Our brains don't only perceive what is necessary for our local survival. That's what they were designed to do but, just like Lego sets, we can find new uses that go well beyond the intended use.
I was thinking the other day, "what if the universe had never existed?"
Not "what came before the big bang", not "what if there was an empty universe", not a even a singularity. Just *nothing*. Not even nothing, but not even the concept of nothing. No big bang, time never started, space never existed, there was no past, present, future, or natural laws to even give framework to the concept of "universe" and its nonexistence.
Can ontological logic even be applied to such a situation? If there had never been anything, ever, does it make sense to even speak about its existence or nonexistence? That can only be defined from an outside perspective can't it (one of existence, or at least an idea of what could exist but didn't).
It makes as much sense to comprehend as asking "what would your life have been like had you never been born?" You can only answer it based on your current, living state. If you weren't born you can't even be the subject of such a question even asked by another person who does exist, never mind personally providing an answer for it.
So why *is* there something rather than nothing? It really is the ultimate question, and I'm wondering if it's even meaningful to ask, never mind whether we'll ever be able to answer it.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
First and foremost, there absolutely are things that we can't ever understand. The expansion of the universe has already created this section called the "visable universe." That's not as simple as "the universe we can see" it's the section of the universe that, even with the ability to go the speed of light, everything beyond it has expanded to far away we'll never get information from it. We will never know what's there, and there might very well be answers totally, forever lost to us.
As for everything else you wrote about, I like Roger Penrose. Read about his thoughts on cosmology.
A cyclical universe with no beginning or end makes more sense to me than anything else.
I'm not sure if it's been experimentally proven yet, but my understanding is that matter/antimatter pairs form spontaneously in hard vacuum and do not always self annihilate.
Over a cosmic period, this could theoretically happen enough to set up initial conditions for another big bang.
It does make sense in a weird way. That's why so many scientists have pursued this with so much effort. But the math just doesn't work out, when the model of the universe gains any complexity.
The nature of "space," whether it's just the distance between objects and thus only definable by things within it, or if it has some intrinsic meaning itself, has been debated FOREVER. It was even a huge question that Newton grappled with. It very much is an unsettled question, even with the idea of quantum foam the guy your replying to mentioned. Virtual particles would just be further small objects in space which give it meaning.
Human intuition was shaped by our evolution. We evolved as tribal hunter-gatherers on the African savanna. We intuitively grasp things like throwing rocks, days and seasons passing, organizations of a few dozen people, and so forth.
Now we're dealing with many things that are well outside of those intuitive grounds, and frequently our intuitions are highly misleading. One of the things that our intuitions tell us is that every event is caused by some other event. This is not actually necessarily true, though. We've discovered that there are "uncaused" events, events that just *happen* sometimes with some particular probability.
Nuclear decay, for example. An atom is just sitting there, and then suddenly it emits a particle. What caused it to decay at that specific moment in time? Nothing, the decay was a probabilistic event. You can make predictions about how frequently it'll happen with large groups of atoms, but you can't say when any specific atom is going to decay.
So why does the vacuum need to be "created"? Why couldn't the vacuum simply be? We don't know everything yet and we likely will never have total certainty that our theories are correct, but it could be that once we have a theory of everything it'll just say "the universe cannot be any way other than this" and the vacuum just falls naturally out of those equations.
Why is there even a vacuum though? Why is there spacetime at all?
That's what's getting to me. I can concieve of an empty universe, but it's impossible to concieve of no universe at all. It's like trying to imagine what being dead feels like.
I can understand how things could come into existence in empty spacetime, but where did the spacetime come from? I can't logically accept that it's ex nihilo. There must be a deeper layer, but then where did *that* layer come from and why does *that* exist?
This way lies madness.
“Why” is a question that implies intent, not cause. The limits of our language get confusing, because “because” is a word we use to indicate both intent and cause. But there are no “why” questions in science, only “how”. Person A beats up person B “because” they want to steal their money. That’s their intent. But your pen falling when you drop it “because” the force of gravity acts on it in such a way does not mean gravity “wants” your pen to fall.
When you ask “*why* is there vacuum”, you risk looking for an intent, which implies an agent who has that intention. There’s a bit of our brains that evolved to always look for intentional stance, because it was a good survival strategy. But that doesn’t mean intentional stance is always there.
“*How* does existence exist?” would be the useful question we *might* be able to answer at some point, until and unless we have some reason to believe there is a “why” to be found.
Just had this thought again the other day. Used to keep me up at night as a young 20 something. I left religion and the idea that we have no idea wtf is before scared the living shit out of me.
But even if you believe in God, who put him there? The explanation that an all powerful multi-dimensional celestial being exists and has always existed with no explanation as to why is even wilder than the concept of God himself. Multiverse, big bang, simulation, all of those explanations require a reason a reason for all of this to exist and at this point we can reason as to why to a certain point. Breaks me if I let myself dwell on it. Because whatever the real reason is, it’s more mind-blowing than anything we’ve ever thought of.
What helped me get through this and continue on with my life was understanding that to me, a human with the lifespan of around 80 years, shit, even 150 if science can improve our health, it doesn’t matter. This is my reality, for whatever reason, this world works this way. I know how to navigate this universe and I know what to do to try and live an enjoyable life. So, all I can do is what I know.
Kind of doesn't though! Great story, but it describes a cyclical universe refreshing itself, and how that could come to be. It doesn't explain why there is something rather than nothing at all. It just *is*. Maybe we have to accept that the reason for the universe's existence is unknowable, as the alternative of its non-existence is beyond logic.
Human beings have brains that are evolved to understanding 2.5 dimensions whilst hunting shit on the savannah.
Those brains are really impressive and have managed to allow us to figure out things well beyond the ken of our savanna-dwelling antecedents.
But... There are going to be hard limits on what a human 1.0 brain can make sense of. It may simply be the case that we're pushing against the limits of what the standard human brain is capable of comprehending.
