Why something instead of nothing?

Because my parents had sex.

Whatever I choose whenever I choose it (if anything).

That isn't a purpose. That is biology.

 

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I think that the 'why does existence exist' question is not only a real question, it's the fundamental question of ontology.

But yeah, a common reply since ancient times to the question is some variant on 'non-existence doesn't exist'. So existence must exist necessarily and be accepted simply as a given. Any inquiry into an explanation for that, for a reason why such a thing as 'existence' exists in the first place, is a pseudo-problem at best, and something best ignored.

The question that I sense is the universe's biggest and most fundamental mystery is dismissed with a shrug and perhaps with a sneer.

I wouldn't dismiss that line of argument as stupid, but it does strike me as rather sophistical.

 

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Yes, this we know, and so then we also know that there was no option, no choice, no deciding—that the default was to go to existence. It doesn't tell about the mechanics, but it does add information for other areas, such as a 'God' not being required.

 

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You might even be here because you have always been, though your conscious experience obviously conforms to the cause-and-effect orderings of a life history: An illusion of being a sequence of stand-alone events that appear and vanish rather than an integrated whole (like slices of bread presented one by one as opposed to being a loaf of bread).

Presentism (only this moment exists) is the default view of people regarding time because that's what appears to be the case, or what is given in human perception ("What I encounter in sense is indeed the nature of reality"; commonsense). But eternalism (all moments exist) seems more supported by physics, or realism about some models in physics. At least until you get to cutting-edge frontiers, where both space and time or spacetime are regarded as likely to be abandoned as fundamental.

Brian Greene: "In day to day life, physicists view time in the same way that everyone else does. And that makes it all the more surprising when we examine how time appears in our current theoretical frameworks, because nowhere in our theories do we see the intuitive notion of time that we all embrace. Nowhere, for example, can we find the theoretical underpinnings for our sense that time flows from one second to the next. Instead, our theories seem to indicate that time doesn't flow --rather, past, present, and future are all there, always, forever frozen in place." --A Conversation With Brian Greene

"Whereas relativity established the subjectivity of time's passage, quantum mechanics challenges the conceptual primacy of time itself. Today's scientists seeking to combine quantum mechanics with Einstein's theory of gravity (the general theory of relativity) are convinced that we are on the verge of another major upheaval, one that will pinpoint the more elemental concepts from which time and space emerge. Many believe this will involve a radically new formulation of natural law in which scientists will be compelled to trade the space-time matrix within which they have worked for centuries for a more basic 'realm' that is itself devoid of time and space." --The Time We Thought We Knew

 

CC: No-time–no-space as fundamental makes some sense, as cosmological physics has space and time as spacetime separating out afterward, so, it sounds like an all-at-onceness, which has no time, and and everything-in-superposition, which maybe someone could better relate to no-space than I can right now.

 

OK, let me try again. In no-time-no-space, there are no fixed-things, making for it to be a no-thing, at large, which may serve as our ‘nothing’, maybe, from which fixed-things emerge.

In this pre-time, pre-space realm, there is no going from here to there, since ‘here’ is already ‘there’, so there is no space, this resulting from there being no time. One could ‘say’ that the instant ‘here to there and everywhere’ is like infinite speed, but it isn’t, being only like it, for there is no time or space to go through.

This superposition of all is what I mean by a From Nothing or a Lack Of Anything state having to be a default, lawless state of “anything goes”.

 

It's a bit hard to imagine this no-time, no-space, realm. If it can even be called a "realm" as it doesn't have any boundary as a boundary implies space. It would rather be much like the singularity that was before the Big Bang and which space and time was created from. Many things about the singularity also seems to be undefined (much like your "anything goes"). Could be that we just don't understand it yet and that some kind of law must exist.

My thinking is that law is what keeps everything from happening all at once, the laws governing physics takes the "everything part" and says that only some things can happen given a certain scenario, where the laws of time keeps the events seperated.

 

That's what it is from, one of those analyses in which a jillion things happen in the first second after the Big Bang, in a certain order, which science seems pretty sure of, but not about before the Big Bang.

The finite speed of light, which is perhaps a dimensional ratio of space (distance) to time, seems to play a role in slowing things down so they can't happen all at once any more.

 

(As over here: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2954904&postcount=39 )

 

What if the singularity is everything happening all at once and at the same location?

The Big Bang and everything else might be the singularity "dissected", or a kind of projection of the singularity. That way, reality can be "one" with the singularity, because every event that has ever taken place is contained within it. Kind of makes sense if we think about it, cause no external source is needed for all of the events to take place as they are already accounted for in the singularity. It becomes a closed system. In fact, we are the singularity, simply a definition of the contents within it.


