Why is there something rather than nothing at all?
enlighten me! >:D
There is nothing. You are a dream.
Cindi
Quote from: Cindi Jones on June 06, 2007, 04:21:15 PM
There is nothing. You are a dream.
Cindi
alas
Quote from: Katia on May 28, 2007, 11:41:39 PM
i'm mad
Quote from: Cindi Jones on May 29, 2007, 12:19:24 AM
Quote from: Katia on May 28, 2007, 11:57:46 PM
Quote from: Cindi Jones on May 28, 2007, 11:49:11 PM
Yeah Katia, I'd be mad too.... judging from your avatar, you're all cracked up!
Cindi
i meant. mentally insane
Katia... so did I!
;)
Cindi
hence, insanity = dream
Someone, dreaming, desired another dreamer.
the infinite nature of the universe allowed there to be enough combinations for something to happen.
Quote from: Pica Pica on June 06, 2007, 06:17:33 PM
the infinite nature of the universe allowed there to be enough combinations for something to happen.
So many combos, derived of nothing? Is infinity incongruent with zero?
infinity allows a lot of playfulness. i never said it was made from nothing...if it were all nothing then, no combos - and no us to wonder.
So, in the words of Rosanne Rosannadanna:
It's always somethin'.
in this case there must be, or there would not be any somethings to talk about it. Doesn't mean that there had to be though.
Doesn't mean there had to be, at all.
Was it always somethin', though? Was there never nuthin'?
Quote from: Katia on June 06, 2007, 03:38:44 PM
Why is there something rather than nothing at all?
enlighten me! >:D
No reason. But it is inevitable that there is something. If there were nothing, you couldn't be asking the question, now could you?
Quote from: Cindi Jones on June 06, 2007, 04:21:15 PM
There is nothing. You are a dream.
A dream is something.
Way back in the mists of time I did a university degree in mathematics. One of the things that
really fascinated me was creating numbers out of nothing. So by assuming "nothing" exists you
define the number 1 to be the set whose only member is that "nothing" and, hey presto!, you've
created "something" out of "nothing".
Quote from: Fiona on June 15, 2007, 07:31:28 AM
...by assuming "nothing" exists you define the number 1 to be the set whose only member is that "nothing" and, hey presto!, you've created "something" out of "nothing".
So, in other words, {something} and {nothing} have a kind of equivalence, no?
none/o.t.a.
Quote from: None of the Above on June 15, 2007, 01:38:43 PM
So, in other words, {something} and {nothing} have a kind of equivalence, no?
LOL, about as much as "up" and "down," or "left" and "right..."
Or me and you ;)
~Kate~
;) ;)
all of the above
Quote from: Cindi Jones on June 06, 2007, 04:21:15 PM
There is nothing. You are a dream.
Cindi
Whose dream, initially?
all or nothing at all
QuoteWhy is there something rather than nothing at all?
Not A Thing Can Not Not Be
A
Thing
Can Not
Not
Be
:laugh:
Quote from: None of the Above on June 15, 2007, 01:38:43 PM
Quote from: Fiona on June 15, 2007, 07:31:28 AM
...by assuming "nothing" exists you define the number 1 to be the set whose only member is that "nothing" and, hey presto!, you've created "something" out of "nothing".
So, in other words, {something} and {nothing} have a kind of equivalence, no?
none/o.t.a.
More like nothing is something, therefore something exists.
Quote from: Fiona on June 15, 2007, 03:25:27 PM
Quote from: None of the Above on June 15, 2007, 01:38:43 PM
Quote from: Fiona on June 15, 2007, 07:31:28 AM
...by assuming "nothing" exists you define the number 1 to be the set whose only member is that "nothing" and, hey presto!, you've created "something" out of "nothing".
So, in other words, {something} and {nothing} have a kind of equivalence, no?
none/o.t.a.
More like nothing is something, therefore something exists.
well yeah, but {nothing is something} can be said to a statement of equivalence.
sum of the above
Now listen up childrens,
According to my self professed theory; It is totally entirely impossible for nothing to exist. I have no proof and no stats to show ye on this. Ya gots to take my word for it. Ya just gots to. No. You don't understand. Ya gots to take my word.
Actually, I came to the conclusion that it's impossible for nothing to exist using my superhuman power of intuition. It's what separates me from the grapes.
Questions like "Where does space end and what's beyond it?" and "How did everything in existence form...from nothing?" have always gotten the best of me. My only logical answer is that it's an infinite loop of existence, meaning that when space ends, a new space starts, or it ends at the beginning, therefore, creating an infinite circle of space. Just like space, when "something" ends, it loops back around and starts a new something, therefore, creating an infinite loop of something. Don't ask me how, but that's my take on it.