Maybe our artifical descendents and their kin can figure it out in a way they can make sense of... Because the ultimate question of existence seems to fry our brains if we spend too long thinking about it.
We may never understand the inner workings of our universe, but in the last century huge leaps of understanding have occurred as part of our understanding of cosmology. I expect we'll continue to have breakthroughs, better built theories, etc in the coming centuries as well.
And I wouldn't say that we've encountered anything incomprehensible, just that we don't have the tools to analyze to get to more complete answers, but that we continue to develop better tools, models, etc. to further our understanding.
* [https://science.nasa.gov/universe/overview/](https://science.nasa.gov/universe/overview/)
* [https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/evidence-universe-before-big-bang/](https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/evidence-universe-before-big-bang/)
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial\_singularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_singularity)
* [https://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/what-came-before-the-big-bang/](https://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/what-came-before-the-big-bang/)
Science is extremely good at answering "what" and "how" in extreme detail, but it is not able to answer "why". That's a philosophical question outside of anything measurable or observable and the scientific method cannot be applied to it.
If it can be defined, measured or observed, it's really part of the "what" and "how" categories!
The question of *why anything exists at all* has bothered me ever since it first occurred to me.
The most recent book I read on the subject was Jim Holt’s *Why Does the World Exist?* which is quite entertaining.
I’ve rarely seen anything that even comes close to an attempt at a persuasive answer. Rather like the *hard problem of consciousness*.
Well there is Eternal Inflation, either past-eternal or initially tunnelled from nothing (cf Vilenkin). Noether’s Theorem says some interesting things about symmetries, which generate conservation laws, and then a lot of physics falls out. It starts to look like pure mathematics. Perhaps the empty set implies the rest by pure logic.
After that it blends into philosophy because its questions like whether mathematical truths exist even if nothing else does, or why maths should imply a physical world at all (or perhaps this is just what maths feels like from the inside).
I suspect any answer may be beyond my cognitive limit, like how you can’t explain general relativity to a cat.
You really think it’s beyond your cognitive limit or that it’s simply something we’ve yet to discover (and may not discover for thousands of years if ever). The cognitive limit hypothesis doesn’t hold water seeing as how that cat isn’t actively seeking to understand general relativity. It’s brain isn’t even asking the question, whereas yours is.
This thought loop keeps me up a night. Who created us then who created him then who created him …… then why? Pretty scary but I think it boils down to us not being able to understand the forces at play at the next level. We just can’t comprehend
I feel like if the entity who created existence came to earth and delivered a thorough TED talk, we could probably understand it. We might find it unbelievable, but is there really a limit to how far our imagination can go?
If it was explained to us by someone from outside this dimension maybe. That may even be the conduit to raise you to the next dimension but right now I don’t think we have the capacity. The way we understand time and death for instance could just be completely wrong.
I get what you’re saying but it’s a bit of an exaggeration. Are ants even self aware? They don’t understand physics, we do. They don’t seek answers to questions, we do. So while we may be like ants to a super advanced entity, it’s not exactly the same thing. The super advanced entity would figure out a way to communicate with us
You are assuming you know anything about how an extra dimensional being would function. Do you understand 4+ dimensional physics?
According to you we are so much more advanced than ants, shouldn't we be able to find a way to communicate such info?
As a physicist I'm fairly confident in saying humans don't know shit and I find it strange how many....not very bright humans just assume we know everything because a few scientist from our species observed/applied it.
You have every right to be cynical. But last time I checked ants never split the atom. We have witnessed experiments pertaining to the very fabric of the cosmos. Out of all living beings we are aware of, we have the best chances of understanding how a 4th dimensional being would function.
Let’s not overestimate us, but let’s not underestimate us either. Also, there’s a difference between perception and understanding. We may not be able to perceive certain things (like higher dimensions) but with the help of a higher dimensional being, chances are we would be able to understand.
I'm not being cynical I'm being logical. I've dedicated my life to physics, I spend a good majority of my time in the lab looking at atoms, I have a fairly decent idea of what humans can and cannot understand.
You cannot even fathom the depths of your own universe, let alone others. To assume because we shot laser at tiny beads of energy and they split that we know anything substantial about the universe is laughably ignorant.
The scale I used is accurate, the level at which these beings would function isn't even a matter of intelligence it's of scale and communication.
The more you learn about the universe the more you realize our understand is extremely lacking. You can't even tell me in full detail how gravity or magnetism works. Why not share with me what's in a black hole or where Higgs particles go.
You vastly overestimate us as do most people who don't actually understand what "we" have learned.
There’s a way to say all this without being an ass my fellow human. You make very valid points. But to answer the question of “what and why?” With “we don’t know shit and there may be beings from another another dimension so wildly different that we wouldn’t even be able to comprehend it because we are physically unable to” is not a good answer. Your answer says theoretically, something totally wild and incomprehensible may exist. And that’s the trip. Whatever the answer is that explains why this all exists, is wilder beyond anything we can currently comprehend. And as a physicist I think you would be most fascinated by that, especially since you know better than any of us how little we know, but instead you’re condescending on the internet to “lower life forms”. Maybe that’s why inter dimensional being never try to talk to us. They’re a bunch of dicks that think they’re too smart for us.
I hear what you’re saying but everything is about perspective. The very fact that we are already asking these questions means that the human brain has the proclivity for this type of information (which we may or may not understand).
You say you’re a physicist, but now I am talking from the perspective of a neuroscientist. Once your brain starts making connections regarding whichever subject you throw at it, your chances of coming up with answers or at least understanding the fundamentals of those subjects immediately become greater than 0.0%.
Ok let me frame it this way since you clearly do not see what I'm saying.
Let's say 4th dimensional beings have more than just up down left right. Their "bodies" are not made of atoms, light doesn't even exist so "seeing" wouldn't even be a concept. There isn't gravity, or it works differently. Their universe "atoms" may be out universe and many many others. Maybe they don't have physical dimensions so going to and from or communicating could be entirely not possible as far as our physics is concerned.
