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Why does anything exist?

alwaysasking.com

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Re: Why does anything exist?

#111

Post by enw »

yes_man wrote: post #36

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…

> So universes with (seemingly) deterministic laws of any kind are just extremely rare sub-trees of this wave of ”every possible wavestate”.

Wow!

This is very similar to what I experienced when I accidentally ingested a large amount of psilocybin (and went to ER just in case, it was the most terrifying experience of my life).

This is what I wrote in my notes post the bad trip:

"I felt a disconnection from my self and could see the fabric of existence, that life is an inconceivably large tree of choices that forms the current state of the universe among an infinite amount of universes (for each infinitesimal choice)"

e.g. I "felt" that there is a sibling branch in this tree of choices in which the universe is a slight modification of the current one. But curiously even when my whole personality disassociated from my "self", there was a "foundation" of my consciousness always attached to the current existence, and to it all parts of my personality that form my consciousness (id/superego/whatever) eventually converged once I got back normal.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#112

Post by 93po »

jorjordandan wrote: post #108

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…

A big chunk the posted article addresses this exact topic: https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#A_Self-Exi...

Re: Why does anything exist?

#113

Post by User23 »

xnoreq wrote: post #62
Victerius wrote: post #2

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"…

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.

> 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.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#114

Post by kordlessagain »

efitz wrote: post #53

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…

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.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#116

Post by kordlessagain »

vehemenz wrote: post #23

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 withou…

Carnap and Quine both argue that treating metaphysical "existence" as a predicate leads to a number of problems. In particular, they argue that it is not possible to know what exists independently of our own perceptions and experiences. This means that any claims about the existence of things beyond our own experience are necessarily speculative and cannot be known for certain.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#117

Post by 93po »

CharlesW wrote: post #83
Pixeleen wrote: post #74

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.

> I happen to believe it is because God willed the universe into existence. Ah yes, Phanes.

Hey, don't undersell Chronos and Ananke

Re: Why does anything exist?

#118

Post by greenonions »

jorjordandan wrote: post #108

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…

Mushroom origins or no, I completely agree.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#119

Post by 93po »

jpeter wrote: post #15

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

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.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#120

Post by 93po »

xylifyx wrote: post #12

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.

Why can something exist?
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