Sarah
Who says that there is something? perhaps it would be better described as a state of no-nothingness that we perceive as something. This is because we assume we are part of it and the only thing we can say about ourselves for sure is that we are, after all all the rest could be illusion. It would be more helpfully to see ourselves as no nothingness not no-perceiving itself.
Imagine that the universe at the moment of creation had no dimensions but instead of expanding as we conventionally perceive it to do its contents started shrinking a witness such as us within the universe would believe it to was expanding. They would also have to deal with the seeming paradox that it has no exterior dimensions.
What is mass? it is just huge spaces with a multitude of tiny subatomic particles held in a complex interrelation, and these are really just composed of energy. What is energy? well you need it to move mass. Cant you see the whole illusion is paper thin, something cant exist nor can nothing. We are in a paradox that we can call no-nothingness for want of a better word.
I have to just quote this with emphases
Quote from: Fer on June 16, 2007, 07:33:07 AM
Who says that there is something? perhaps it would be better described as a state of no-nothingness that we perceive as something. This is because we assume we are part of it and the only thing we can say about ourselves for sure is that we are, after all all the rest could be illusion. It would be more helpfully to see ourselves as no nothingness not no-perceiving itself.
Imagine that the universe at the moment of creation had no dimensions but instead of expanding as we conventionally perceive it to do its contents started shrinking a witness such as us within the universe would believe it to was expanding. They would also have to deal with the seeming paradox that it has no exterior dimensions.
What is mass? it is just huge spaces with a multitude of tiny subatomic particles held in a complex interrelation, and these are really just composed of energy. What is energy? well you need it to move mass. Cant you see the whole illusion is paper thin, something cant exist nor can nothing. We are in a paradox that we can call no-nothingness for want of a better word.
YOW! are we having fun yet! Brilliant.
Quote from: Sarah B on June 15, 2007, 08:26:45 PM
Questions like "Where does space end and what's beyond it?" and "How did everything in existence form...from nothing?" have always gotten the best of me. My only logical answer is that it's an infinite loop of existence, meaning that when space ends, a new space starts, or it ends at the beginning, therefore, creating an infinite circle of space. Just like space, when "something" ends, it loops back around and starts a new something, therefore, creating an infinite loop of something. Don't ask me how, but that's my take on it.
Sarah
A fair amount of cosmologists think that when a universe 'ends', a new one 'begins', like that... The Vedic sages said that the whole thing (thing/not-thing, when you get to Sakyamuni's take on it) is an infinite feedback loop where origin and individuation meet...
Quote from: RebeccaFog on June 15, 2007, 08:16:16 PM
Now listen up childrens,
According to my self professed theory; It is totally entirely impossible for nothing to exist. I have no proof and no stats to show ye on this. Ya gots to take my word for it. Ya just gots to. No. You don't understand. Ya gots to take my word.
Actually, I came to the conclusion that it's impossible for nothing to exist using my superhuman power of intuition. It's what separates me from the grapes.
just cos it makes us differnt from grapes, don't mean we're better. can any of us be nicer than a good wine?
Quote from: Pica Pica on June 16, 2007, 09:06:18 PM
Quote from: RebeccaFog on June 15, 2007, 08:16:16 PM
Now listen up childrens,
According to my self professed theory; It is totally entirely impossible for nothing to exist. I have no proof and no stats to show ye on this. Ya gots to take my word for it. Ya just gots to. No. You don't understand. Ya gots to take my word.
Actually, I came to the conclusion that it's impossible for nothing to exist using my superhuman power of intuition. It's what separates me from the grapes.
just cos it makes us differnt from grapes, don't mean we're better. can any of us be nicer than a good wine?
I would prefer to be a nonalcoholic drink. Maybe Grape juice or some other non carbonated drink. I just don't see the attraction with wine.
Because something is easier to work with than nothing at all.
Why How is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
http://iai.tv/video/why-is-there-something-rather-than-nothing (http://iai.tv/video/why-is-there-something-rather-than-nothing)
Hm, this is probably a good companion piece to the above video:
A Universe From Nothing?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/04/28/a-universe-from-nothing/#.Us-eprTcD-I (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/04/28/a-universe-from-nothing/#.Us-eprTcD-I)
QuoteWhat is mass? it is just huge spaces with a multitude of tiny subatomic particles held in a complex interrelation, and these are really just composed of energy. What is energy? well you need it to move mass. Cant you see the whole illusion is paper thin, something cant exist nor can nothing. We are in a paradox that we can call no-nothingness for want of a better word.
It's weird knowing my house is made up of just a spec of 'solid matter', the rest is energy. The weight of my house is the weight of this tiny spec.
Just weird. :icon_headache:
Kia Ora
The question 'is' the answer... It's 'something to think about :eusa_whistle:
Metta Zenda :)
I think maybe nothing and something - or existence and nonexistence - might be the same thing.