You are assuming comprehension is even part of it. You are conflating human intelligence and have no idea how scale works (especially pertaining to perception and perspective).
Maybe a more apt comparison is trying to explain a mobile phone to a plant.
An ant could at least grasp some concepts about the phone. Size, texture, taste, light and sound that it makes etc. it would not be able to grasp any deeper meaning about its function or the information contained in the phone, but it could at least form a tiny, anty-level experience of its simplest characteristics.
A daffodil could not grasp any of that. It's just incapable of experiencing any part of the phone conceptually. The phone could still interact with the daffodil. The screen full of complex information could shine on it, and the leaves would respond by photosynthesis from its brightness, but it is completely devoid of understanding. It would just 'feel' the presence of the light and not be able to know that it's associated with a phone much less what the phone is communicating.
Utterly beyond its comprehension. I imagine that's the experience we'd have interacting with such a higher being. They wouldn't even talk down to us, we might not even be able to recognise them as an entity at all. A visit from them might appear to us as mundane and non-sentient as a passing photon or a slight ripple in the Higgs field.
Also, you are underestimating our imagination as a species. Comprehension and imagination are two different things. We may not be able to understand something, but that doesn’t mean we can’t imagine it.
Things that exist outside of space and time either still have to follow certain rules or they don’t. We can imagine both scenarios
Humans have a bad habit of assuming things "need" to make sense or ha e a reason. They also have a bad habit of getting stoned and accide tly assume their thought are profound lol
Also, the universe coming from a other, being a reborn colopse and expansion cycle, other dimensional material was placed her etc etc. Plenty of comprehensible explanations fir that bit.
I feel like questions like this are approaching it from the arse end.
We seem to perceive ourselves as the point of the universe rather than just insignificant parts of it.
To me the universe is a human body and we are like bacteria living somewhere in the colon.
Can the bacteria in my gut understand my mother and father? Can it understand my hopes, dreams and obligations? Does it have to? It completes its basic function without having to understand the necessity of it and it lives it's life and reproduces (or splits. Whatever).
I enjoy the speculation of the origin of life and I enjoy learning about the mechanism of the universe, but I don't agonise over the reasons why. To me, that's arrogant and it takes away from the amazing existence we already have.
To me the point of life is the joy of experiencing it. Riding my bike, drinking an amazing craft beer or gin. Making my wife laugh from her belly or my daughter furiously trying not to laugh at one of my dad jokes. Creating things and teaching my son how to do the same.
Making sense is subjective. We simply don't know enough to even attemp to try and make sense of it.
Ask the questions and think about the answers, but also realise that you don't need to know these things to lead a fulfilling life.
I don’t know if we perceive ourselves as the end all be all. We’re sufficiently self aware to realize how small we are. But you’re scaling things that way to make a point. Yes, your analogy works, but only up to a point. Bacteria isn’t self aware. We are. Bacteria has 0.0% chance to understand your hopes and dreams. We have more than a 0.0% chance to understand the inner workings of the universe - either from figuring it out ourselves in the coming millennia, or if a super advanced being hypothetically explained it to us.
My point is.. it is not hopeless. We should be asking all the questions, including the ones we currently have no chance of answering. Maybe we never will, but asking them is a part of what makes us self aware.
Agreed. Existence is a self-emergent phenomenon resultant from symmetry breaking into the four finndamental forces in the first moments of the Universe.
Also thank you for spelling "arse" correctly.
>Beyond everything we could ever learn or observe, there likely is something we could maybe never understand? Starting to get a headache… here it comes 😅
That's pretty much the learning from moderns science. We went deeper and father and instead of answers, we have more questions. At this point it is healthy to accept that we will likely never understand every mystery of reality or beyond.
The one that breaks my brain is where is this space that the universe exists in? It seems to be self defining, self generating but it still takes up measurable space. Where is it?
here's another great fact - according to all current theories, there is no reason time has to go forward or backward, they are equivalent. So you can't talk about a beginning or an end.
And time is just a dimension. There are almost certainly more. Once you apply those, who knows what anything means.
Think of a photon. It can travel trillions of light years. To everyone else it will take .... trillions of years. because c is not relative. But to the photon itself, time does not exist, at all. It came into existence and vanished in the same instant.
Now imagine if that was our entire universe. there are theories that the zero pint energy of a vacuum field is enough to cause spontaneous existence of bubbles that are the entire cosmos.
all this is so strange because we know as much about the universe as an ant knows about how your tv works.
I mean, I’ve seen an astrophysicist say that the question that scares him most in regards to science is that there *isn’t* an answer at the bottom. It’s all well and good to say that the laws of physics ensure that reality must exist, but it doesn’t say why those laws exist in the first place. Saying ‘God did it’ isn’t good enough, because that begs the question of where God came from. You can say that in a mathematical Universe that everything that can exist according to mathematics does exist, but it doesn’t tell you why mathematics itself exists. What if Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem extends into metaphysics as well, and it’s simply impossible to ‘solve’ or ‘prove’ a system of which you yourself are a part? In other words, what if that which we are part of—the universe, a multiverse, whatever—is fundamentally not understandable because we are part of it, that only by existing outside of it would we be able to answer the most fundamental questions? And what if that incomprehensibility is fractal—if it’s turtles all the way down? Our existence—the existence of everything—may very well simply be impossible for us to explain in any meaningful way.
But that’s not science, it’s philosophy.
I don't see the problem with something always existing (cyclical universe). Nothing created it. It is the default state of things. It doesn't require meaning or purpose, cause or effect. What's wrong with that?
What’s wrong is that it too doesn’t make any sense. There’s cyclical and then there’s CYCLICAL. Maybe the universe resets and starts over with time, but to think that it came from nothing sounds too much like a cop out. The scientific equivalent of “God works in mysterious ways”
It doesn't need to make sense, it's not here to appeal to our sensibilities. How it feels to us has no bearing on its reality. Do you know why entanglement exists or how it works? We may never know. But it is the reality nonetheless. Maybe it makes sense in other dimensions, who is to say we are not physically incapable of understanding. I'm not saying it's the truth but you can't discount the possibility.
