Why is there Something instead of Nothing?

[Olm the Water King]

Posted on consciousness, and here's the other Big Question (is there a third one?)

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...ain-why-theres-something-rather-than-nothing/

Science Will Never Explain Why There's Something Rather Than Nothing

By John Horgan on April 23, 2012

When predicting something that science will never do, it's wise to recall the French philosopher Auguste Comte. In 1835 he asserted that science will never figure out what stars are made of. That seemed like a safe bet, but within decades astronomers started determining the chemical composition of the Sun and other stars by analyzing the spectrum of light they emitted.

I'm nonetheless going out on a limb and guessing that science will never, ever answer what I call "The Question": Why is there something rather than nothing? You might think this prediction is safe to the point of triviality, but certain prominent scientists are claiming not merely that they can answer The Question but that they have already done so. Physicist Lawrence Krauss peddles this message in his new book A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (Free Press, 2012).

...

 

[miss fortune]

fascinating... though I think pondering it too long may make my brain implode

something from nothing makes no sense really...

 

[EcK]

There's lot of theories. (quantum uncertainty, etc. etc. etc.) but I guess the best one at our level of knowledge (testable stuff i mean) would just be the good old entropic principle.
The universe exists because if it didn't we wouldn't be there to ponder about it.

 

[EcK]

Also it gets much more probable when you think 'big' enough.
Though we don't really have words for it. But as long as something can happen if you give it enough 'time' and 'space' (meaningless yes) it will exist.
If you run into a wall again and again long enough you'll get through. Either by actually breaking through (well more probably it'll break you but bear with me - thought experiment) or by tunneling through it. Though it's so unlikely that it may take quadrillions and quadrillions of years.

If one intelligence bearing universe exists, for all we know there is an infinity of them with and infinity of universe exactly like this one, where I wrote those same words, others where I did something slightly different. There's no need for 'parallel universes' in time, if we deal in numbers big enough it would happen in space as well. or both. of course.

I'm not going to go into the physics but from some theoretical standpoints we could be (the universe) the equivalent of a 'black hole'. And similar physics (allowing black holes-type phenomena to occur naturally) could mean that life-friendly universes naturally create more universes every time a star collapse on its own mass.

Like a 'natural selection' of life bearing universes of sorts.

For all we know our universe is an experiment at the very very large hadron colider and in a fraction of a nanosecond we evaporate. But from our perspective trillions of years have passed.

And for all we know our type of universe happens randomly at first but is then created much more reliably and numerously by intelligent life inside these or other created universes by 'god-scientists' who may or may not even know it or may or may not have any way of influencing it (not to mention time dilation..).

and for all we know big bangs is what happens when universes colide, and one day everything will stop. in, yes, a 'big bang' when we come too close to another universe and they are like galaxies, attracting more and more 'mass' and 'energy' until they can create particules complex enough to support life, and then even more complex matter...

Or/and every time a universe is created the rules change (because why should the rules always allow life? That's improbable) and one time gravity is stronger, while other atomic forces weaker etc... (if gravity is even a 'force' and not just a result of entropy)



etc. etc. etc.

As many possible theories as there is stars in the sky (more actually) as long as we don't have solid data.

 

[EcK]

Or if quantum uncertainty exists 'out there' (in some meta universal 'space' / higher dimensions -- whatever we want to call it)
Universe just come into being because if speed and mass are not absolutes, then neither is 0.

That's how black holes evaporate after all. (virtual particules 'sucking' their energy dry at their boundaries)

So one day, out of nothing. BOOM.

So when you say 'how can there be something out of nothing'

I say "out there I don't know' but in OUR universe: it already happens, every day, every second, pico second...

The uncertainty principle in quantum physics seems to apply to 0 as well. Energy out of nothing, in your neighbourhood.
It's all just a matter of likelihood. like flipping a coin.

So why look further?
It happens.

 

[EcK]

Or quantum uncertainty is just because we're one big hologram, (that would explain alot about blackholes, btw).
and we're just seeing a '2D data' projected on '3D' - it's ahem.. pixelated.

But that's a whole other bag of stories

 

[Yama]

This is a question that I ask myself all the time. It hurts my brain too much trying to find an answer. Everything has to have a beginning, but did the universe have a beginning? If so, then what was there before that and how did it happen? If not, then how has it always existed? As mortal beings I don't think we'll ever truly be able to comprehend some of the mysteries of the universe. They're really fun to think about though. Until you get a headache and have to go lie down.

