be (they're called contingent). For instance, if we use the standard definition of a square, then every square you will ever encounter will necessarily have four sides. In contrast, not every square you encounter will be blue or tiny. Those are contingent properties of a square. A square may be blue, or it may not be. A square may be tiny, or it may not be. Now, would you say that our universe's existence is necessary or contingent? If its existence is necessary, it would mean that there is no possible way for our universe not to exist. If its existence is contingent, then our universe either could exist, or it could not. I happen to think it's contingent. But if our universe is contingent, then it must be contingent upon something that is necessary. Regardless of whether you view that necessary thing as God or something else, if you agree that the universe is contingent, then the contingency doesn't stop at its creation; its continued existence is also contingent. So, beyond needing a "first cause" to explain its existence (as with a picture on a painted canvas), our universe requires a "sustaining cause" (as with a picture on a TV set).
- hydrolox 4y ago
  but isn't the problem that you could get stuck in an infinite contingency loop? i.e if you pick God, what if God is contingent and so on. Sure you can say something is required but it's rather arbitrary.
  - caloriesdont 4y ago
    >Sure you can say something is required but it's rather arbitrary. It's only arbitrary if there aren't good reasons. Dozens of reasons have been given in philosophy, it's up to you to decide if any of them work. One of the big differences would be to point out that the universe is completely composite, whereas a foundation could be purely simple. Josh Rasmussen is a great communicator about this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX79xXgi44o&ab_channel=TheUnapologeticApologists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX79xXgi44o&ab_channel=TheUn...
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abetusk 4y ago
Turing Machine Equivalence is the norm, not the exception.
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phkahler 4y ago
I'm mostly down with the Mathematical Universe and might have independently reached that conclusion. I like to use the example of the Mandelbrot set - did that set/image/fractal exist prior to someone writing a program to create a map of it? I would argue that it did. So a mathematical object exists independently from our ever "discovering" it or its definition. That point of view quickly leads to "All things that have a mathematical definition exist in that same sense" which leads to "If there is a mathematical definition of our universe, that is sufficient cause for it to exist". I do object to the talk of computability. Not all mathematically well-defined things are computable. I also don't like the following from the article: >> Are we to take as serious the idea that we live inside an equation? And this equation somehow produces all computations by virtue of its solutions? And that the whole physical universe is just some kind of shared hallucination? A mathematical definition is not limited to "an equation". What does he even mean by "produces all computations"? And then "shared hallucination" also seem nonsensical - we experience things however the definition allows/causes. The only thing I grapple with is why we perceive the passage of time. If there is a mathematical definition of the entire span of the universe and time, that doesn't satisfy me in understanding why "I" am experiencing "now". Some might argue that a "simulation" is "running" but like the Mandelbrot set, the entire thing is defined at once by the definition, and any need to "run" it pushes the whole problem down one level (like where did god exist before he made the universe?) it's turtles all the way down. So while defining the universe over time might involve a definition that looks like a simulation, that still doesn't explain why we experience the simulation at a single point in time.
ptmvp 4y ago
I think it's interesting to see the ease with which a few commenters on this thread assume they either 1) know how to answer this question or 2) are comfortable hand-waving it away.
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Pixeleen 4y ago
I happen to believe it is because God willed the universe into existence. There are more esoteric explanations, something about him being lonely, but we're not supposed to even start worrying about them until the age of 40.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > I happen to believe it is because God willed the universe into existence. Ah yes, Phanes.
  - 93po 4y ago
    Hey, don't undersell Chronos and Ananke
triyambakam 4y ago
> The religious person is left with a mystery which is no less than the mystery with which science leaves us As a Hindu I find this baffling. For the Hindu there is a consistency across science and religion, and sometimes the line between the two isn't clear. They work together harmoniously to form my worldview. Based on the cursory information I have about the author's background, I am assuming he was exposed to Western Christianity growing up. I find that this breeds a very narrow minded form of atheism, one that rejects a very specific idea of what God is. I have a suspicion that if many of the atheists in the West were exposed to the full metaphysical understanding of the Eternal Dharma they may not be atheists, or at least be a different kind of atheist than simply a Not-Christian. In Hinduism God is not a man or a woman, but instead the energy that is manifest in every atom of every universe. God is the universal wave function.
- packetlost 4y ago
  Assigning a personification to a concept is a common theme among many religions throughout the world. To that end, Christianity and those based on it are more of an outlier than the norm.
- uh_uh 4y ago
  Same question remains: why does that energy exist?
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  That’s true of Christianity, as well: The philosophy of Christianity is rooted deeply in Platonic ideas — where “God” as the ultimate ideal is embodied both in a human (“Jesus”) and in the happening of the world (“Holy Spirit”). I can’t claim to be an expert in Hinduism — but to my limited understanding, it’s akin to saying that Brahman manifests both through avatars and the actions of deities, as forces of nature.
- bergenty 4y ago
  I’m Hindu too but why come up with some random bullshit rather than try to figure out what is happening. If you want to call god the universe just say universe. The value of Hinduism is in cultural heritage and providing a pathway for life. It’s in tapping into the mysticism and indulging in the rituals to make life interesting.
russellbeattie 4y ago
I have a better question: Why does everything move, forever? Newton's first law is bewildering when you stop to think about it. From the smallest subatomic particle on up, matter and energy are always moving, both through the universe, as well as within matter itself. Gluons are constantly bopping back and forth among the quarks that make up nucleons, electrons zip around from atom to atom, photons fly off on infinite voyages. The Voyager space probes will never stop unless something stops it. Why? Seems like a fundamental question. Imagine if we discovered the Ultimate Frame Of Reference and were able to lock an atom in 3D space, completely removing its momentum? The first discovery might blow a hole in the side of a mountain as a single stopped atom suddenly gets hit by the Earth at whatever insane speed it's moving through the universe. It'd be the ultimate kinetic energy weapon.
tresqotheq 4y ago
define "existence"
Pixelbrick 4y ago
A concise treatment of all of metaphysics... :)
jorjordandan 4y ago
I had a mushroom trip that made this all make sense (at the time). The gist of it was, there was never nothing. Nothing is a made up concept. It's deeply valuable, but there is no instance of any kind of nothing that actually exists. There is only "exists". The most basic form of existence is change. Even if there had been nothing, and something came from it, in order for something to come from it, there would first need to have been some change. So regardless of how it could have started, change has to be the first thing. But in my opinion, recursive cycles is a more likely explanation than a linear universe with a start and end that are both in 'nothing'. I'm posting this nonsense tongue in cheek but.. I don't think it's completely wrong.
- 93po 4y ago
  A big chunk the posted article addresses this exact topic: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Self-Existent_Thing https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Self-Exi...
- greenonions 4y ago
  Mushroom origins or no, I completely agree.
- emerged 4y ago
- Galaxeblaffer 4y ago
  My favorite cyclic theory so far is probably Roger Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology. In essence the universe keeps expanding exponentially which in the end becomes equivalent to a new big bang since the universe at that point will loose all notions of scale due to their being no more particles to drive scale. A much better explanation is given here https://youtu.be/FVDJJVoTx7s https://youtu.be/FVDJJVoTx7s
- bsedlm 4y ago
  I agree 100%. once upone a time I asked myself what the heck do we mean by 'nothing' when asking "why is there something rather than nothing?"? from wondering that, I concluded the same thing you did. that nothing is a made up concept; and I agree, it's super useful and it's ideal instead of real. later on, I started to ponder what the heck does 'everything' really mean, and for now I think that 'everything' is just as made up as 'nothing'. hence, 'everything' doesn't exist in the same way 'something' (anything) exist. it's also just a very valuable made up concept. there is no instance of everything, it's also an assumption. then again, maybe I got stuck in the trip
