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Why does anything exist?

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Re: Why does anything exist?

#131

Post by whoisjuan »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #128
whoisjuan wrote: post #46

Our minds can only interpret the universe through a binary model, but that doesn't mean that the universe conforms to our binary interpretation of it. "Why does anything exist?" becomes a silly question if you're capable of abandoning your rational mind for a minute and humbly accepting that perhaps the universe is an absolute system with no dualistic nature.

there is much wrong with this post, I'm embarrassed to respond to it. Our minds don't interpret the world through a binary model. Abandoning your rational mind means what exactly?

Look at the rest of the debate below the original answer, and maybe you will get an idea of what I meant.

My choice of words shouldn’t be the basis for attacking my points, especially since there’s more context in this very same thread that expands on my ideas.

Maybe instead of coming against me with an incendiary comment, make an effort to gain more insight into my views and add some value to the discussion. Again, my choice of words might be the wrong articulation of my ideas, but you just need to ask politely, and I will gladly expand and try to find better words.

Also, if you’re embarrassed to respond, then why did you? Please read the Hacker News guidelines if you forgot about them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Why does anything exist?

#132

Post by eldenwrong »

otikik wrote: post #127
jawns wrote: post #59

If you like the question of "Why does anything exist?" then an obvious next question is: "What's stopping things from not existing?" In philosophy, there is a distinction between things that must be (they're called necessary) and things that may or may not be (they're called contingent). For instance, if we use the standard definition of a square, then every square you will ever encounter will necessarily have four s…

> But if our universe is contingent, then it must be contingent upon something that is necessary You say that as if it was a obvious why, but to me that looks like a baseless assumption. The way I see it, if our universe is contingent, then that’s all we can know , the journey ends, there’s nothing else we can deduce. I simply can’t “assume” that there’s a “necessary substrate” just … because.

Everything we can observe in this universe has a cause and effect. The first cause is God.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#133

Post by emerged »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#134

Post by jiggawatts »

prmph wrote: post #129
jiggawatts wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our universe requires a "sustaining cause" (as with a picture on a TV set). The movie doesn't cease to exist because you turned the television off, only the projection of it into those particular photons. Top Gun will continue to exist even if you break every Blu Ray of it into tiny pieces, crush those pieces to powder, and melt the result into a formless goo. Movies are purely information, a sequence of bits. Thos…

Interesting point of view, but a few caveats: - I don't think it can be taken for granted that math exists independent of consciousness to think of it. - Even if math exists independent of time and consciousness, it need not have a physical manifestation (by your own logic). So why does a physical universe have to exist?

Physics is the equation, not a scribble of one on a dead tree.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#135

Post by zmgsabst »

triyambakam wrote: post #86

> The religious person is left with a mystery which is no less than the mystery with which science leaves us As a Hindu I find this baffling. For the Hindu there is a consistency across science and religion, and sometimes the line between the two isn't clear. They work together harmoniously to form my worldview. Based on the cursory information I have about the author's background, I am assuming he was exposed to Wes…

That’s true of Christianity, as well:

The philosophy of Christianity is rooted deeply in Platonic ideas — where “God” as the ultimate ideal is embodied both in a human (“Jesus”) and in the happening of the world (“Holy Spirit”).

I can’t claim to be an expert in Hinduism — but to my limited understanding, it’s akin to saying that Brahman manifests both through avatars and the actions of deities, as forces of nature.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#136

Post by tshaddox »

breuleux wrote: post #72
tshaddox wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing problematic about “appeals to the divine” or other explanations that “push the question up a level” is if part of the explanation is the prohibition of “where did that thing come from?” or “why is it this way and not some other way?” But pushing things up a level is actually the only option we have for good explanations. For any explanation about anything whatsoever, you should always be able to ask “w…

From a mathematical/algorithmic point of view, you could define a good explanation as a sort of compression process: on one hand, you have observations, data to explain, totalling a certain number of bits. On the other hand, you have a process or algorithm that can generate these observations, and if that process can be described in less bits than the original observations, then you have a "good explanation". For exa…