 

[EcK]

Posted on consciousness, and here's the other Big Question (is there a third one?)

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...ain-why-theres-something-rather-than-nothing/

Oh I just skimmed through the actual article.
So yeah his idea is based on uncertainty.

I and I think about everyone who thought about big bangs and quantum stuff already thought about it. Not really an original idea more like something you think about and then realize a gazillion people already had upon googling.

It's flawed though for the same reasons mentioned in said article. It's based on 'our physics' and saying 'our physics' apply to 'outside the universe' is not a given.
ie: our physics seem to allow for life, which is unlikely. So while you could say 'ok so say some of the laws of physics can change but the 'uncertainty' remains.
It does cover up the flaw of 'why is it fine tuned' but... it still doesn't explain the laws in the first place.

So yeah, as I was saying in previous posts essentially. At this point we don't know. The more data we have the fewer theories will remain possible, that's how science works it's cool that way.

 

[EcK]

This is a question that I ask myself all the time. It hurts my brain too much trying to find an answer. Everything has to have a beginning, but did the universe have a beginning? If so, then what was there before that and how did it happen? If not, then how has it always existed? As mortal beings I don't think we'll ever truly be able to comprehend some of the mysteries of the universe. They're really fun to think about though. Until you get a headache and have to go lie down.

I never understand when people say 'mortal' because it's not as if we know of any truly 'immortal'/amortal beings.
If all beings and all we know (yes even protons) are 'mortal' (ie: will break down) then why even mention it.

 

[Yama]

I never understand when people say 'mortal' because it's not as if we know of any truly 'immortal'/amortal beings.
If all beings and all we know (yes even protons) are 'mortal' (ie: will break down) then why even mention it.

What I mean is, the length of a human life isn't even a single grain of sand on a beach compared to how long the universe is assumed to have been around. Maybe it will end, I don't know. But what would come after that? And what came before, if it has a beginning? Why does any of it exist? Why is there even such a thing as existence itself? I don't know if we will ever be able to truly know.

 

[Zangetshumody]

I would prefer to just talk about this topic directly rather than first dealing with cited material;

I didn't read the whole article, but I read enough of the start of an argument to know at least that one was fallacious.

A vacuum is not nothing.

I see now that the article also seems to point out that same contention...

I would also like to draw out further the point that:

If you can't fully answer the 'why', you can never give a full account for 'what' it is either.
And when science, professes to contain a full of account of any or each of these things, does do itself disservice in hiding behind its fudged interpretation of how the application of science gets to any 'answers (sic)' at all.

A word I shall start using after I read it in the last article you posted earlier;- "physical-ism" (which I just used to refer to as 'materialism', or 'material-monism'), is the blatant presumption woven into the operative-structure of the Scientific Method, therefore Science is obviously incapable of evidencing consciousness, nor is it capable of accounting for any point at which the empirical observation does not correlate with deterministic features, which is why all science can do is translate the uncertainty principle (in Quantum Mechanics) into numbers, and then shout at people for being innumerate if they catch onto this charade.

Physical-ism has vast philosophical problems,

1. it can only be presumed to operate apriori, which is itself a shaky inconsistency [of contingent thinking that must be absurdly taken for granted].

2. It must forge an impossible cohort of interdependent reliance, from the entirety of human knowledge, and so, its very analogous to a cancerous part of the body, growing by the disordered displacement of symbiosis,- amongst the hosts' component parts; and so in promoting its limited vision for an imposed hierarchy that reinforces its agenda of the physicalism-bias, there is no end until the cancer is done supplanting the hosts component parts into the image of its anti-consciousness, anti-free-will dogma (note: Science is incapable of ever producing evidence on the validity of this dogma, and so it can only maintain its hierarchy by smear campaigns and appeals to non-thinking, and appeals for not thinking that physicalism should be substantiated rather than just blindly presumed to operate (because all the math-models of the world, still can't convince me that quantum mechanics is governed by forces of the "physical" characteristic described by those numbers***(see footnote)).

3. At this point, I can only encourage you guys to watch the current Supergirl series, and maybe read some Superman comic books, because this exactly the kind of stuff of Crypton's demise.