1970-01-01 4y ago
This question always breaks my brain. It's the ultimate question. I physically jerk back after thinking about it. The initial conditions of this universe are perfect. Maybe there are others that weren't.
twanschik 4y ago
Quantamagazin actually has an article that seems to fit perfectly into the discussion: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-physics-of-nothing-underlies-everything-20220809/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-physics-of-nothing-un...
superb-owl 4y ago
I love the "math, matter, mind" trinity. I think it originates with Penrose - I first came across it in The Road to Reality. I wrote a bit about it (incidentally) here: https://superbowl.substack.com/i/65186479/metacognitive-truth https://superbowl.substack.com/i/65186479/metacognitive-trut...
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Animats 4y ago
Why does anything exist? Funding.
dasil003 4y ago
> For most of history, the question remained beyond the possibility of being answered. But we live in a most-exciting point in time: one where this question has fallen to the progress of human knowledge. > [...] > We now have viable answers to great questions of existence: > [...] > It required us to assume math, rather than matter, is fundamental. For all the length of this exposition, the conclusion is pure Streetlight Effect. Despite the fact that our brains have allowed us to achieve quite a high level of abstract reasoning relative to other Earth fauna, we remain inextricably coupled to our meat sack nature. It doesn't matter how many logical theories and models you stack up that map to observable phenomena, the truth is that there is no basis to assume that math is fundamental. Math, is just a tool for building models, and to paraphrase George Box: despite being useful, all models are wrong. The irony of attempting to answer the hardest philosophical questions in this way, reflects a very human emotional need to transcend our obvious physical and observational limitations. We can no more explain why the universe exists than an amoeba could explain why a skyscraper exists, and actually the gap is much much bigger, because whatever we observe and determine as causality can always elicit another "why". A three year old can master this trick, and yet here we have a grown and supposedly rational person who does not want to come to terms with the fact that "what" can never fully explain "why". This existential ambiguity is our birthright and is actually beautiful and inspiring if you unclench your bowels a bit.
- jiggywiggy 4y ago
  Us humans are all just meaning machines. We are on a constant quest of meaning. Quiet tiring to be honest. Somehow the question keeps arising in human mind, what does it all mean? (Especially if we have too much time to think) Yet us modern folks keep trying to solve it outside of our mind in which it arises, biology, physics, whatever. Maybe the answer is more straightforward?
  - dasil003 4y ago
    Agree with you 100% and I love the way you phrased that. Maybe it is more straightforward, and I respect everyone's beliefs here. The hard part is proving it one way or the other.
6510 4y ago
even funnier: If there are non zero odds for something to arise out of nothing the amount of nothing has disturbing consequences. It must happen infinity often, it always did and will continue forever.
skeltoac 4y ago
Logged in to say something about how the question is based on a false dichotomy, but now I think it better just to say nothing.
- floppydiskette 4y ago
  You said something, not nothing, though.
jiggywiggy 4y ago
Often modern rational people are not aware they've surrendered their experience of meaning to the theory of evolution, where in the old days it was surrendered to religion. Often you hear modern skeptics speak like, we do things to preserve the self, or to preserve the "race". Theories of evolving are not the same as truths of meaning. Even though in many senses religion was more restrictive, in the search for meaning it might have given more useful answers. Useful in the sense of practical.
- bobabob 4y ago
  Evolution is not a theory, it's a fact, you can see it happening.
  - jiggywiggy 4y ago
    Both and. Same with physics. They are theoretical approximations of the truth. They are true because they work, the times they don't we keep adjusting it. However they both don't explain all of reality, especially not human meaning seeking, so what I'm saying is we shouldnt be trying to solve the problem of meaning with a model for explaining a biological phenomenon.
layer8 4y ago
My take is the following: I don't think that "existence" is an actual property of $whatever, an actual property in the sense that it could be either way (either exists or not) without logical contradiction. Because if that were the case, both a reality where $whatever exists or where it does not exist would be conceivable, or in other words, whether $whatever exists or does not exists would be arbitrary, without explanation of why it is one way and not the other. Because, if there would be an explanation why it is one way and not the other, then effectively it would be a necessary consequence and not a freely choosable property. So, if on the other hand it is arbitrary, then that means that effectively there cannot be an explanation. Another way to put this is that anything "existing" must either mean it is an (necessarily arbitrarry, in the sense of freely chosen) axiom, or that is a mere implication. Now comes the subjective part: Necessarily arbitrary axioms are highly unattractive, because they cannot ever be explained, by definition. If we accept such a thing, then implicitly everything is arbitrary (within the realm of what is logically consistent) due to the arbitraryness of the axioms from which everything derives, and thus there cannot be an explanation of the specific "existing" reality. Therefore, by Occam's razor, it makes much more sense to me to not assume that reality is based on such inherent arbitraryness, and rather assume (which is really the absence of an assumption) that everything that is logically consistent "exists". However, labelling it as "existing" is meaningless, because in that view that is just a synonym for "logically consistent". So, that's why I don't think that "existing" is a property different from "logically consistent".
hyoogle 4y ago
In response to Leibniz's ontological query "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Morgenbesser answered "If there were nothing you'd still be complaining!" — Sidney Morgenbesser https://quotepark.com/quotes/1744434-sidney-morgenbesser-in-response-to-leibnizs-ontological-query-why-is/ https://quotepark.com/quotes/1744434-sidney-morgenbesser-in-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser
blacksqr 4y ago
To me, the issue and flaw with this argument, as with most computation-based theories about existence and consciousness, is that we like to conceive of computation in purely abstract terms. But it's been known since the 1940s that the concept of computation is founded on information theory, which is simply a restatement of parts of the laws of thermodynamics, which are derived from classical physics and applicable only in the macro world. But we know that the universe is not classical in nature. So it seems to me that trying to use a classical-only approximation to do all the backfilling to a theory of the nature of existence must necessarily come up short. It feels "like butter scraped over too much bread." Information theory also establishes that any information state must correspond directly to a physical state, so it seems to me most likely that all our concepts of mathematics are not communions with the mind of God, but projections of some aspect of the physical functioning of our brains. And since our brains are products of a non-classical universe, the classical nature of our concepts of computation represents some sort of essential reduction of complexity; just like our brains reduce the complexity of our sensory inputs to produce a model of the world sensible enough for us to act on. Trying to employ that reduced-complexity model to account for the nature of existence itself is necessarily forced and futile in my view, like trying to explain the nature of a reflection in a mirror as an alternate dimension. It reminds me of how Frank Tipler pointed out that Nietzsche's theories of physics and his concept of eternal return were in fact formally correct, or would be if the universe were classical in nature. But the universe is non-classical, and thus there were surprises in 20th century calculations of the nature and destiny of the universe. Until there are full non-classical theories of physics and of computation, I think we as well will need to expect surprises in conceptions of how existence came about.
stakkur 4y ago
Wrong question.
im3w1l 4y ago
Before asking why, can we even prove that anything does exist? Three famous quotes that many people agree with: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" "I think therefore I exist" "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." We can interpret the first saying that it is questionable if something exists if it isn't perceived. It ties reality to perception. The second quote insists that a person exists because he is thinking, because he is exhibiting conscious activity. How can we interpret the last one. What does it mean that something "doesn't go away". I take it to mean that it keeps affecting you and impacting your life. I think it's pretty interesting that it all seems to tie into the experience of a conscious entity. Maybe it's a self-centered view of the world, or maybe these two concepts really are intrinsically linked.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
if there's something I learnt in my life, if there's a space, something will eventually fill it.

