
Why Is There Something Instead of Nothing? (2015) - saadalem
https://waitbutwhy.com/table/why-is-there-something-instead-of-nothing
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ericb
I struggled with this--then I realized the question is flawed. The question
presumes the default is _nothing_.

What if the default is _everything_?

In other words, there's no reason for the universe to be any one thing,
including "nothing" so it is simply everything--every possibility that could
be, is. Every combination of matter, every type of rules, or sequence of
possibilities that can be, exists, all in infinite quantities. We just happen
to exist in one possibility with conscious matter able to observe our small
corner of the infinity of possibilities.

~~~
andrekandre
> What if the default is everything?

said slightly differently, maybe the default is "anything"

if there is no reason for there to be "something" then there is also no reason
for there to be "nothing"

and (please correct me if i am wrong) it seems that according to quantum
physics, the default state of space is just random noise

so i would aslo concur, its a flawed question starting from an unproven
premise (default = nil)

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woodandsteel
We are trying to answer this question with our minds, so how we think about
the question and if it can be answered will depend on how we think about our
minds.

If you take the scientific position that are mental processes are the produce
of material brains produced through natural forces, you will believe our
thinking is limited in power, like anything material. And that being the case,
at some point the mind will run into questions it cannot answer, and the
question of why there is something rather than nothing would seem to be that
sort of question. And if you think of the problem that way then you will just
accept the mystery and go on to thinking about matters where your mind might
make some useful progress.

If you think our minds are the product of a God that understands everything,
but made human minds limited, then you will also accept the mystery.

On the other hand, if you hold, as in Platonism or Hindu mysticism, that the
mind is non-material and one with the Infinite, then you will likely believe
that humans who grow spiritually enough can at some point come to understand
why reality exists.

I think the waitbutwhy guy is philosophically in the first position but hasn't
thought it out logically yet.

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simonh
Marvin Minsky had an interesting take on this. His attitude was that ours is
one possible world, but that possibility is all it takes. Imagine a computer
program. It executes, it processes data and it produces output, but running
the program doesn’t change the fact of its existence, or its result. Given
that program and input the output was always going to happen, simply
instantiating it didn’t change anything about the program or it’s behaviour.
So with any universe, a possible universe simply exists.

Personally I find the zero energy universe concept pretty interesting. It
turns out that the net energy of the universe is probably zero. This is
possible because gravitational energy in the curvature of space is negative.
If this is true, and it seems it is, then in terms of quantum mechanics
there’s nothing to stop the universe from emerging from a net zero energy
random fluctuation. But then a fluctuation of what? Well quantum fields are
simply probability distributions. Maybe everything in the universe simply
boils down to the possibilities expressed in a set of consistent probabilistic
mathematical structures.

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tobr
As it says in the article, it’s _the_ question. But a clue is that to even
ponder the question, there has to be something. If there really was _nothing_
, you wouldn’t have noticed.

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genjipress
"Why Does The World Exist?" is a fun book-length tour of the various ways
people try to answer this question.

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tengbretson
I don't think it's necessarily a given that nothingness is even an option.