I don’t think the length of the explanation is very relevant, and finding shorter explanations doesn’t seem like a primary concern. Explanations should be judged on what problems they solve and how well they stand up to criticism and competing explanations. And since I don’t think any explanation can be “final” or “100% true” or “guaranteed” or anything like that, the notion of a shortest possible explanation doesn’t even make much sense.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#137

Post by thethirdone »

prmph wrote: post #129
jiggawatts wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our universe requires a "sustaining cause" (as with a picture on a TV set). The movie doesn't cease to exist because you turned the television off, only the projection of it into those particular photons. Top Gun will continue to exist even if you break every Blu Ray of it into tiny pieces, crush those pieces to powder, and melt the result into a formless goo. Movies are purely information, a sequence of bits. Thos…

Interesting point of view, but a few caveats: - I don't think it can be taken for granted that math exists independent of consciousness to think of it. - Even if math exists independent of time and consciousness, it need not have a physical manifestation (by your own logic). So why does a physical universe have to exist?

Why do you assume the physical universe is a manifestation?

The Mandelbrot set exists and contains self reference without any need for it to be graphed (a manifestation). Similarly the universe as we experience it may exist without any physical manifestation.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#138

Post by dasil003 »

> For most of history, the question remained beyond the possibility of being answered. But we live in a most-exciting point in time: one where this question has fallen to the progress of human knowledge.

> [...]

> We now have viable answers to great questions of existence:

> [...]

> It required us to assume math, rather than matter, is fundamental.

For all the length of this exposition, the conclusion is pure Streetlight Effect. Despite the fact that our brains have allowed us to achieve quite a high level of abstract reasoning relative to other Earth fauna, we remain inextricably coupled to our meat sack nature. It doesn't matter how many logical theories and models you stack up that map to observable phenomena, the truth is that there is no basis to assume that math is fundamental. Math, is just a tool for building models, and to paraphrase George Box: despite being useful, all models are wrong.

The irony of attempting to answer the hardest philosophical questions in this way, reflects a very human emotional need to transcend our obvious physical and observational limitations. We can no more explain why the universe exists than an amoeba could explain why a skyscraper exists, and actually the gap is much much bigger, because whatever we observe and determine as causality can always elicit another "why". A three year old can master this trick, and yet here we have a grown and supposedly rational person who does not want to come to terms with the fact that "what" can never fully explain "why". This existential ambiguity is our birthright and is actually beautiful and inspiring if you unclench your bowels a bit.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#139

Post by tmountain »

eldenwrong wrote: post #132
otikik wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if our universe is contingent, then it must be contingent upon something that is necessary You say that as if it was a obvious why, but to me that looks like a baseless assumption. The way I see it, if our universe is contingent, then that’s all we can know , the journey ends, there’s nothing else we can deduce. I simply can’t “assume” that there’s a “necessary substrate” just … because.

Everything we can observe in this universe has a cause and effect. The first cause is God.

Theology fits comfortably with our intuitive perception of time, but that doesn’t make it the definitive answer.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#140

Post by plutonorm »

crdrost wrote: post #68
nathan_compton wrote: post #49

This is a lot of ground to cover to get to what is, in my opinion, a very bizarre conclusion which is epistemologically extremely lugubrious: that all structures expressible mathematically also exist and we are (obviously) a subset of those structures. Frankly, this doesn't even feel like any kind of knowledge to me. Its operationally meaningless! In any case, I think the author has the cart before the horse: numbers…

Yeah I had to skim through it as well. I think the author probably has written something that has passed peer review, but has either written so many such things that he has gotten sick of terseness and getting to the point, or so few things that he has not learned to value it in the first place? Like the writing is not god-awful like a lot of the crackpot takes, but it's definitely tortuous. As a theory goes, I don't…

Nice that you can step out of the frame and see your motivations. I write this because I think that your self knowledge is virtuous and like a moth to a flame I am drawn to the good. By identifying with the good or ingesting it like knowledge candy - I can come closer to this platonic concept that my nervous system so craves.

I can no more step outside of my own seeking than a wave can stand up from the ocean and make its way in land.

Pointless. All of it.

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