147 points by ZacnyLos 4y ago

Survivor bias. If nothing existed [1], we wouldn't be here to ask the question. It's like asking what is P(A|A). The question "Why do I not exist" has never and will never be (seriously) asked. [1] To be clear, if only nothing existed, and there existed nothing other than nothingness. [2] [2] I sense epistemologists warming their guns here, asking if the "existence" of "nothing" counts as the existence of "something". I.e. is "nothing" something?

amelius 4y ago
It is still possible that nothing exists. For example, if physics rules are an algebra where you start with nothingness, and nothingness is then combined with nothingness in various ways. Then, from the inside it appears as if things exist, but from the outside it seems that nothing exists. Somewhat similar to a computer game which may look like an entire world from the inside, but you see only a bunch of computer chips from the outside.
- criddell 4y ago
  Are you talking about the mathematical universe hypothesis where everything is just mathematics?
mecsred 4y ago
You say this like it's a solved issue, but you're still debating with yourself in the footnotes.
dibujante 4y ago
I don't think so. There has to be a plausible survivor for survivorship bias. Living forever is advantageous to being a member of a survival cohort, and yet survivorship bias hasn't discovered any immortal people. Is there a plausible reason for things to exist that would explain why existence survived as an outcome?
gnulinux 4y ago
Isn't it the opposite of what you suggest? If there was nothing, there would be nothing to investigate; but now that we now the universe exists, it does make sense to ask why is that something exists rather than nothing.
captainclam 4y ago
Doesn't this just completely dodge/dismiss the original question? If I asked how biology worked, you wouldn't say "Survivorship bias: if biology didn't work, you wouldn't be here to ask the question."
- Victerius 4y ago
  I see what you mean. But with biology, every organism has a different biology. I can take a plant or an animal and study its biology as an external and impartial observer. With respect to the question of the existence of everything, I can't take the Universe or a Universe and study its properties as an external and impartial observer. If I was the only organism in the Universe, I could still try to study my body and reach limited conclusions, like we do with physics, but I couldn't go further without dissecting myself or injecting myself with potentially hazardous substances, which would kill me. And I certainly would never be able to answer the question of where I came from if I didn't know about the concept of gender, sex, and reproduction, which I couldn't know about if I was the only organism to have ever existed from my point of view. So I am dismissing the original question.
nsxwolf 4y ago
Stephen Hawking famously confused gravity for "nothing" when he said “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing." He was an incredible intellect, but not everything he said is going to be a winner.
xnoreq 4y ago
Anything exists because of survivor bias? That's backwards logic / you've missed/evaded the question. It's not like asking P(A|A), it's not even asking why P(A) > P(N). It's asking why P(A) > 0, which it evidently is. Statistically, one could make the argument that there are infinite possibilities of A(nything) and just one of N(othing), so the odds are stacked infinitely high against nothingness.
- User23 4y ago
  > Statistically, one could make the argument that there are infinite possibilities of A(nything) and just one of N(othing), so the odds are stacked infinitely high against nothingness. This reminds me of the classic joke that all probabilities are 50/50. Either a thing happens or it doesn't.
  - xnoreq 4y ago
    In frequentist statistics it's either 1 or 0 after the experiment (dice roll, card flip or universe creation). Either it happened or it didn't.
ptmvp 4y ago
I don't get what point you're trying to get across with this comment. The question at hand is essentially one of causality, but you seem to be avoiding it? Addressing your points one by one: >Survivor bias. If nothing existed [1], we wouldn't be here to ask the question. Survivor bias leading to the question is not the reason anything exists, in the same way you being alive to ask this question is not the reason you're alive. In both cases existence is simply a pre-requisite to asking the question, but it does not answer it. >It's like asking what is P(A|A). No, that is misinterpretation of the question. The question is not "What is the probability that anything exists, given that anything exists?", it's asking "Why does anything exist?", as per the title. >The question "Why do I not exist" has never and will never be (seriously) asked. Haven't given much thought to this, and at face value, yes, you're right. But "seriously" is ambiguous and there are some interesting questions here regarding the possibility of an evil demon like entity, or, more interestingly, GPT-3 posing this question.
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JoshCole 4y ago
Is this really a dismissal? You say "it is like asking what is P(A|A)" but that is just another notation for the logical proposition A. Saying something is like someone asking questions about logical propositions generally isn't considered bad form: logic actually has more to recommend it than probability theory - logic is when probability theory suggests certainty and probability theory is what you get due to logic applied to hidden information. Logic is therefore always more certain and stable than probabilistic claims: it is what you have when certainty exists. I don't find the statement which translates to it being like reasoning perfectly to be particularly strong as a dismissal. It doesn't even seem to merit the rank of disagreement - the article does go into discussion of logical propositions and has it very near the fundamentals. So saying it is like it is effectively just a repetition of what the article states, but using different words. You appear to me to be stating premises within the text and implying that the existence of logical reasoning means you disagree, but that doesn't quite make sense to me. To dismiss the argument would require that you first disagree with it at least once, which you haven't done, and probably ought to have a stronger foundation that the rejection of logical relationships. After all, if you reject those, then you've also rejected probability theory - with it your reject observation, which is related to both logic and probability via sampling. The rejection on the basis of being like logic has corollaries of claiming to be both blind and incapable of coherent reasoning. This isn't a very strong basis for dismissal.

