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 co

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.