It doesn't solve the original question though, which could be rephrased as "Why the singularity? Why everything?".

Somehow I think that we can't rule out external causes, I just feel that there must be some definition for something to exist, the only thing undefined is nothing, cause to exist is in a way to be defined as something, reality or existence itself has defined it within it. I can't imagine what something would be if it has no definition at all.

True, I said myself that the singularity was undefined, but it doesn't mean that it is truly undefined in reality and that it has no laws whatsoever, perhaps it is only undefined to us.

Perhaps containing the entire universe simply creates laws that are too hard for us to understand, after all, the singularity would have to govern the entire universe at all times, all at once. Perhaps that's the reason it finally broke into the time-space universe we see today? It was simply too complex to handle, so the only way was to spread it out into the Big Bang and handle each piece and moment seperately instead of the whole thing at once.

These are just speculations, but I think they are worth considering. It's basically what we would do too if we find the whole of something to be too complex to handle, we would break it into pieces and study each part seperately.

Edit: Thanks for the link, it was very interesting (I didn't read it prior to this post though), it might influence my above idea, I think in a way that laws "breaks out" of the symmetry, or are emerging somehow from it, probably by seperation of things. Cause as long as we have one thing that is seperated from another then we need a law as a consequence to keep the "whole". The whole must always be the same, I think.

 

What is an 'external cause'? External to what? External to reality itself? It seems to me that any account of 'what is' must necessarily include everything, including those things which may be said to be 'external' to what we might consider ourselves to be 'within'. I mean, we exist within the atmosphere of earth, and one might say that outer space is external to that in some sense, but we can't leave it out of our account of what is.

But more to the point, external causes, rather than providing an answer to why anything at all exists, simply move the question back one level. Some people seem satisfied with that, because the question is pushed beyond their immediate ability to further examine, and therefore takes on a superficial appearance similar to that of a question answered (in an out-of-mind sort of sense), but the truth is that nothing has been resolved.

In a nutshell, no matter what reality one may propose as being the source of all existence, once can always legitimately ask "why does it exist, instead of nothing?", if indeed a question like that can be legitimately asked at all.

 

By explaining the universe as a singularity we have only rephrased the question, all of the existence is there, only in a different form. This is what makes me feel that it won't ever be sufficient to explain why something exists at all, by defining what exists. It seems that some external cause must be present to account for the question. That said, the question itself doesn't have to be a valid one in reality. It makes me wonder though, why a certain amount of everything, if there was never any definition made?

 

Yes, I meant that, as one single point would not be space, for at least two would be required.

Very insightful, and it thus clicks with me, helping me connect with other things. So, yes, as in holism, the whole changes form, but it is still the whole, and the whole could be a ‘hole’ (nothing) or a ‘whole’ (everything), either of which would seem to have the same information content: zero.

And it’s not like anything not from the singularity could stick its nose in, so what is of the singularity is all reflected here, and is, still, as you say, the same information of the singularity, and so maybe everything does end up happening somewhere, sometime, among our trillions stars and more, including a lot of waste, as we can see, but Earth is here, millions of the right conditions coming together, including a moon for stability. No wonder the universe is so large, for everything had to be accommodated.

So, in a way everything was set long ago, already having happened, in its own way, but is now ‘happening’ (or just seeming to) for us since the broadcast had to slow down in its playing-out form once spacetime and the speed of light came into form.

Well, no point of deciding of anything specific is possible, as the buck stops at this prime mover, plus no time is there anyway. And no time and no space means it has to be a singularity.

Then, like a pencil trying to stand on its point, it fell, the perfect symmetry of everything/nothing toppled, breaking into opposition pairs.

Well, it’s some very minimal, simplest state.

The default could be the law of no laws.

It had to, we know, it not being able to remain as it was, but we don’t know all of it yet, or how often it happens, but it happened once so it seems that it could happen again, as another universe, or ours could change form again. Seems we are getting very close, though, what with cosmology, and philosophy and logic for future science to zero in on to confirm.

 

By positing an external cause to explain existence, you are also obliged (by the same logic) to posit a cause for the external cause. Again, nothing is solved.

Do we really know that there is a certain amount of everything? I don't think that we do. Perhaps, instead, there is an infinite amount of everything, or an infinite amount of that from which everything is composed anyway. Nothing is needed to define such an amount, since it simply exists everywhere that nothing can't (which is everywhere).

 

Yes, something like that. We know the laws are perfect, cause however we seperate the pieces and whatever we do to them the whole is still the same, the laws reflect what was all connected and keeps it intact still.