humanistbot 4y ago

I liked the table comparing many disciplines' default instance of nothing: Physics: No energy: the vacuum Geometry: No dimensionality: a point Set theory: No elements: the empty set Arithmetic: No magnitude: zero Information theory: No information: zero bits Then they ask: "There is an unlimited number of possible theoretical systems. Does this mean there are also unlimited conceptions of nothing?"

soulofmischief 4y ago
I would answer that there is surely a single supreme nothingness, such as Wuji[0], which would contain all sets of nothingness. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuji_%28philosophy%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuji_%28philosophy%29
tablespoon 4y ago
> I liked the table comparing many disciplines' default instance of nothing: > Physics: No energy: the vacuum And not being aware of the difference can lead one to dumbly misunderstand the question with confidence (e.g. some physicist explaining how the universe could have arisen out of "nothing," when they're really explaining how it could have arisen out of a vacuum, which metaphysically is definitely a something).
- voxl 4y ago
  Can you, metaphysically, define nothing? I ask because I wager you can't, and I am highly suspect that metaphysics has philosophical value.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > Can you, metaphysically, define nothing? I ask because I wager you can't, Are you saying that you can't define "absence"? But asking me is silly and pointless: I'm no philosopher. And even if philosophers have trouble, that doesn't mean there's no merit to the concept: it just means its difficult. > and I am highly suspect that metaphysics has philosophical value. I'm pretty sure you meant the exact opposite of what you actually said, and I strongly suspect you're wrong.

funwie 4y ago

Because everything else exist

atwood22 4y ago

I had a shower thought the other day: clearly conservation of energy is just a guideline and not a fundamental law. Otherwise, how could anything exist?

Victerius 4y ago
A former physics professor of mine said that energy was not in fact conserved in the Universe because the expansion of the Universe consumed the energy. The total available mass-energy in the Universe is decreasing over time.
- deleted 4y ago
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ryandvm 4y ago
Well... conservation of energy is just a law within our universe. Everything in here is energy, e=mc^2 and all that. But the creation of our universe definitely involved some process that dumped a shit ton of energy into a very small space about 14 billion years ago.
- awb 4y ago
  Or, a prior universe collapsing in a "big crunch" and then re-exploding back into existence. Or two objects colliding. But those theories just push the moment of creation back farther in time and the question is still relevant where those objects came from.

lordleft 4y ago

To generate value for the shareholders, silly.

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jpeter 4y ago

Does somebody now what the author is up to now. I have been waiting for a new article for over a year

93po 4y ago
Assuming his LinkedIn isn't full of hot air, he's probably retired. I don't see any online presence in the past year though.

EMM_386 4y ago

If you like questions like this, you'll probably enjoy the Closer to Truth series. All of its episodes since 1999 are on YouTube. With regards to "why something rather than nothing", here's an article on the "levels of nothing". Even if there were to be no universe, no laws, etc ... could mathematics still exist? https://www.closertotruth.com/articles/levels-nothing-robert-lawrence-kuhn https://www.closertotruth.com/articles/levels-nothing-robert...

xylifyx 4y ago

Why does something exist? There is an easy answer: Because it can. Similar to the many world interpretation of quantum mechanics. All possibilities exist. Both a something and a nothing.

93po 4y ago
Why can something exist?

a-r-t 4y ago

Because even the concept of nothing is something.

pineconewarrior 4y ago
That discussion is among the largest cans of worms.

silent_cal 4y ago

>So long as we operate from a theory of geometry, we can’t define nothingness as anything less than a space of zero-dimensionality. >This leaves us with a point. That's still not nothing.

soulofmischief 4y ago
What interests me is that if there is only the point, there's no external system for reference. So the point has no coordinates, no observable properties... right?
- silent_cal 4y ago
  You said "there is only the point", which means there is something. That's not nothing.
  - soulofmischief 4y ago
    To observe something, you need another reference frame. Without an external reference frame, there's no extrinsic information about the point, and if the point is dimensionless, then there is no intrinsic information, either. What you are left with, is the notion of a point, with no way to describe or observe it.
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vehemenz 4y ago

As a philosopher, I recommend that anyone read up on ontological anti-realism before they get too invested in the answer to questions like these. Carnap and Quine (to say nothing of Kant) wrote extensively about the problems that arise when treating metaphysical "existence" as a predicate. There are strong reasons to adopt ontological anti-realism. I'm amused when folks muse extensively in the ontological mode without addressing the elephant in the room—most of it is likely nonsense.

tobrien6 4y ago
I see how your response makes sense in terms of questions like "why does an electron exist", but what about the general notion of existence? It seems self-evident that there is something, even just experience. I interpreted the question as more "why something rather than nothing" which seems coherent.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  I don't really follow. I interpret "there is" and "something" as quantifications, not predicates. What would be the predicate here? The general notion of existence, at least in natural language, seems to be a shorthand for quantification or negation. I'm not sure what it would mean for "existence" to exist, short of adopting Platonism or some bizarre metaphysical system. The "something rather than nothing" question, if stated coherently, would likely be beyond the scope of human knowledge. Although ultimately I don't think it can be stated in a way that makes sense.
  - tobrien6 4y ago
    Experience exists. Whether the contents of the experience are "real" or "not real", it is not coherent to claim that there is truly nothing at all -- what could even cause one to come to that conclusion if there's nothing at all? Platonism is one of the few (only?) games in town in terms of potential ability to furnish answers here (a Popperian scientific method has well-defined boundaries on the scope of explanatory power) -- and the more indications we get that physics can be derived from number theory and combinatorics, the more seriously I think it will be taken as a research topic. A more formally developed Platonism would also potentially be able to address the "something rather than nothing" question. Why do you think "something rather than nothing" question doesn't make sense?

ctrlp 4y ago

Good book on this topic by Jim Holt: "Why Does the World Exist? (An Existential Detective Story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Does_the_World_Exist%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Does_the_World_Exist%3F

photochemsyn 4y ago

I suppose this kind of thing is fun to think about, but this kind of claim, which appears to be the main one, is metaphysical, not scientific, in that it appears to make no testable predictions, as far as I can see: > "Mathematical truth implies the existence of all computations. The existence of all computations implies the existence of all observers. The existence of all observers leads to a quantum mechanical reality populated with all possibilities and ruled by simple laws." Extra points to the author for including a link to Eugene Wigner's "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" (1960). For convenience: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf

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Tycho 4y ago

In a vacuum with no matter or radiation, presumably the laws of physics still exist, and therefore it will be emptiness forever. As King Lear said, nothing will come of nothing. But if the laws of physics themselves did not exist, then nothing could indeed come from nothing - what’s to stop it?