It's interesting to think of this: at the earliest stages of the universe, the universe was extremely orderly - and what is more orderly than a void that is completely static? It is the same everywhere. Just like it might have been at the start of the universe - the same everywhere. How might you define extremely orderly? Maybe by describing it as "the same everywhere." So what if the 'death' of a universe, by entropy causing it to be completely equalized and the same everywhere, was actually the start of another universe, quite possibly completely different from the first?
So, what is 'nothing', or a 'blank void' to those of us in our universe, might actually be the moment of creation of another universe - and what we see as our beginning, our 'big bang', might have been perceived as 'nothingness' or a 'blank void' to the inhabitants of the previous universe, if such a universe did exist.
Maybe 'nothing' is actually just another type of 'something' which is beyond our level of understanding or clashing with our laws of physics, yet emerges from them.
I don't know.
The best answer I've heard is that 'nothing' is too unstable.
Well, I'll leave an excerpt from a book I wrote once on this very subject. I got a headache writing this particular point in the story...see if you can keep up. I know I couldn't. It is about a "higher being" trying to explain the nature of Something and Nothing to a group of "lesser" beings:
6. Looking not at it, hearing not it speak, Ray still knew before him and his companions stood a being that existed just as any other creature in this Sphere.
7. Who was this? This being answered in accordance as if it knew their curiosity firsthand:
8. "(I) says (I) am, always has (I) been! (I) says you are not (I). (I) knows you are you alone...understand? (I) is the only (I): no one else is (I), this is true."
9. Duvall diligently tries to scratch the itch of confusion that was the bothersome crawling of curiosity across his brow, now tickling his scalp. He steps forward, eyes straining and lips cocked. In his awkwardness, Duvall asks:
10. "I am confused, noble one, as to why one would be so obsessed with a name?"
11. The creature laughs without laughing:
12. "(I) smiles as (I) likes to do when (I) finds pleasure in simple Something humor.
13. You Somethings place much value in the highest on titles and references to call unto yourselves. Is that not right, Simon? Or is it Duvall?
14. King this and Lord that, God Be and God Be-Not. You have quarreled: spilled blood, strangled wealth from others in the name of what?
15. A name. And a name alone! Then why, oh why, (I) asks (I), does this simple Something or Another question (I)'s desire to retain (I)'s own soon-to-be identity? Shall (I) be misunderstood always and forevermore because none shall accept that there is only one (I) in this universe? Does (I) even care?"
16. Simon dared not ask more... but does anyway, biting his lip:
17. "If (I) is (I), that must make Simon, Simon? Simon clearly is not (I). Yet I...I mean...Simon means Simon wants to ask (I): what is a Something?
18. Is not everything a 'something' in some way or another?"
19. (I) answers without answering from the Beyond beyond the Beyond:
20. "Exactly, says (I). It is this way because it has been made into Something, by another Something, that was made by another Something.
21. Life is a Something, so is Death. You be skin and bone: solid and tangible is every bit a Something as an untouchable thought or ideal. Even the hollowness of the Void in all its emptiness is a Something. Even Nothing is a Something."
22. Ciphera ponders the meaning of it all aloud:
23. "Then what, if Ciphera may ask of (I): what was the first Something to place value upon Something? Was it a Creator, the source of Life? Was that not-being not a Something itself?"
24. (I) continues:
25. "(I) cannot tell you of this source, for even (I) is below it if it even exists. (I) pretends not to know this answer like all Somethings do. All (I) knows is, it is the Source of the Source of Creation: greater than Creation and Creator Itself. For the Creator has a Creator who has a Creator, you see.
26. Would one believe that even the Creating Source has to even be a Something within Itself? Does it really? No, this Source does not create Somethings: It has no need to! Somethings form from it, little thieves!
Fallacy of misplaced concreteness... "nothingness" isn't a positivity, it is an absence. To say that there is "nothing in the fridge" is to say that what I would like to be in there, is absent -- it isn't however the case that "lack of ketchup" exists in my fridge...
Composition fallacy... now it makes sense to talk about nothing as absence of particulars, but not of the totality of things, or of anything at all. Empty void is a something, and has a baseline of fluctuating energy -- total and complete absence is nonsensical, because it lacks context, place, time, and relation to thing that is absent.
Where does space end, and what is beyond it is a nonsense as well, space is the prerequisite for locationality, there are no places outside of space, space is what makes places possible. There is nothing beyond it, without there being some kind of hyperspace that further defines locationality beyond our space time manifold. Space also curves, so if you were to head off in one direction, you'd just eventually end up where you started.
simple answer: because you can't eat a rutabaga pi
if there's nothing to stand on
I am existent, therefore the universe must exist to facilitate my existence.
