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Why does anything exist?

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Re: Why does anything exist?

#201

Post by EmilyHughes »

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…

What you call change is the concept impermanence in buddhism. You had an insight into impermanence.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#202

Post by pigtailgirl »

EmilyHughes wrote: post #201
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…

What you call change is the concept impermanence in buddhism. You had an insight into impermanence.

-- To further your point - The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1994) - Narrated by Leonard Cohen is excellent peek into the word of Bardo --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg8ikDKL_zs

Re: Why does anything exist?

#204

Post by saulpw »

layer8 wrote: post #168
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…

> God is the universal wave function. I suspect that that's disingenious, because calling it "God" implies that you think it is actually in some way more than what the universal wave function is in physics. Because otherwise why would you have a problem with an atheist physisist who believes the wave function describes the universe, and there is not more to it than that mathematical desciption?

Because for some reason the universal wave function results in a subjective experience. If you can math that, I'll concede that Math = God.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#205

Post by otikik »

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.

This has been discussed many times before.

The problem is that "the first cause is God" is not based on anything. It is perfectly fine to ask "If everything has a cause, then what caused God?".

Then there's two options. One is that it's "turtles all the way down" - God1 caused God. And God2 caused God1. And that goes on, forever.

The other option is "God caused himself". Which is similar to being "the first cause", but here's the difference: at that point, we have admitted an exception to the "everything has a cause" rule, which is that "some things can cause themselves". At which point one might as well make that decision earlier and conclude "The Universe Created Itself", not needing God at all.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#206

Post by xnoreq »

User23 wrote: post #113
xnoreq wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In frequentist statistics it's either 1 or 0 after the experiment (dice roll, card flip or universe creation). Either it happened or it didn't.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#207

Post by otikik »

logicchop wrote: post #148
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.

You probably have to assume there is a necessary substrate. What else can you possibly think? Contingency means being contingent on something else. You could suppose that the "something else" is itself contingent, but then you have another contingency. At some point you will likely take it for granted that there must be something that is itself not contingent and that the rest of the stuff downstream turns on it bein…

> You probably have to assume there is a necessary substrate. What else can you possibly think?

That there's no necessary substrate.

> Contingency means being contingent on something else

Can't it just be "luck", then? Chaos just happened to take this form.

> At some point you will likely take it for granted that there must be something that is itself not contingent

Sorry but I don't agree. I think it is perfectly conceivable that everything is contingent and there's no "necessary substrate". For example: it could be that several factors (things like the gravitational constant and the different fundamental forces) are contingent on isolation, but when they are put together the ensemble becomes necessary. Like in a tensegrity structure (not saying that I think that's what happens to our Universe, just pointing out that there's other options besides "One necessary substrate", and we don't know which one is ours).

Re: Why does anything exist?

#208

Post by anthk »

hackerlight wrote: post #198
erklik wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The concept of Pi and the irrationality of sqrt(2) predates the universe itself. Think about it. How? Get rid of the universe, and the concept of pi doesn't exist. Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter. Circles didn't exist before the universe, thus no pi. There could be another universe where circles are impossible due to whatever laws of physics exist, thus no pi.

> There could be another universe where circles are impossible due to whatever laws of physics exist, thus no pi. Circles (perfect ones) are impossible in our universe, too. Circles are abstractions. If we have successfully deduced a conclusion from a set of axioms, wouldn't that deduction hold true in all possible universes? The mathematical realist position is that these abstract math objects exist independent of a…

This. Circles are just the set of all the infinite points from any point covering any degree around you having the same distance. That's why Pi it's infinite on decimals.

Ditto with sqrt(2), you need to "sharpen" the triangle made from half an square forever in order to get all the decimals.

Re: Why does anything exist?

#209

Post by mannykannot »

aeonik wrote: post #197
ako wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If god can be the one-time exception, the universe can also be the one-time exception.

I agree with this, but we don't really know if the universe is God using this infinite regress definition. The cool part about this definition of God, is that it necessitates the existence by definition, and gives a falsifiable hypothesis. Continuing with this definition, current cosmological theories would then imply that the Big Bang is God. Though this explanation of the beginning of everything leaves me unsatisfi…

Defining God to be whatever is assumed to be necessary is the opposite of a falsifiable hypothesis.

You say we are stuck with logical deductions, but the thing about them is that they are no more true than are their premises, so analytical metaphysics grounds out in a personal and subjective choice of axioms (subjective in the sense that no-one else is logically compelled to accept them.)

Re: Why does anything exist?

#210

Post by booleandilemma »

satori99 wrote: post #179
booleandilemma wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Top Gun still exists in the minds of everyone who has seen it. It is an idea as well as a performance. And you don't need to consume any particular encoding of the performance to continue to either enjoy or hate it. Art is weird like that.

Top Gun won't exist, just people's memories of Top Gun.

And memory is fallible. It changes over time. People will all remember the movie differently.

The memory of Top Gun != Top Gun.

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