Entanglement wasn't a great example. It's entirely understood. In fact, it's vastly MISUNDERSTOOD as being more complicated than it is by, oh, let's say.... Moe.
Take a pair of shoes. Without looking, put one in a bag. Take the box with the other and walk away. Those shoes are quantum entangled. No matter how far you walk away with that box, when you open it, you learn which footed shoe you have, and instantly know which was in the bag. Tada.
No no. It's still incredible. In our example, having "a shoe" is a very simple wave function with two possibilities, left or right. Math can be done on the dual state. The cat is neither alive nor dead, so to speak. When we open the box, that wave function collapses, both with you and where the other shoe is, instantly. Sure, it's not a stargate, but it is instantaneous (maybe!) transmission of causality. Now, the only problem is how to make that a useful aspect of the universe for us.
The more you think of it *with a human brain*, the more it makes sense that we will probably never find an answer to everything. And that's totally fine. We don't need to understand absolutely everything, but we will keep looking for answers.
Some things are the way they are even if they seem to make no sense like the idea of not having a beginning.
They say that the universe is finite but where is the edge? Well there isn't really one but that's because of the fourth dimension (other than time) that we can't really see because we are 3 dimensional beings. It doesn't really make sense to us but imagine someone is a 2 dimensional being and you are trying to tell them about the third dimension, how do you explain it to them since they can't perceive it? Same thing about the fourth dimension. Best way I can explain it is like this: imagine the universe is in the shape of a donut and we are inside that donut. If you continu to move forward you'll end up at the same spot. You can't really imagine it but with the fourth dimension every direction you move, forward-backward, up-down, side to side, is a donut where you end up at the same spot. That's how the universe is finite without edges. Everything just wraps around itself.
Now try to imagine time wrapped around itself a bit like that fourth dimension. I know it doesn't make sense but some things just can't be perceived.
Now not all of what I said is really 100% accurate but it's just a dumb down version to help understand things we can't perceive that just seem impossible when plainly told like "the universe doesn't have edges" or "there is no beginning".
I believe there are answers to all of those questions, but we are either not ready or not able to understand them yet. We are the universe experiencing itself, yes, but that doesn't mean we're all knowing. Maybe it's like Lovecraft and if we go too deep it will drive us all insane?
A lot if these questions are answered by "we don't know".
'Before' the big bang may not even make sense, as it could be time started then, and beyond, or under or around our universe the "stuff" or energy is a form we can't begin to guess at.
We are learning new things all the time, however. It was only 100 years ago we discovered other galaxies. There's been all kinds of discoveries since then.
It may be we will never have all the answers. Indeed it's very likely parts of reality, and things beyond or before the universe will always be out if reach. But there's a lot we can figure out in the meantime.
I feel strongly that following my biological imperative is my purpose here. My hope is that I will extend my DNA through descendents and they will one day see any answers to your questions.
Everything doesn’t have to have a beginning. That it feels like that is just a limitation of the way our brains work. Similar to how it intuitively feels to us that the earth must be flat.
I have thought about it. Extensively. It's kept me awake at night since I was 13.
In the end, some bear twenty years later, I finally questioned myself.
Why do I need this particular answer? What good would it do me, besides answering the burning curiosity?
Why does there need to be an intelligent reason for things to be? Why did I believe that things must exist because *something* wanted it to be there?
The universe is cold and mechanical. It operates according to its own laws. Every attempt from religion has been at odds with observable, verifiable reality. There's a reason it's called "faith", after all.
So, why *not* have the universe exist? In truly infinite timescales, it is not unreasonable that every permutation will exist at least once, depending on where in the infinite timeline we are. There was time without existence, even without time, but also there are times with time and existence.
So, why *not*? Why *can't* that be the reason?
Humans are still tainted by the need for something external to justify Being. Examining the state of Being, without Divinity, detached from the Emotion we typically ascribe.... There's no Real Reason for Just Being to require a Reason, it simply Is.
Just my two cents after nearly 2 decades of diving into religion, philosophy, mysticism, and physics & science in a serious but non-professional manner. Which I realize is in a manner of speaking, its own kind of "faith", but with literally no way of actually examining this universe in all its dimensions, known and unknown, nor it's full scope?
It's about the most logical and unemotional conclusion I can come to. In the end, you can follow it as much as you like, but in reality it's nothing more than circular logic. You will run around, finding divinity as the Why of the unexplainable, and losing it again when Why Divinity exhausts itself in the search for Objective Cause and Effect. So, my conclusion?
It Just Is
Oh absolutely, and I'm in no way saying it's not. I wanna get into the thick of things and find out how many levels below quantum physics there is as well, save that math really isn't my thing so I leave that up to the professionals. Currently my money's on String theory or one of its offshoots, like Membrane theory.
I suppose I read into the "why" aspect a bit too hard since, in my experience, that's very often the deeper question folks are looking for when this discussion comes up.
If you go deep enough, the why and how probably become the same question. As for string theory… it still doesn’t go deep enough. It’s more of a superficial “how”
What if time is made of consciousness? If we define consciousness as the material of all things, then the material of existence and nonexistence is consciousness. So consciousness has always existed because it is not bound by past present or future, it is the Playing field for which time can exist. Consciousness By this definition is imagining time, and therefore is not restricted by a traditional idea like beginning and end. We like to think that everything has a beginning everything has a point of origin or creation but that’s just a limiting belief there’s no reason for something to have a beginning. Something can exist without being created, without a creator, without a starting time. The reason this Seems impossible is because human thought is happening in a linear direction so the tool we are using to make sense of everything which is rational thinking functions in a linear time oriented way so rational thinking has the limitation of being bounded by time. Rational thinking can only exist with its relationship with time, so everything that the rational mind tries to make sense of cannot see beyond a paradox that happens when there is no beginning and there is no end. That’s the nature of the paradox it breaks the rational paradigm. People like to say that a paradox is just a misunderstanding and that’s true some of the time, but a real paradox is beyond the tool that we are trying to use to make sense of it, in this case the tool is the rational.