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vehemenz 4y ago
The laws of physics are true; why do they need to "exist"?
- themodelplumber 4y ago
  They are internally true; why do ? need to physics laws?
- fluoridation 4y ago
  Are the states of the laws of physics being true and them "existing", distinct?
  - vehemenz 4y ago
    Yes. One is a statement that describes the world, the other is an ontological claim about what "exists" (whatever that means). What is added by saying the laws of physics "exist"? Note that we already know they are true.
victor- 4y ago
I wonder if the first part of the statement is true actually. What if the laws of interaction between space, energy and matter were poured in along with the space, energy and matter itself?
- Tycho 4y ago
  I suppose that amounts to the same thing as what I’m saying.

kloch 4y ago

On the similar theme of "things we don't have answers to yet": When I was five years old I asked my dad what was beyond the "edge" of the Universe. He said "There is no edge, it goes on infinitely forever. Even if there was an edge, there would have to be something beyond that, even if it was a vacuum right?". I literally cried myself to sleep trying to visualize this.

weatherlite 4y ago
I still occasionally cry myself to sleep and I'm nearing 40...
dieselgate 4y ago
Cool to see someone articulate this specific point. My dad has some grad schooling in astrophysics so we used to chat about this kind of stuff when I was young (still now but less so). I’d always ask “if the universe is expanding what is it expanding _in to_” and he’d kind of always change the subject to black holes or something. Thinking back on that it’s amazing how easy it is to “question” or “push/poke” the boundaries of known (or even knowable) knowledge. But alas guess it just furthers the point of how all people ponder these things.
agumonkey 4y ago
one of the only question i want an answer from smartest people on earth

frogpelt 4y ago

Steven Wright said, "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" When I told this to a friend he answered, "Everywhere."

themodelplumber 4y ago

Cool to see this. I'm interested in orthogonal models that provide different types of leverage in the same broad arena of thought. Replacements for "exist", "real", even "dream," "simulation," etc. IOW words or phrases that skip the rather prominent liabilities of those same (tired?) words/models but also work well at such a global scope and scaffold nicely. Thanks for posting.

yes_man 4y ago

Having listened to a dozen YT videos and podcasts on the subject, I am kind of an expert (just kidding). But I can relay one view a few brilliant people invested into the subject have about the issue: that reality is a set of all possible states. Of what states? Well literally anything. Imagine a wave that can at any point oscillate up or down. If it does both and splits, it eventually will create all possible states of anything imaginable. Some of the waves become more and more complex, until in very rare cases structure and rules form within the wave function itself. Akin to Conway’s Game of Life. So universes with (seemingly) deterministic laws of any kind are just extremely rare sub-trees of this wave of ”every possible wavestate”. All the peculiarities like dimensions are illusions the same way a multidimensional array to a computer is ultimately just one-dimensional, with logic to treat it as multi-dimensional. I also like the explanation that concept of nothingness is categorically invalid because there clearly is existence (or is there? Maybe this is the ultimate ”nothing”?), but the theory of all possible states sounds even better. Definitely not claiming this is true but intuitively feels like the best explanation for this existence… that this universe with all its laws is a rare sub-tree of all possible states of a simple oscillator. Other universes with other laws exist further up the tree in its other branches. In between, voids and vacuums and undeterministic universes

themodelplumber 4y ago
This all-states model has a lot of impact in relevance to claims like "belief systems generally have a knob you can turn to point at (and accommodate) any desired outcome/belief". It seems like a good idea to move away from such a reality model in that case. Ideally to replace it with either several good plugins or a new metamodel which can encompass its strengths and weaknesses. I.e. reality can be a helpful term to describe "I found a new and helpful perspective for looking at a thing." That's a big strength and one commonly seen as people migrate between beliefs.
trebbble 4y ago
Looks like an appeal to the divine, in that it doesn't explain anything but does push the question up a level. "Why does something exist?" "God did it." "Uh, ok, why does God exist?" "Dunno, just does." <- sure seems like you could have simply applied that last answer to the first question and it'd be exactly as useful and valid. "Why does something exist?" "The set of all possible wave states exists and behaves such-and-such way" "OK, but why does that exist and why does it do that?" "Dunno, just does". <- Ditto.

throwaway290 4y ago

Tl;DR > Why does anything exist? > Because necessity requires logical laws; logical laws imply incontrovertible truth; such truth includes mathematical truth; mathematical truth defines numbers; numbers possess number relations; number relations imply equations; equations define computable relations; computable relations define all computations; all computations include algorithmically generated observers; and these observers experience apparent physical realities. I'm not convinced. Does anyone follow this?

markkat 4y ago

Existence is interaction.

whoisjuan 4y ago

Our minds can only interpret the universe through a binary model, but that doesn't mean that the universe conforms to our binary interpretation of it. "Why does anything exist?" becomes a silly question if you're capable of abandoning your rational mind for a minute and humbly accepting that perhaps the universe is an absolute system with no dualistic nature.

nathan_compton 4y ago
My problem with this attitude is what even are you talking about? Suppose we "abandon our rational mind" for a moment and sojourn into the irrational. How the heck are we supposed to take anything back from that experience and into the world of discourse? Presumably there is much more bullshit in the endless tracks of irrationality than truth and whatever mechanism by which we choose to carry ideas back clearly can't distinguish the two as it has abandoned anything like epistemology. So what is the point of even talking about it?
- whoisjuan 4y ago
  First, assuming that the universe is an absolute system doesn't mean we can't build models to interpret its nature through binary interpretations. In the same way that a map is not the territory, a mental model for the universe isn't the universe. So saying "abandon our rational mind" is just a rhetorical mechanism to establish that perhaps this is the wrong question, and we should reframe what we understand as absolute or relative. You're incorrectly interpreting my words as a call for irrationality. I'm just saying that our interpretation of the universe and the debates about its origins are often based on ideas that can't be challenged because they are scientific truisms. The problem is that anything that doesn't comply with our standard interpretation of the universe will be deemed esoteric and unscientific. Therefore, it neuters debates that could yield a valid interpretation of the universe.
  - nathan_compton 4y ago
    I still don't really get it. Not all ideas which disagree with or go beyond the current best scientific models of the universe are considered non-scientific or esoteric (if this were the case scientific progress would be impossible). How about this: state explicitly what strategies beyond empiricism, model building, ontology refinement, and epistemological reasoning you think can provide genuine verifiable insight about the world?

efitz 4y ago

Does "cause" exist? I didn't spend the hours reading the entire article, but after 10-15min I realized that the author has adopted a "caused" vs. "uncaused" taxonomy, without really defining what "caused" means. Does causality exist or is it simply an observational phenomenon that is a side effect of our limited perception of space-time? Kind of like "centrifugal force" is an observational phenomenon. Maybe there is no such thing as causality, and we can never know "why stuff exists" because we are incapable of perceiving the answer.