Footnotes:
***One could feebly argue the answer is possessed somewhere in those numbers, but, that its presented in such a useless framework, that it is just become a mirror representation for the scientific method itself and its own folly. And in that mirror, we can only proceed with Science intact, if we conclude that the universe itself operates as an aggregate of statistical probability, which sounds only a little bit outlandish (seeing as there is actually only one STREAM of outcome ever (that we can suppose access to)), until we lend it some more weight by extrapolating: actually there are multitudes of every possible universe so that our statistical model does render us the full answer, it just seems confusing to us, because we can't see past the limitation of this universe into all the possible universes like the math-model can! (So now Science must cast its speculation into a plurality of the present (many-worlds), or a hidden plurality we must believe lives inside of our one and only stream (either in the dynamism of its own singular course, wherein we can only ever compare our one stream to a cosmic luck (as we rate it against the math-model), or a veiled divergence that encompasses any possible course for the stream, with no account for the location or navigation between those possibilities (other than luck rated against which universe was destined to keep containing you, wherein the math-model itself is an arbitrary co-incidence that is only useful in telling what kind of luck you have displaced amongst the collection of veiled alternative-universes... I do think there is even Astrology that is more convincing than all of this, sadly.)

 

[EcK]

What I mean is, the length of a human life isn't even a single grain of sand on a beach compared to how long the universe is assumed to have been around. Maybe it will end, I don't know. But what would come after that? And what came before, if it has a beginning? Why does any of it exist? Why is there even such a thing as existence itself? I don't know if we will ever be able to truly know.

Well by definition we can't know what we will / could know but don't know 'now'. I don't think it's very useful to hum, i mean some of what you say are kind of co-dependant truisms. Like differentiating 'existence' and 'things existing'. By default that kind of reasoning will hurt your brain (or anyone's) because it's a feedback loop.

Just look at the data and make your own mind about it, but if you just think of that to yourself without information you'll never get out of it.

 

[Yama]

^Agreed. Even just a black void filled with nothing is something--it's a black void filled with nothing. The mere concept of there being truly nothing is something we can't even imagine or fathom.

 

[EcK]

I would prefer to just talk about this topic directly rather than first dealing with cited material;

I didn't read the whole article, but I read enough of the start of an argument to know at least that one was fallacious.

A vacuum is not nothing.

I see now that the article also seems to point out that same contention...

I would also like to draw out further the point that:

If you can't fully answer the 'why', you can never give a full account for 'what' it is either.
And when science, professes to contain a full of account of any or each of these things, does do itself disservice in hiding behind its fudged interpretation of how the application of science gets to any 'answers (sic)' at all.

A word I shall start using after I read it in the last article you posted earlier;- "physical-ism" (which I just used to refer to as 'materialism', or 'material-monism'), is the blatant presumption woven into the operative-structure of the Scientific Method, therefore Science is obviously incapable of evidencing consciousness, nor is it capable of accounting for any point at which the empirical observation does not correlate with a deterministic features, which is why all science can do is translate the uncertainty principle (in Quantum Mechanics) into numbers, and then shout at people for being innumerate if they catch onto this charade.

Physical-ism has vast philosophical problems,

1. it can only be presumed to operate apriori, which is itself a shaky inconsistency [of contingent thinking that must be absurdly taken for granted].

2. It must forge an impossible cohort of interdependent reliance, from the entirety of human knowledge, and so, its very analogous to a cancerous part of the body, growing by the disordered displacement of symbiosis,- amongst the hosts' component parts; and so in promoting its limited vision for an imposed hierarchy that reinforces its agenda of the physicalism-bias, there is no end until the cancer is done supplanting the hosts component parts into the image of its anti-consciousness, anti-free-will dogma (note: Science is incapable of ever producing evidence on the validity of this dogma, and so it can only maintain its hierarchy by smear campaigns and appeals to non-thinking, and appeals for not thinking that physicalism should be substantiated rather than just blindly presumed to operative (because all the math-models of the world, still can't convince me that quantum mechanics is governed by the forces of a "physical" characteristic described by those numbers***).

3. At this point, I can only encourage you guys to watch the current Supergirl series, and maybe read some Superman comic books, because this is the stuff of Crypton's demise.