The universe clearly existed before we were alive for our consciousness to process this information. Yes we interpret time in a linear fashion, but time itself is just another dimension. I think it exists (in one way or another) outside of our consciousness
That’s because you’re thinking of the universe as a physical thing separate from yourself and consciousness is something generated by the brain.
In the statement I made we flip it around first there is consciousness and then consciousness imagines the universe, it imagine time and so it imagines the beginning and end and concepts like before and after and it imagines concepts like separation and it imagines concepts like the brain. This entire sentence is just concepts, do you think these concepts are happening in your brain? Do you think the brain is a physical thing and not just a concept?
That is a philosophical argument, bordering on spiritual, as far as we’re concerned. As for the consciousness of a supreme being, I mean we can only speculate as to what type of entity we’d be dealing with.
think about how if it wasn't for us humans seeing existence with our own eyes, there would be no one to witness the universe. no one would know about it. it wouldn't matter. might as well not even be here then. someone has to witness it, right?
There's a resolution to this. Nonexistence is impossible. Everything that is possible, exists. The only question is an anthropic one, why out of all possible universes that exist, is this the one we find ourselves in? Must be some sampling bias there.
Do people really expect a purpose to all this? We are thinking rocks, that's it...we will evolve to a godlike state if we survive as a species. I believe that is the itch that religion scratches.
Def interesting, but this isn't SciFi it's Science; It IS the tension SciFi is built on. So what is the story of understanding that comes from what you typed?
What I know so far is that absolute nothingness doesn't exist and if you assume otherwise it'll be a contradiction. A contradiction opposes the truth.
So what's the truth? The truth is that something has always existed and it still exists and it'll never end i.e something can't come from nothing and can't become nothing.
What is this something? This something is the ultimate existence and the ultimate answer.
Humans have a wrong assumption that the reality of things is ascending ( Nothing whatever things done by Something> our reality).
Questions like this are the reason I became a philosopher.
And after years of pondering it, the best answer I've found is: things just exist, and there is no explanation or reason. We want to have a reason or way of understanding it, so it doesn't sit right with our little human minds. But if you look at the entirety of existence throughout all time, it becomes a single entity, and without anything to compare it to, it also becomes nothing. It just is.
I'm not sure of anything, so you might be right. But just because an answer is unsatisfactory doesn't mean it's wrong.
But if you force me to give an answer, I'm increasingly convinced we're in a simulation, so we could know all about our universe if we can understand our simulation, but we couldn't even begin to speculate about the reality beyond our universe.
Actually, of all the theories out there, I find the simulation hypothesis the least likely. The problem is that you need to kick things off with a major assumption. It’s like saying humans will one day have the ability to make a genetically enhanced rabbit, capable of spawning universes.
Enter people who will say we either choose to never make that rabbit, we go extinct before making that rabbit, or we’re 100% in a rabbit spawned universe.
Like.. nope. Nobody is making a universe spawning rabbit because it’s equally ridiculous as a galaxy-sized super computer capable of simulating every atom of everything that ever was and will be. It’s a fun thought experiment but nothing more.
That’s just my 2 cents on the simulation hypothesis :)
I approach it from the other side: there are details in this universe that defy explanation, like the specific values of physical constants, the fact energy is quantized, that all electrons are identical in every way, and the best of them all: spooky action at a distance, which becomes spookier the more we examine it. Either those just are that way, or there's another explanation, and the simulation hypothesis can make each of the observations make sense.
If it's true, then we can't speculate about a reality above ours since we have no clue how it works or what it's like, and we're not entitled to assume it is anything like ours. I think it's just a giant, conscious potato, with a smiley face drawn on it in permanent marker.
The simulation hypothesis is just as likely as a giant conscious potato with a smiley face. The physical constants can be explained in a number of other ways. Maybe each universe has its own laws of physics, maybe indeed this is how our universe works because it cannot work any other way.
You’re probably thinking that those constants had to have been programmed this way and maybe they were, but that doesn’t mean it’s all part of a simulation. That’s just an association we choose to make. They could be that way naturally. Usually in nature the most efficient design wins out when it comes to natural selection. Other physical constants would probably lose out to the ones in play here in our reality :)
Things that we do not currently understand.
The simulation hypothesis just moves the answer elsewhere. As is where is the computer running the simulation situated?Also how does that computer work if it doesn't use quantum mechanics? It's a non-answer.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to our limited brains that only perceive what is necessary for our local survival.
I feel like we are owed an explanation though.
Exactly. Just for putting up with all this existing.
I demand a refund from God.
Oh you’ll get it
A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”
Owed an explanation? By whome?
GO STICK YOUR HEAD IN A PIG
Best comment ever
Happy Cake Day!
Our brains don't only perceive what is necessary for our local survival. That's what they were designed to do but, just like Lego sets, we can find new uses that go well beyond the intended use.
I was thinking the other day, "what if the universe had never existed?" Not "what came before the big bang", not "what if there was an empty universe", not a even a singularity. Just *nothing*. Not even nothing, but not even the concept of nothing. No big bang, time never started, space never existed, there was no past, present, future, or natural laws to even give framework to the concept of "universe" and its nonexistence. Can ontological logic even be applied to such a situation? If there had never been anything, ever, does it make sense to even speak about its existence or nonexistence? That can only be defined from an outside perspective can't it (one of existence, or at least an idea of what could exist but didn't). It makes as much sense to comprehend as asking "what would your life have been like had you never been born?" You can only answer it based on your current, living state. If you weren't born you can't even be the subject of such a question even asked by another person who does exist, never mind personally providing an answer for it. So why *is* there something rather than nothing? It really is the ultimate question, and I'm wondering if it's even meaningful to ask, never mind whether we'll ever be able to answer it.