kordlessagain 4y ago
There is no single answer to this question as it is a matter of philosophical and religious debate. Some schools of thought, such as Buddhism, accept the existence of cause and effect, while others, such as some forms of skepticism, deny or question its existence.
kaashif 4y ago
I like the question 'Does "cause" exist?' because it exposes the fact that basic terms haven't been defined and axioms haven't been made clear. This kind of discussion can (and definitely has, in my opinion) devolved into meaningless rambling as a result of vague or missing definitions. I didn't read the whole article either, obviously (way too long), so I may have missed the author defining things. Even the question "Why does anything exist?" is never really broken down and defined. What kind of answers are we looking for? When dealing with philosophical stuff it's crucial to define terms very carefully. If you can't make clear definitions, you're in the realm of nonsense.

jesuslop 4y ago

There is a known old argument in St. Anslem, Leibnitz and Gödel for that in a pantheistic picture. Gödel adopted higher order modal logic, and factors the question via the axiom 'if possible then actual' (god/reality existence). I'm now pleased to discover that in 2017 someone has went through the pains of porting the thing to a proof verifier, Isabelle/HOL (they start from Melvin Fitting reconstruction of the idea in 1999). [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317956529_Types_Tableaus_and_Godel's_God_in_IsabelleHOL https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317956529_Types_Tab...

jesuslop 4y ago
EDIT: axiom -> lemma

nathan_compton 4y ago

This is a lot of ground to cover to get to what is, in my opinion, a very bizarre conclusion which is epistemologically extremely lugubrious: that all structures expressible mathematically also exist and we are (obviously) a subset of those structures. Frankly, this doesn't even feel like any kind of knowledge to me. Its operationally meaningless! In any case, I think the author has the cart before the horse: numbers (and other sorts of mathematics) do not pre-exist reality. Numbers are abstractions of regularities we see in nature. Mathematics is nothing but the observation of regularities in certain sorts of elaborate rituals involving making markings on paper. Many of those rituals are inspired by and correlated with regularities which exist in the world, but its difficult to me to see any reason to believe that they have an independent existence.

crdrost 4y ago
Yeah I had to skim through it as well. I think the author probably has written something that has passed peer review, but has either written so many such things that he has gotten sick of terseness and getting to the point, or so few things that he has not learned to value it in the first place? Like the writing is not god-awful like a lot of the crackpot takes, but it's definitely tortuous. As a theory goes, I don't think this one is successful. It probably either implies that time is an illusion or that we are all Boltzmann brains, and I would take it as a baseline desideratum that our fundamental understanding of the universe does not come in either of these shapes. (Both essentially state “actions don't exist” in different ways, and if the universe is the place where activities occur, the place where things happen, then the idea that nothing is really happening in there appears to fail hard.) Of course is a Christian and a mystic, my understanding of my own answer is that it is also carefully calculated nonsense, nonsense in service of some sort of artistic goal, so I'm not in a great place to really criticize. He can struggle with his mythos and I can struggle with mine, haha.
- nathan_compton 4y ago
  Why believe anything about this question at all? I feel quite strongly that the proper mental posture towards many questions is "I don't have a very compelling reason to hold a strong opinion on that." This feeling it buttressed by the fact that there are a great many tractable scientific and philosophical mysteries which are as yet unresolved. It seems premature to tackle this particular one, perhaps because I fundamentally disagree with the author that we are at a stage in history where it can be tackled "scientifically."

forty 4y ago

Is there a clear distinction in English between "why" and "what for" ? In french it's literally the same words ("pourquoi" vs "pour quoi") My 5yo daughter asked me "why do we exist". I answered the why as in some events that happened that led to our existence, but finding a reason is a bit tougher :)

wizofaus 4y ago
Not a completely clear one, but "what for" is more precise than "why", which can be asking "for what purpose" or "due to what cause". "Why are you in my room" is obviously asking the former, "why are the cookies burnt" fairly obviously the latter (unless you really did deliberately burn them to achieve some particular further goal...).

breuleux 4y ago

I think it's kind of silly to expect that a satisfactory answer to that question exists. Given that there is an infinite number of possible ways the universe could have been ("nothing" being just one of these possibilities), pretty much all of these possibilities are vanishingly improbable, including whichever one them eventually obtains. So I think that "it is what it is", or "it is arbitrary" is a perfectly reasonable answer to why our universe exists. To put it a different way, I don't see why existence couldn't be necessarily arbitrary, or what is repugnant about that notion. I only skimmed the article, but from what I can see they advocate the mathematical universe theory. To me, that's just a metaphysical choice that does not really add any useful information: it is arbitrarily solving the issue by making every consistent universe exist with probability 1, which strikes me as little more than a parlor trick. If there are 100 balls in a box, I draw one, and it has the number 23 on it, I don't think "there are 100 parallel universes, one where I draw ball one, one where I draw ball two, and so on" is a more compelling explanation than "there is one universe and I happened to draw ball 23". I would still want to know why I am in universe 23. Maybe (probably) there is no answer, except that it is what it is.

jawns 4y ago

If you like the question of "Why does anything exist?" then an obvious next question is: "What's stopping things from not existing?" In philosophy, there is a distinction between things that must be (they're called necessary) and things that may or may not be (they're called contingent). For instance, if we use the standard definition of a square, then every square you will ever encounter will necessarily have four sides. In contrast, not every square you encounter will be blue or tiny. Those are contingent properties of a square. A square may be blue, or it may not be. A square may be tiny, or it may not be. Now, would you say that our universe's existence is necessary or contingent? If its existence is necessary, it would mean that there is no possible way for our universe not to exist. If its existence is contingent, then our universe either could exist, or it could not. I happen to think it's contingent. But if our universe is contingent, then it must be contingent upon something that is necessary. Regardless of whether you view that necessary thing as God or something else, if you agree that the universe is contingent, then the contingency doesn't stop at its creation; its continued existence is also contingent. So, beyond needing a "first cause" to explain its existence (as with a picture on a painted canvas), our universe requires a "sustaining cause" (as with a picture on a TV set).

hydrolox 4y ago
but isn't the problem that you could get stuck in an infinite contingency loop? i.e if you pick God, what if God is contingent and so on. Sure you can say something is required but it's rather arbitrary.
- caloriesdont 4y ago
  >Sure you can say something is required but it's rather arbitrary. It's only arbitrary if there aren't good reasons. Dozens of reasons have been given in philosophy, it's up to you to decide if any of them work. One of the big differences would be to point out that the universe is completely composite, whereas a foundation could be purely simple. Josh Rasmussen is a great communicator about this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX79xXgi44o&ab_channel=TheUnapologeticApologists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX79xXgi44o&ab_channel=TheUn...
- 4y ago

abetusk 4y ago

Turing Machine Equivalence is the norm, not the exception.