Yes, but the question the OP asks is "Why something instead of nothing?", singularity, even devoid of time/space (or rather all of time and all of space at one point), is still something. Minimising the universe to a singularity thus doesn't answer the question.

That would be a law though, so how can we have a law of no laws? And how could such a law be formed without any existence to start with?

I just wish that there was any possible answers. I can't find even the possibility of a answer. Does that mean that the answer that we do find (if we do) must be unimaginable to us at this point?

True, but the question itself seems to beg the answer that there is something external that could give it a reason for existing. I don't know if there can be a internal reason for existing, I guess if the reason was the first to exist, but then how could it be the reason for existence if it came to exist along with it? It is itself a existence in need of a reason.

It depends, I guess for the universe to be contained in a singularity, it should have defined quantities, at least after the singularity is "disturbed" or however the Big Bang happened. I find it unimaginable that a infinite amount of things can be contained in a finite size. Wouldn't that mean that there would be a infinite amount of things everywhere? Or is the infinite amount contained in some "hotspots" in the universe?

Perhaps you are suggesting that the universe isn't the final answer and that there is a vast void out there that perhaps can hold other universes? I guess that there is a possibility that everything is infinite, and that the universe is simply a "inflation" of some corner in that vast void (as I think inflation theory goes). I don't know if it explains more to make what it should explain bigger and even more vast though. Perhaps it's simply a way to avoid the question, rather than answering it?

 

Well, it’s really the absence of law, which is what we’d expect as the default position, and maybe as well the absence of anything, which is nonexistence, seems to be all that is left for existence to come from, as a change in form of nonexistence, such as a distribution of it as opposites. We wouldn’t even consider this if we weren’t in a bind, but we like a bind that has only two answers, which is: Stuff/fields Forever versus stuff/fields from No-thing; so, we are extremely close to the right answer.

The prime mover sits where the chain of effects from causes ends, it having no inputs coming in, thus being everything/nothing, but it’s more like all the causes and effects are still exactly the prime mover, and nothing else, as just another form, as there couldn’t be anything else doing anything; so, subtle is the difference between reductionism and holism, if any.

As for considering ‘infinite’, that is not an amount, but infinite stuff over infinite space would at least result in an average finite energy density of 1, in universal units.

Something has to be, because a lack of anything cannot be (or stay). But it would be good to know the mechanics of this.

 

It is the mechanics of it that is the real problem, because any mechanics implies some kind of existence. How can "non-existence" change state to become "existence"?

Even redistributing the negative and positive that it is made from requires action. Why would it be redistributed for no reason at all? Without cause?

In my experience, what is nothing, tends to stay that way. At least if no external source is giving it any reason for it not to stay that way. Then we have virtual particles, but some sources tell me that they aren't really coming from "nothing" but rather from fields, could even say that they are fields that happen to be in a different form, mainly because of the uncertainty principle.

 

The 'paradox' could be that something and nothing are perceived to be radically and irreconcilably different. If not different, then the universe had no origin from nothingness—it is just another expression of it.

If the universe had no origin then why is it here instead of nothing? How is existence derived from nonexistence? This is the prime 'paradox'. No wonder everyone went off to do something else, yet, there must be a solution, for the universe is indeed here.

Something has to give, and that we know, for there are no true paradoxes, so, really, this makes us closer to the answer than ever; in fact, we hold it in our hand, but we don't know which one it is.

 

Doing an overview of various thoughts among physicists out there about this... Space and time not only get "grain-ified" into their own elemental components that are interpenetrating each other at a non-extended level, but there's also a parallel trend toward considering these quanta as similar to the bits of information theories, in the context of the holographic principle (which then may recover at least two dimensions and a third one for time).

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Antoine Suarez: "In conclusion the experiments testing quantum entanglement [...] supports the idea that the world is deeper than the visible, and reveals a domain of existence, which cannot be described with the notions of space and time. In the nonlocal quantum realm there is dependence without time, things are going on but the time doesn’t seem to pass here." --paper titled Entanglement and Time; Center for Quantum Philosophy

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"[Carl] Rovelli, the advocate of a timeless universe, says the NIST timekeepers have it right ['Our clocks do not measure time ... time is defined to be what our clocks measure.’]. Moreover, their point of view is consistent with the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. 'We never really see time,' he says. 'We see only clocks. [...] We say we measure time with clocks, but we see only the hands of the clocks, not time itself. And the hands of a clock are a physical variable like any other. So in a sense we cheat because what we really observe are physical variables as a function of other physical variables, but we represent that as if everything is evolving in time.