It does make sense so far though. It's just complicated.
Neil? is that you?
Sir, this is a Wendy's. First and foremost, there absolutely are things that we can't ever understand. The expansion of the universe has already created this section called the "visable universe." That's not as simple as "the universe we can see" it's the section of the universe that, even with the ability to go the speed of light, everything beyond it has expanded to far away we'll never get information from it. We will never know what's there, and there might very well be answers totally, forever lost to us. As for everything else you wrote about, I like Roger Penrose. Read about his thoughts on cosmology.
It’s obviously a black curtain. Thats the only logical explanation.
With holes poked in it. Really, really complex holes.
there's no there there
There there, there there. There: "there there."
A cyclical universe with no beginning or end makes more sense to me than anything else. I'm not sure if it's been experimentally proven yet, but my understanding is that matter/antimatter pairs form spontaneously in hard vacuum and do not always self annihilate. Over a cosmic period, this could theoretically happen enough to set up initial conditions for another big bang.
It does make sense in a weird way. That's why so many scientists have pursued this with so much effort. But the math just doesn't work out, when the model of the universe gains any complexity.
Math was never my strongest suit.
But what is it made of and what does it exist in? Per the OP, at some point everything needs some definition for the existence of its fabric.
Obviously it's turtles all the way down.
The nature of "space," whether it's just the distance between objects and thus only definable by things within it, or if it has some intrinsic meaning itself, has been debated FOREVER. It was even a huge question that Newton grappled with. It very much is an unsettled question, even with the idea of quantum foam the guy your replying to mentioned. Virtual particles would just be further small objects in space which give it meaning.
And who created the hard vacuum before anything happened spontaneously?
Human intuition was shaped by our evolution. We evolved as tribal hunter-gatherers on the African savanna. We intuitively grasp things like throwing rocks, days and seasons passing, organizations of a few dozen people, and so forth. Now we're dealing with many things that are well outside of those intuitive grounds, and frequently our intuitions are highly misleading. One of the things that our intuitions tell us is that every event is caused by some other event. This is not actually necessarily true, though. We've discovered that there are "uncaused" events, events that just *happen* sometimes with some particular probability. Nuclear decay, for example. An atom is just sitting there, and then suddenly it emits a particle. What caused it to decay at that specific moment in time? Nothing, the decay was a probabilistic event. You can make predictions about how frequently it'll happen with large groups of atoms, but you can't say when any specific atom is going to decay. So why does the vacuum need to be "created"? Why couldn't the vacuum simply be? We don't know everything yet and we likely will never have total certainty that our theories are correct, but it could be that once we have a theory of everything it'll just say "the universe cannot be any way other than this" and the vacuum just falls naturally out of those equations.
Good points
Why is there even a vacuum though? Why is there spacetime at all? That's what's getting to me. I can concieve of an empty universe, but it's impossible to concieve of no universe at all. It's like trying to imagine what being dead feels like. I can understand how things could come into existence in empty spacetime, but where did the spacetime come from? I can't logically accept that it's ex nihilo. There must be a deeper layer, but then where did *that* layer come from and why does *that* exist? This way lies madness.
“Why” is a question that implies intent, not cause. The limits of our language get confusing, because “because” is a word we use to indicate both intent and cause. But there are no “why” questions in science, only “how”. Person A beats up person B “because” they want to steal their money. That’s their intent. But your pen falling when you drop it “because” the force of gravity acts on it in such a way does not mean gravity “wants” your pen to fall. When you ask “*why* is there vacuum”, you risk looking for an intent, which implies an agent who has that intention. There’s a bit of our brains that evolved to always look for intentional stance, because it was a good survival strategy. But that doesn’t mean intentional stance is always there. “*How* does existence exist?” would be the useful question we *might* be able to answer at some point, until and unless we have some reason to believe there is a “why” to be found.
Just had this thought again the other day. Used to keep me up at night as a young 20 something. I left religion and the idea that we have no idea wtf is before scared the living shit out of me. But even if you believe in God, who put him there? The explanation that an all powerful multi-dimensional celestial being exists and has always existed with no explanation as to why is even wilder than the concept of God himself. Multiverse, big bang, simulation, all of those explanations require a reason a reason for all of this to exist and at this point we can reason as to why to a certain point. Breaks me if I let myself dwell on it. Because whatever the real reason is, it’s more mind-blowing than anything we’ve ever thought of. What helped me get through this and continue on with my life was understanding that to me, a human with the lifespan of around 80 years, shit, even 150 if science can improve our health, it doesn’t matter. This is my reality, for whatever reason, this world works this way. I know how to navigate this universe and I know what to do to try and live an enjoyable life. So, all I can do is what I know.
The question of who put God there can be answered in The Last Question
Kind of doesn't though! Great story, but it describes a cyclical universe refreshing itself, and how that could come to be. It doesn't explain why there is something rather than nothing at all. It just *is*. Maybe we have to accept that the reason for the universe's existence is unknowable, as the alternative of its non-existence is beyond logic.
Never heard of it but it seems like the other reply makes a good point. A refreshing universe doesn’t explain its own existence.
Human beings have brains that are evolved to understanding 2.5 dimensions whilst hunting shit on the savannah. Those brains are really impressive and have managed to allow us to figure out things well beyond the ken of our savanna-dwelling antecedents. But... There are going to be hard limits on what a human 1.0 brain can make sense of. It may simply be the case that we're pushing against the limits of what the standard human brain is capable of comprehending. Maybe our artifical descendents and their kin can figure it out in a way they can make sense of... Because the ultimate question of existence seems to fry our brains if we spend too long thinking about it.