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phkahler 4y ago

I'm mostly down with the Mathematical Universe and might have independently reached that conclusion. I like to use the example of the Mandelbrot set - did that set/image/fractal exist prior to someone writing a program to create a map of it? I would argue that it did. So a mathematical object exists independently from our ever "discovering" it or its definition. That point of view quickly leads to "All things that have a mathematical definition exist in that same sense" which leads to "If there is a mathematical definition of our universe, that is sufficient cause for it to exist". I do object to the talk of computability. Not all mathematically well-defined things are computable. I also don't like the following from the article: >> Are we to take as serious the idea that we live inside an equation? And this equation somehow produces all computations by virtue of its solutions? And that the whole physical universe is just some kind of shared hallucination? A mathematical definition is not limited to "an equation". What does he even mean by "produces all computations"? And then "shared hallucination" also seem nonsensical - we experience things however the definition allows/causes. The only thing I grapple with is why we perceive the passage of time. If there is a mathematical definition of the entire span of the universe and time, that doesn't satisfy me in understanding why "I" am experiencing "now". Some might argue that a "simulation" is "running" but like the Mandelbrot set, the entire thing is defined at once by the definition, and any need to "run" it pushes the whole problem down one level (like where did god exist before he made the universe?) it's turtles all the way down. So while defining the universe over time might involve a definition that looks like a simulation, that still doesn't explain why we experience the simulation at a single point in time.

ptmvp 4y ago

I think it's interesting to see the ease with which a few commenters on this thread assume they either 1) know how to answer this question or 2) are comfortable hand-waving it away.

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Pixeleen 4y ago

I happen to believe it is because God willed the universe into existence. There are more esoteric explanations, something about him being lonely, but we're not supposed to even start worrying about them until the age of 40.

CharlesW 4y ago
> I happen to believe it is because God willed the universe into existence. Ah yes, Phanes.
- 93po 4y ago
  Hey, don't undersell Chronos and Ananke

triyambakam 4y ago

> The religious person is left with a mystery which is no less than the mystery with which science leaves us As a Hindu I find this baffling. For the Hindu there is a consistency across science and religion, and sometimes the line between the two isn't clear. They work together harmoniously to form my worldview. Based on the cursory information I have about the author's background, I am assuming he was exposed to Western Christianity growing up. I find that this breeds a very narrow minded form of atheism, one that rejects a very specific idea of what God is. I have a suspicion that if many of the atheists in the West were exposed to the full metaphysical understanding of the Eternal Dharma they may not be atheists, or at least be a different kind of atheist than simply a Not-Christian. In Hinduism God is not a man or a woman, but instead the energy that is manifest in every atom of every universe. God is the universal wave function.

packetlost 4y ago
Assigning a personification to a concept is a common theme among many religions throughout the world. To that end, Christianity and those based on it are more of an outlier than the norm.
uh_uh 4y ago
Same question remains: why does that energy exist?
zmgsabst 4y ago
That’s true of Christianity, as well: The philosophy of Christianity is rooted deeply in Platonic ideas — where “God” as the ultimate ideal is embodied both in a human (“Jesus”) and in the happening of the world (“Holy Spirit”). I can’t claim to be an expert in Hinduism — but to my limited understanding, it’s akin to saying that Brahman manifests both through avatars and the actions of deities, as forces of nature.
bergenty 4y ago
I’m Hindu too but why come up with some random bullshit rather than try to figure out what is happening. If you want to call god the universe just say universe. The value of Hinduism is in cultural heritage and providing a pathway for life. It’s in tapping into the mysticism and indulging in the rituals to make life interesting.

russellbeattie 4y ago

I have a better question: Why does everything move, forever? Newton's first law is bewildering when you stop to think about it. From the smallest subatomic particle on up, matter and energy are always moving, both through the universe, as well as within matter itself. Gluons are constantly bopping back and forth among the quarks that make up nucleons, electrons zip around from atom to atom, photons fly off on infinite voyages. The Voyager space probes will never stop unless something stops it. Why? Seems like a fundamental question. Imagine if we discovered the Ultimate Frame Of Reference and were able to lock an atom in 3D space, completely removing its momentum? The first discovery might blow a hole in the side of a mountain as a single stopped atom suddenly gets hit by the Earth at whatever insane speed it's moving through the universe. It'd be the ultimate kinetic energy weapon.

tresqotheq 4y ago

define "existence"

Pixelbrick 4y ago

A concise treatment of all of metaphysics... :)

jorjordandan 4y ago

I had a mushroom trip that made this all make sense (at the time). The gist of it was, there was never nothing. Nothing is a made up concept. It's deeply valuable, but there is no instance of any kind of nothing that actually exists. There is only "exists". The most basic form of existence is change. Even if there had been nothing, and something came from it, in order for something to come from it, there would first need to have been some change. So regardless of how it could have started, change has to be the first thing. But in my opinion, recursive cycles is a more likely explanation than a linear universe with a start and end that are both in 'nothing'. I'm posting this nonsense tongue in cheek but.. I don't think it's completely wrong.

93po 4y ago
A big chunk the posted article addresses this exact topic: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Self-Existent_Thing https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Self-Exi...
greenonions 4y ago
Mushroom origins or no, I completely agree.
emerged 4y ago
Galaxeblaffer 4y ago
My favorite cyclic theory so far is probably Roger Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology. In essence the universe keeps expanding exponentially which in the end becomes equivalent to a new big bang since the universe at that point will loose all notions of scale due to their being no more particles to drive scale. A much better explanation is given here https://youtu.be/FVDJJVoTx7s https://youtu.be/FVDJJVoTx7s
bsedlm 4y ago
I agree 100%. once upone a time I asked myself what the heck do we mean by 'nothing' when asking "why is there something rather than nothing?"? from wondering that, I concluded the same thing you did. that nothing is a made up concept; and I agree, it's super useful and it's ideal instead of real. later on, I started to ponder what the heck does 'everything' really mean, and for now I think that 'everything' is just as made up as 'nothing'. hence, 'everything' doesn't exist in the same way 'something' (anything) exist. it's also just a very valuable made up concept. there is no instance of everything, it's also an assumption. then again, maybe I got stuck in the trip

1970-01-01 4y ago

This question always breaks my brain. It's the ultimate question. I physically jerk back after thinking about it. The initial conditions of this universe are perfect. Maybe there are others that weren't.

twanschik 4y ago

Quantamagazin actually has an article that seems to fit perfectly into the discussion: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-physics-of-nothing-underlies-everything-20220809/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-physics-of-nothing-un...

superb-owl 4y ago

I love the "math, matter, mind" trinity. I think it originates with Penrose - I first came across it in The Road to Reality. I wrote a bit about it (incidentally) here: https://superbowl.substack.com/i/65186479/metacognitive-truth https://superbowl.substack.com/i/65186479/metacognitive-trut...