'What happens with the Wheeler-DeWitt equation is that we have to stop playing this game. Instead of introducing this fictitious variable -- time, which itself is not observable -- we should just describe how the variables are related to one another. The question is, Is time a fundamental property of reality or just the macroscopic appearance of things? I would say it’s only a macroscopic effect. It’s something that emerges only for big things.'

[...] By “big things,” Rovelli means anything that exists much above the mysterious Planck scale. As of now there is no physical theory that completely describes what the universe is like below the Planck scale. One possibility is that if physicists ever manage to unify quantum theory and general relativity, space and time [...] would consist of discrete fragments -- quanta, in the argot of physics [...]

"It’s not easy to imagine space and time being made of something else. Where would the components of space and time exist, if not in space and time? As Rovelli explains it, in quantum mechanics all particles of matter and energy can also be described as waves. And waves have an unusual property: An infinite number of them can exist in the same location. If time and space are one day shown to consist of quanta, the quanta could all exist piled together in a single dimensionless point. 'Space and time in some sense melt in this picture,' says Rovelli. 'There is no space anymore. There are just quanta kind of living on top of one another without being immersed in a space.'" --Newsflash: Time May Not Exist; DISCOVER MAGAZINE online; 06/12/2007

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"...many weird quantum features could be explained by thinking about the information contained in a quantum system, just as computer scientists look at how information is encoded, stored, and transferred in bits. [...] Information theory, says Brukner, is the key to showing how plausible (or indeed implausible) it is that a deeper classical reality underlies quantum mechanics. It reveals that even within the simplest quantum system—an electron spin—classical realism is extremely resource demanding. That’s because it would take infinitely many hidden variables to encode all the instructions needed to explain the results of all possible measurements of the electron’s spin.

Brukner argues that the total information that can be carried by an electron spin is finite. That means, by necessity, the system’s answers to some questions will contain an element of randomness. Thus, [...] the observed quantum behavior could be explained by nothing more mysterious than a lack of storage space for sufficient information.

Information theory can also be easily extended to naturally explain quantum entanglement [...] For example, it would take two bits of information to jointly encode entanglement into two particle spins, so that they are parallel to each other. Once those two bits have been exhausted, there is no more storage space to encode extra spin information into either of the two entangled particles individually, says Brukner. As a result of this lack of extra encoded information, measuring the spin of one of the pair must yield a random value, while the spin of its partner will be immediately fixed, regardless of distance. --The End of the Quantum Road?


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"[David Anthony] Lowe’s work builds on the holographic principle, the idea that all the information in our universe can be mathematically represented on a cosmic horizon like the surface of a black hole. Just like the two-dimensional hologram on your credit card, which appears to spring into a third dimension when you hold it just so, this cosmic hologram encodes information for one more dimension than it exists in itself. Lowe interprets the holographic principle as more than just a handy mathematical tool: 'It means we’re inside a black hole,' he says. --The End of Time

"Many ideas in theoretical physics involve extra dimensions, but the possibility that the universe has only two dimensions could also have surprising implications. The idea is that space on the ultra-small Planck scale is two-dimensional, and the third dimension is inextricably linked with time. If this is the case, then our three-dimensional universe is nothing more than a hologram of a two-dimensional universe. This idea of the holographic universe is not new, but physicists at Fermilab are now designing an experiment to test the idea."Holometer experiment to test if the universe is a hologram

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"The Planck length is far beyond the reach of any conceivable experiment, so nobody dared dream that the graininess of space-time might be discernable. That is, not until [Craig] Hogan realised that the holographic principle changes everything. If space-time is a grainy hologram, then you can think of the universe as a sphere whose outer surface is papered in Planck length-sized squares, each containing one bit of information. The holographic principle says that the amount of information papering the outside must match the number of bits contained inside the volume of the universe.

Since the volume of the spherical universe is much bigger than its outer surface, how could this be true? Hogan realised that in order to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the world inside must be made up of grains bigger than the Planck length. 'Or, to put it another way, a holographic universe is blurry,' says Hogan.

This is good news for anyone trying to probe the smallest unit of space-time. 'Contrary to all expectations, it brings its microscopic quantum structure within reach of current experiments,' says Hogan. '[...]If you lived inside a hologram, you could tell by measuring the blurring,' he says.

[...] Hogan agrees that if the holographic principle is confirmed, it rules out all approaches to quantum gravity that do not incorporate the holographic principle. Conversely, it would be a boost for those that do - including some derived from string theory and something called matrix theory. 'Ultimately, we may have our first indication of how space-time emerges out of quantum theory.' As serendipitous discoveries go, it's hard to get more ground-breaking than that. --Our World May Be A Giant Hologram NEW SCIENTIST; 15 January 2009

 

'It' from 'bit'.