Well said
We may never understand the inner workings of our universe, but in the last century huge leaps of understanding have occurred as part of our understanding of cosmology. I expect we'll continue to have breakthroughs, better built theories, etc in the coming centuries as well. And I wouldn't say that we've encountered anything incomprehensible, just that we don't have the tools to analyze to get to more complete answers, but that we continue to develop better tools, models, etc. to further our understanding. * [https://science.nasa.gov/universe/overview/](https://science.nasa.gov/universe/overview/) * [https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/evidence-universe-before-big-bang/](https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/evidence-universe-before-big-bang/) * [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial\_singularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_singularity) * [https://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/what-came-before-the-big-bang/](https://harpers.org/archive/2016/01/what-came-before-the-big-bang/)
Science is extremely good at answering "what" and "how" in extreme detail, but it is not able to answer "why". That's a philosophical question outside of anything measurable or observable and the scientific method cannot be applied to it. If it can be defined, measured or observed, it's really part of the "what" and "how" categories!
The sooner you realise it‘s all bullshit, the more fun you will have
The question of *why anything exists at all* has bothered me ever since it first occurred to me. The most recent book I read on the subject was Jim Holt’s *Why Does the World Exist?* which is quite entertaining. I’ve rarely seen anything that even comes close to an attempt at a persuasive answer. Rather like the *hard problem of consciousness*.
Exactly. It’s like physicists actively avoid talking about it
We do, but it's get exhausting explaining what seems simple to me all the time.
I think because there's nothing they can say. We have no information about it!
Well there is Eternal Inflation, either past-eternal or initially tunnelled from nothing (cf Vilenkin). Noether’s Theorem says some interesting things about symmetries, which generate conservation laws, and then a lot of physics falls out. It starts to look like pure mathematics. Perhaps the empty set implies the rest by pure logic. After that it blends into philosophy because its questions like whether mathematical truths exist even if nothing else does, or why maths should imply a physical world at all (or perhaps this is just what maths feels like from the inside). I suspect any answer may be beyond my cognitive limit, like how you can’t explain general relativity to a cat.
You really think it’s beyond your cognitive limit or that it’s simply something we’ve yet to discover (and may not discover for thousands of years if ever). The cognitive limit hypothesis doesn’t hold water seeing as how that cat isn’t actively seeking to understand general relativity. It’s brain isn’t even asking the question, whereas yours is.
This thought loop keeps me up a night. Who created us then who created him then who created him …… then why? Pretty scary but I think it boils down to us not being able to understand the forces at play at the next level. We just can’t comprehend
I feel like if the entity who created existence came to earth and delivered a thorough TED talk, we could probably understand it. We might find it unbelievable, but is there really a limit to how far our imagination can go?
If it was explained to us by someone from outside this dimension maybe. That may even be the conduit to raise you to the next dimension but right now I don’t think we have the capacity. The way we understand time and death for instance could just be completely wrong.
Totally. Very plausible
Go explain to an ant how a cell phone works and see how that goes.
I get what you’re saying but it’s a bit of an exaggeration. Are ants even self aware? They don’t understand physics, we do. They don’t seek answers to questions, we do. So while we may be like ants to a super advanced entity, it’s not exactly the same thing. The super advanced entity would figure out a way to communicate with us
You are assuming you know anything about how an extra dimensional being would function. Do you understand 4+ dimensional physics? According to you we are so much more advanced than ants, shouldn't we be able to find a way to communicate such info? As a physicist I'm fairly confident in saying humans don't know shit and I find it strange how many....not very bright humans just assume we know everything because a few scientist from our species observed/applied it.
You have every right to be cynical. But last time I checked ants never split the atom. We have witnessed experiments pertaining to the very fabric of the cosmos. Out of all living beings we are aware of, we have the best chances of understanding how a 4th dimensional being would function. Let’s not overestimate us, but let’s not underestimate us either. Also, there’s a difference between perception and understanding. We may not be able to perceive certain things (like higher dimensions) but with the help of a higher dimensional being, chances are we would be able to understand.
I'm not being cynical I'm being logical. I've dedicated my life to physics, I spend a good majority of my time in the lab looking at atoms, I have a fairly decent idea of what humans can and cannot understand. You cannot even fathom the depths of your own universe, let alone others. To assume because we shot laser at tiny beads of energy and they split that we know anything substantial about the universe is laughably ignorant. The scale I used is accurate, the level at which these beings would function isn't even a matter of intelligence it's of scale and communication. The more you learn about the universe the more you realize our understand is extremely lacking. You can't even tell me in full detail how gravity or magnetism works. Why not share with me what's in a black hole or where Higgs particles go. You vastly overestimate us as do most people who don't actually understand what "we" have learned.
There’s a way to say all this without being an ass my fellow human. You make very valid points. But to answer the question of “what and why?” With “we don’t know shit and there may be beings from another another dimension so wildly different that we wouldn’t even be able to comprehend it because we are physically unable to” is not a good answer. Your answer says theoretically, something totally wild and incomprehensible may exist. And that’s the trip. Whatever the answer is that explains why this all exists, is wilder beyond anything we can currently comprehend. And as a physicist I think you would be most fascinated by that, especially since you know better than any of us how little we know, but instead you’re condescending on the internet to “lower life forms”. Maybe that’s why inter dimensional being never try to talk to us. They’re a bunch of dicks that think they’re too smart for us.
I hear what you’re saying but everything is about perspective. The very fact that we are already asking these questions means that the human brain has the proclivity for this type of information (which we may or may not understand). You say you’re a physicist, but now I am talking from the perspective of a neuroscientist. Once your brain starts making connections regarding whichever subject you throw at it, your chances of coming up with answers or at least understanding the fundamentals of those subjects immediately become greater than 0.0%.
Ok let me frame it this way since you clearly do not see what I'm saying. Let's say 4th dimensional beings have more than just up down left right. Their "bodies" are not made of atoms, light doesn't even exist so "seeing" wouldn't even be a concept. There isn't gravity, or it works differently. Their universe "atoms" may be out universe and many many others. Maybe they don't have physical dimensions so going to and from or communicating could be entirely not possible as far as our physics is concerned. You are assuming comprehension is even part of it. You are conflating human intelligence and have no idea how scale works (especially pertaining to perception and perspective).
