Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why does anything exist?

alwaysasking.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 233 posts

Re: Why does anything exist?

#151

Post by jiggywiggy »

dasil003 wrote: post #138

> 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 Streetl…

Us humans are all just meaning machines.

We are on a constant quest of meaning. Quiet tiring to be honest.

Somehow the question keeps arising in human mind, what does it all mean? (Especially if we have too much time to think)

Yet us modern folks keep trying to solve it outside of our mind in which it arises, biology, physics, whatever.

Maybe the answer is more straightforward?

Re: Why does anything exist?

#152

Post by bsedlm »

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…

I agree 100%.

once upone a time I asked myself what the heck do we mean by 'nothing' when asking "why is there something rather than nothing?"?

from wondering that, I concluded the same thing you did. that nothing is a made up concept; and I agree, it's super useful and it's ideal instead of real.

later on, I started to ponder what the heck does 'everything' really mean, and for now I think that 'everything' is just as made up as 'nothing'. hence, 'everything' doesn't exist in the same way 'something' (anything) exist. it's also just a very valuable made up concept.

there is no instance of everything, it's also an assumption.

then again, maybe I got stuck in the trip

Re: Why does anything exist?

#153

Post by holoduke »

dasil003 wrote: post #138

> 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 Streetl…

An amoeba is not asking questions. We are asking questions and we get answers all time. We are on the way to understand everything. Maybe we need to evolve to a different entity like an AI or something, but we are most definitely going into that direction. There are so many great discoveries made every day. We are not sitting still.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#154

Post by jiggywiggy »

Often modern rational people are not aware they've surrendered their experience of meaning to the theory of evolution, where in the old days it was surrendered to religion.

Often you hear modern skeptics speak like, we do things to preserve the self, or to preserve the "race".

Theories of evolving are not the same as truths of meaning.

Even though in many senses religion was more restrictive, in the search for meaning it might have given more useful answers.

Useful in the sense of practical.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#155

Post by bergenty »

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…

I’m Hindu too but why come up with some random bullshit rather than try to figure out what is happening. If you want to call god the universe just say universe. The value of Hinduism is in cultural heritage and providing a pathway for life. It’s in tapping into the mysticism and indulging in the rituals to make life interesting.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#156

Post by booleandilemma »

jiggawatts wrote: post #121
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…

> 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…

> Top Gun will continue to exist even if you break every Blu Ray of it into tiny pieces

If you destroy every recording of Top Gun, it will cease to exist.

> The bit sequence doesn't stop existing just because we delete every manifestation

Yes it does.

And Top Gun didn't exist before 1986.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#157

Post by mannykannot »

logicchop wrote: post #143
hydrolox wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but isn't the problem that you could get stuck in an infinite contingency loop? i.e if you pick God, what if God is contingent and so on. Sure you can say something is required but it's rather arbitrary.

That is the whole point of God as an explanation. God is where the buck stops on contingency. God is necessary.

It seems to me that you have created a one-time exception that gets yourself out of the infinite regress that this line of thought leads to. All it does, however, is to raise another question to replace the original one: why is God necessary?

Re: Why does anything exist?

#158

Post by voxl »

tablespoon wrote: post #92
humanistbot wrote: post #3

I liked the table comparing many disciplines' default instance of nothing: Physics: No energy: the vacuum Geometry: No dimensionality: a point Set theory: No elements: the empty set Arithmetic: No magnitude: zero Information theory: No information: zero bits Then they ask: "There is an unlimited number of possible theoretical systems. Does this mean there are also unlimited conceptions of nothing?"

> I liked the table comparing many disciplines' default instance of nothing: > Physics: No energy: the vacuum And not being aware of the difference can lead one to dumbly misunderstand the question with confidence (e.g. some physicist explaining how the universe could have arisen out of "nothing," when they're really explaining how it could have arisen out of a vacuum, which metaphysically is definitely a something )…

Can you, metaphysically, define nothing? I ask because I wager you can't, and I am highly suspect that metaphysics has philosophical value.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#159

Post by awinder »

jiggawatts wrote: post #121
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…

> 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…

The h264 movie Top Gun is purely information, but it’s also derivative and with information loss, right?

From our perception at least, it seems like Tom and Val were a part of the earliest & highest fidelity information that makes up Top Gun when they were part of shooting it day to day. Or somewhere around there, the movie that the h264 derives from requires daily shots + editing/effects etc. If Tom & Val are in-universe observers, then wtf happened during those shooting days, and in their argument I’d imagine, the ideas & experiences they’d had on how they portrayed their parts?

Re: Why does anything exist?

#160

Post by bobabob »

jiggywiggy wrote: post #154

Often modern rational people are not aware they've surrendered their experience of meaning to the theory of evolution, where in the old days it was surrendered to religion. Often you hear modern skeptics speak like, we do things to preserve the self, or to preserve the "race". Theories of evolving are not the same as truths of meaning. Even though in many senses religion was more restrictive, in the search for meanin…

Evolution is not a theory, it's a fact, you can see it happening.
Post reply on HN