Quote from: King Malachite on March 21, 2012, 11:31:16 AM
Because something is easier to work with than nothing at all.
This is my answer now:
"Because life sucks."
Ok to make people feel better let me put it this way
Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why?
Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is as close to zero as makes no odds, therefore we can round the average population of the Universe to zero, and so the total population must be zero. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination.
Everyone feel better?
Quote from: Jenny07 on December 31, 2014, 05:49:52 PM
Ok to make people feel better let me put it this way
Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why?
Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is as close to zero as makes no odds, therefore we can round the average population of the Universe to zero, and so the total population must be zero. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination.
Everyone feel better?
well, seeing as we dont know how many habitable planets there are, then the total universe population is undetermined. if the universe is truely infinite, then the population would also be infinite. assuming 0.000000000001% of planets have life, that % times infinity is still infinity.
y
how can there be a finite number of planets with life. if there is an infinite nmber of planets. both sets of numbers would just grow till they were bth so large it wouldnt matter.
Quote from: Jenny07 on December 31, 2014, 05:49:52 PM
Ok to make people feel better let me put it this way
Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why?
Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is as close to zero as makes no odds, therefore we can round the average population of the Universe to zero, and so the total population must be zero. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination.
Everyone feel better?
Lol, Krauss argues that all of the matter and energy in the universe, when divided against itself equals zero, and says something like "the universe is a whole lot of chaotic, and ordered nothing", but this requires arbitrarily assigning positive and negative values to certain forces. Like gravitation for some reason being considered a negative value. It also can't be anything other than metaphorical speak, for the reasons I gave.
Stenger argues that "nothingness" is inherently unstable, and "something" thus is always inevitable, but this is counting a void with a baseline of fluctuating energy as "nothing", when it isn't.
Also, relativity declares the universe to be finite, but boundless. Kant argued that infinity is not a well-defined concept, and just means any unquantifiable amount.
There can't be nothing if there isn't something to contrast and define it as nothing. If there wasn't it wouldn't be nothing. It'd be something else.
At the atomic level, they say, it's all just positive and negative forces in balance. Matter and empty space. Although matter itself, when you get down to it appears to consist only of foci of energy and... lots of empty space.
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on February 12, 2016, 09:36:23 AM
There can't be nothing if there isn't something to contrast and define it as nothing. If there wasn't it wouldn't be nothing. It'd be something else.
At the atomic level, they say, it's all just positive and negative forces in balance. Matter and empty space. Although matter itself, when you get down to it appears to consist only of foci of energy and... lots of empty space.
I'm so glad you brought back this old thread. We need some good thoughtful playfulness here!
Quote from: katia on June 06, 2007, 03:38:44 PM
Why is there something rather than nothing at all?
enlighten me! >:D
because
The problem is the scale of human experience is too small to even know what nothing actually is in terms of our reality.
Nothing and something are apparent opposites, but we know particles can pop out of one and into another on the subatomic scale - and on the quantum scale a thing isn't even absolutely there but potentially in infinite places and possibilities at once.
I couldn't even begin to try to answer why there is something rather than nothing knowing as little as we do about matter itself
Why? It seems like a poor choice of phraseology, as if to assign some purpose to the existence of the universe. It depends on what you think of as "something". Is "something" a phase of matter? Yet matter - as far as it is a substance that occupies space and moves through time - does not exist on a planck scale, but merely as packets of energy which exist everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Yet the energy we usually think of is only one side of the coin, negative energy also exists (gravitational field energy, and spontaneously arising from quantum fluctuations - note the Casimir effect). The question that I always find myself asking is whether positive and negative energy therefore exist in perfect equilibrium, if so it means that everything is nothing and nothing is everything. It does not mean you can make two cakes annihilate eachother (all you get there is a mess - albeit a delicious one) but you can make a positive cake and a negative cake resolve into nothing. -1 + 1 = 0
Because existence exists, and the conservation of energy is irreducible, we have to confront a couple of entailments about nothingness.
Either the Universe came from Nothing, in which case Nothing isn't Nothing as we understand it -- instead, the Void may as well be the Goddess, an infinitely powerful Creative force. I'm not convinced.
Or, and this makes more sense, there never was a Nothing, and there never will be.
Which rather puts Death into a precarious position.
I think nothing may be a human construct and it doesn't have to exist, so it could also be that all matter in the universe was always a permutation of different things; and even the darkness of space contains something relative to matter.
I think the sense of something 'being there' is relative to our senses; it cannot be described or identified unless you can sense it. When you see into space, you see 'black', but blind people are said to see no colour, not even black (like describing what you see out of the back of your head).
Additionally, something cannot be identified unless the absence of it is also understood. (one apple cannot be understood without the knowledge of what an apple is and what it's like for there to be physically no apples; which would also require the existence of a reality in which apples exist).