Footnotes:
***One could feebly argue the answer is possessed somewhere in those numbers, but, that its presented in such a useless framework, that it is just become a mirror representation for the scientific method itself and its own folly. And in that mirror, we can only proceed with Science intact, if we conclude that the universe itself operates as an aggregate of statistical probability, which sounds only a little bit outlandish (seeing as there is actually only one STREAM of supposed outcome ever), until we lend it some more weight by extrapolating: actually there are multitudes of every possible universe so that our statistical model does render us the full answer, it just seems confusing to us, because we can't see past the limitation of this universe into all the possible universes like the math-model can (so now Science must cast its speculation into a plurality of the present (many-worlds), or a hidden plurality we must believe lives inside of our one and only stream (either in the dynamism of its own singular course, wherein we can only ever compare our one stream to a cosmic luck (as we rate it against the math-model), or a veiled divergence that encompass any possible course for the steam, with no account for the location or navigation between those possibilities (other than luck rated against which universe contains you, wherein the math-model itself is an arbitrary co-incidence that is only useful in telling what kind of luck you have displaced amongst a collection of veiled universes... ).

When I see someone developing and contorting a whole philosophy just to point at what they see as an empty outline in the volume they've just made up and proudly say 'see: there's stuff there - I WAS RIGHT' it's often because they started with a conclusion. If you do that there's an infinity of possible explanations for what you're talking about and your opinion might as well not exist/not have any meaning.

It was a blank sheet to start with, if you shape it into a circle with a hole in the middle and point at the hole I'll just tell you that.. well. You just made that hole. Please stop playing with the photocopy machine.

What you're making is the same mistake Descartes made centuries ago.

You're doing it wrong.

 

[EcK]

^Agreed. Even just a black void filled with nothing is something--it's a black void filled with nothing. The mere concept of there being truly nothing is something we can't even imagine or fathom.

Of course we can't. why would we evolve to understand concepts that don't correspond to the data/environment we evolved in? There'd be no benefit to that.

 

[Yama]

Of course we can't. why would we evolve to understand concepts that don't correspond to the data/environment we evolved in? There'd be no benefit to that.

You're right. It's just that since humans have begun developing intellectual pursuits after civilization, it's seems we've become so curious to understand things that we just can't really ever understand, I think.

 

[EcK]

You're right. It's just that since humans have begun developing intellectual pursuits after civilization, it's seems we've become so curious to understand things that we just can't really ever understand, I think.

Yeah it's kind of awesome
We'd be so bored otherwise! (well probably not.)

 

[Zangetshumody]

When I see someone developing and contorting a whole philosophy just to point at what they see as an empty outline in the volume they've just made up and proudly say 'see: there's stuff there - I WAS RIGHT' it's often because they started with a conclusion. If you do that there's an infinity of possible explanations for what you're talking about and your opinion might as well not exist/not have any meaning.

It was a blank sheet to start with, if you shape it into a circle with a hole in the middle and point at the hole I'll just tell you that.. well. You just made that hole. Please stop playing with the photocopy machine.

What you're making is the same mistake Descartes made centuries ago.

You're doing it wrong.

Do you ever bother actually making a response using direct critique? Or just pretending to go through the motions of intellectualism (as you've come to imitate them) through mere dealings in flaccid insinuation?

If the rest of your responses are as pretentious as this last one, I won't bother wasting my time with further replies.

 

[EcK]

Do you ever bother actually making a response using direct critique? Or just pretending to go through the motions of intellectualism (as you've come to imitate them) through mere dealings in flaccid insinuation?

If the rest of your responses are as pretentious as this last one, I won't bother wasting my time with further replies.

Seriously?
'pretending to go through the notion of intellectualism' you recycled 3 century old ideas without the kind of elegant discourse already existing on the topic.
Back then men didn't know what we know now. You do not have that excuse.

I answered in kind. I understand this may be infuriating to you but what I'm offering is simply fair treatment.

As I said, you start with a conclusion. So what is there to discuss exactly? If you do that your opinion is by default meaningless.
I assume that because assuming your theories are overcompensated cognitive dissonances is the kinder of two options.

So again? what is there to discuss?

When that 'science' you demonize for whatever personal reason does exactly what you mock it for not being able to achieve (predictive power) it becomes obvious that you do not know what you are talking about.

And talking about kalias? And essentialism. Please. It's recycled pre-industrial philosophy. if you want to do that at least stick to Plato or Nietzsche.

So.. again and a last time. What is there to discuss, if you do not seem to know anything about the subjet at hand?

 

[jixmixfix]

my.guess.would be because nothing cant exist.