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Animats 4y ago

Why does anything exist? Funding.

dasil003 4y ago

> For most of history, the question remained beyond the possibility of being answered. But we live in a most-exciting point in time: one where this question has fallen to the progress of human knowledge. > [...] > We now have viable answers to great questions of existence: > [...] > It required us to assume math, rather than matter, is fundamental. For all the length of this exposition, the conclusion is pure Streetlight Effect. Despite the fact that our brains have allowed us to achieve quite a high level of abstract reasoning relative to other Earth fauna, we remain inextricably coupled to our meat sack nature. It doesn't matter how many logical theories and models you stack up that map to observable phenomena, the truth is that there is no basis to assume that math is fundamental. Math, is just a tool for building models, and to paraphrase George Box: despite being useful, all models are wrong. The irony of attempting to answer the hardest philosophical questions in this way, reflects a very human emotional need to transcend our obvious physical and observational limitations. We can no more explain why the universe exists than an amoeba could explain why a skyscraper exists, and actually the gap is much much bigger, because whatever we observe and determine as causality can always elicit another "why". A three year old can master this trick, and yet here we have a grown and supposedly rational person who does not want to come to terms with the fact that "what" can never fully explain "why". This existential ambiguity is our birthright and is actually beautiful and inspiring if you unclench your bowels a bit.

jiggywiggy 4y ago
Us humans are all just meaning machines. We are on a constant quest of meaning. Quiet tiring to be honest. Somehow the question keeps arising in human mind, what does it all mean? (Especially if we have too much time to think) Yet us modern folks keep trying to solve it outside of our mind in which it arises, biology, physics, whatever. Maybe the answer is more straightforward?
- dasil003 4y ago
  Agree with you 100% and I love the way you phrased that. Maybe it is more straightforward, and I respect everyone's beliefs here. The hard part is proving it one way or the other.

6510 4y ago

even funnier: If there are non zero odds for something to arise out of nothing the amount of nothing has disturbing consequences. It must happen infinity often, it always did and will continue forever.

skeltoac 4y ago

Logged in to say something about how the question is based on a false dichotomy, but now I think it better just to say nothing.

floppydiskette 4y ago
You said something, not nothing, though.

jiggywiggy 4y ago

Often modern rational people are not aware they've surrendered their experience of meaning to the theory of evolution, where in the old days it was surrendered to religion. Often you hear modern skeptics speak like, we do things to preserve the self, or to preserve the "race". Theories of evolving are not the same as truths of meaning. Even though in many senses religion was more restrictive, in the search for meaning it might have given more useful answers. Useful in the sense of practical.

bobabob 4y ago
Evolution is not a theory, it's a fact, you can see it happening.
- jiggywiggy 4y ago
  Both and. Same with physics. They are theoretical approximations of the truth. They are true because they work, the times they don't we keep adjusting it. However they both don't explain all of reality, especially not human meaning seeking, so what I'm saying is we shouldnt be trying to solve the problem of meaning with a model for explaining a biological phenomenon.

layer8 4y ago

My take is the following: I don't think that "existence" is an actual property of $whatever, an actual property in the sense that it could be either way (either exists or not) without logical contradiction. Because if that were the case, both a reality where $whatever exists or where it does not exist would be conceivable, or in other words, whether $whatever exists or does not exists would be arbitrary, without explanation of why it is one way and not the other. Because, if there would be an explanation why it is one way and not the other, then effectively it would be a necessary consequence and not a freely choosable property. So, if on the other hand it is arbitrary, then that means that effectively there cannot be an explanation. Another way to put this is that anything "existing" must either mean it is an (necessarily arbitrarry, in the sense of freely chosen) axiom, or that is a mere implication. Now comes the subjective part: Necessarily arbitrary axioms are highly unattractive, because they cannot ever be explained, by definition. If we accept such a thing, then implicitly everything is arbitrary (within the realm of what is logically consistent) due to the arbitraryness of the axioms from which everything derives, and thus there cannot be an explanation of the specific "existing" reality. Therefore, by Occam's razor, it makes much more sense to me to not assume that reality is based on such inherent arbitraryness, and rather assume (which is really the absence of an assumption) that everything that is logically consistent "exists". However, labelling it as "existing" is meaningless, because in that view that is just a synonym for "logically consistent". So, that's why I don't think that "existing" is a property different from "logically consistent".

hyoogle 4y ago

In response to Leibniz's ontological query "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Morgenbesser answered "If there were nothing you'd still be complaining!" — Sidney Morgenbesser https://quotepark.com/quotes/1744434-sidney-morgenbesser-in-response-to-leibnizs-ontological-query-why-is/ https://quotepark.com/quotes/1744434-sidney-morgenbesser-in-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Morgenbesser

blacksqr 4y ago

To me, the issue and flaw with this argument, as with most computation-based theories about existence and consciousness, is that we like to conceive of computation in purely abstract terms. But it's been known since the 1940s that the concept of computation is founded on information theory, which is simply a restatement of parts of the laws of thermodynamics, which are derived from classical physics and applicable only in the macro world. But we know that the universe is not classical in nature. So it seems to me that trying to use a classical-only approximation to do all the backfilling to a theory of the nature of existence must necessarily come up short. It feels "like butter scraped over too much bread." Information theory also establishes that any information state must correspond directly to a physical state, so it seems to me most likely that all our concepts of mathematics are not communions with the mind of God, but projections of some aspect of the physical functioning of our brains. And since our brains are products of a non-classical universe, the classical nature of our concepts of computation represents some sort of essential reduction of complexity; just like our brains reduce the complexity of our sensory inputs to produce a model of the world sensible enough for us to act on. Trying to employ that reduced-complexity model to account for the nature of existence itself is necessarily forced and futile in my view, like trying to explain the nature of a reflection in a mirror as an alternate dimension. It reminds me of how Frank Tipler pointed out that Nietzsche's theories of physics and his concept of eternal return were in fact formally correct, or would be if the universe were classical in nature. But the universe is non-classical, and thus there were surprises in 20th century calculations of the nature and destiny of the universe. Until there are full non-classical theories of physics and of computation, I think we as well will need to expect surprises in conceptions of how existence came about.

stakkur 4y ago

Wrong question.

im3w1l 4y ago

Before asking why, can we even prove that anything does exist? Three famous quotes that many people agree with: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" "I think therefore I exist" "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." We can interpret the first saying that it is questionable if something exists if it isn't perceived. It ties reality to perception. The second quote insists that a person exists because he is thinking, because he is exhibiting conscious activity. How can we interpret the last one. What does it mean that something "doesn't go away". I take it to mean that it keeps affecting you and impacting your life. I think it's pretty interesting that it all seems to tie into the experience of a conscious entity. Maybe it's a self-centered view of the world, or maybe these two concepts really are intrinsically linked.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

if there's something I learnt in my life, if there's a space, something will eventually fill it.