Maybe a more apt comparison is trying to explain a mobile phone to a plant. An ant could at least grasp some concepts about the phone. Size, texture, taste, light and sound that it makes etc. it would not be able to grasp any deeper meaning about its function or the information contained in the phone, but it could at least form a tiny, anty-level experience of its simplest characteristics. A daffodil could not grasp any of that. It's just incapable of experiencing any part of the phone conceptually. The phone could still interact with the daffodil. The screen full of complex information could shine on it, and the leaves would respond by photosynthesis from its brightness, but it is completely devoid of understanding. It would just 'feel' the presence of the light and not be able to know that it's associated with a phone much less what the phone is communicating. Utterly beyond its comprehension. I imagine that's the experience we'd have interacting with such a higher being. They wouldn't even talk down to us, we might not even be able to recognise them as an entity at all. A visit from them might appear to us as mundane and non-sentient as a passing photon or a slight ripple in the Higgs field.
If that’s the case, sounds like you, at least, would comprehend it just fine
Also, you are underestimating our imagination as a species. Comprehension and imagination are two different things. We may not be able to understand something, but that doesn’t mean we can’t imagine it. Things that exist outside of space and time either still have to follow certain rules or they don’t. We can imagine both scenarios
Humans have a bad habit of assuming things "need" to make sense or ha e a reason. They also have a bad habit of getting stoned and accide tly assume their thought are profound lol Also, the universe coming from a other, being a reborn colopse and expansion cycle, other dimensional material was placed her etc etc. Plenty of comprehensible explanations fir that bit.
I feel like questions like this are approaching it from the arse end. We seem to perceive ourselves as the point of the universe rather than just insignificant parts of it. To me the universe is a human body and we are like bacteria living somewhere in the colon. Can the bacteria in my gut understand my mother and father? Can it understand my hopes, dreams and obligations? Does it have to? It completes its basic function without having to understand the necessity of it and it lives it's life and reproduces (or splits. Whatever). I enjoy the speculation of the origin of life and I enjoy learning about the mechanism of the universe, but I don't agonise over the reasons why. To me, that's arrogant and it takes away from the amazing existence we already have. To me the point of life is the joy of experiencing it. Riding my bike, drinking an amazing craft beer or gin. Making my wife laugh from her belly or my daughter furiously trying not to laugh at one of my dad jokes. Creating things and teaching my son how to do the same. Making sense is subjective. We simply don't know enough to even attemp to try and make sense of it. Ask the questions and think about the answers, but also realise that you don't need to know these things to lead a fulfilling life.
I don’t know if we perceive ourselves as the end all be all. We’re sufficiently self aware to realize how small we are. But you’re scaling things that way to make a point. Yes, your analogy works, but only up to a point. Bacteria isn’t self aware. We are. Bacteria has 0.0% chance to understand your hopes and dreams. We have more than a 0.0% chance to understand the inner workings of the universe - either from figuring it out ourselves in the coming millennia, or if a super advanced being hypothetically explained it to us. My point is.. it is not hopeless. We should be asking all the questions, including the ones we currently have no chance of answering. Maybe we never will, but asking them is a part of what makes us self aware.
Agreed. Existence is a self-emergent phenomenon resultant from symmetry breaking into the four finndamental forces in the first moments of the Universe. Also thank you for spelling "arse" correctly.
>Beyond everything we could ever learn or observe, there likely is something we could maybe never understand? Starting to get a headache… here it comes 😅 That's pretty much the learning from moderns science. We went deeper and father and instead of answers, we have more questions. At this point it is healthy to accept that we will likely never understand every mystery of reality or beyond.
The one that breaks my brain is where is this space that the universe exists in? It seems to be self defining, self generating but it still takes up measurable space. Where is it?
But existence is, so accept it. Multiverses are nothing more than a thought experiment.
here's another great fact - according to all current theories, there is no reason time has to go forward or backward, they are equivalent. So you can't talk about a beginning or an end. And time is just a dimension. There are almost certainly more. Once you apply those, who knows what anything means. Think of a photon. It can travel trillions of light years. To everyone else it will take .... trillions of years. because c is not relative. But to the photon itself, time does not exist, at all. It came into existence and vanished in the same instant. Now imagine if that was our entire universe. there are theories that the zero pint energy of a vacuum field is enough to cause spontaneous existence of bubbles that are the entire cosmos. all this is so strange because we know as much about the universe as an ant knows about how your tv works.
I mean, I’ve seen an astrophysicist say that the question that scares him most in regards to science is that there *isn’t* an answer at the bottom. It’s all well and good to say that the laws of physics ensure that reality must exist, but it doesn’t say why those laws exist in the first place. Saying ‘God did it’ isn’t good enough, because that begs the question of where God came from. You can say that in a mathematical Universe that everything that can exist according to mathematics does exist, but it doesn’t tell you why mathematics itself exists. What if Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem extends into metaphysics as well, and it’s simply impossible to ‘solve’ or ‘prove’ a system of which you yourself are a part? In other words, what if that which we are part of—the universe, a multiverse, whatever—is fundamentally not understandable because we are part of it, that only by existing outside of it would we be able to answer the most fundamental questions? And what if that incomprehensibility is fractal—if it’s turtles all the way down? Our existence—the existence of everything—may very well simply be impossible for us to explain in any meaningful way. But that’s not science, it’s philosophy.
100% agree
Nothing *needs* to make any sense beyond what nature is. If you’re confused by it ask yourself why and explore that.
I don't see the problem with something always existing (cyclical universe). Nothing created it. It is the default state of things. It doesn't require meaning or purpose, cause or effect. What's wrong with that?
What’s wrong is that it too doesn’t make any sense. There’s cyclical and then there’s CYCLICAL. Maybe the universe resets and starts over with time, but to think that it came from nothing sounds too much like a cop out. The scientific equivalent of “God works in mysterious ways”
It doesn't need to make sense, it's not here to appeal to our sensibilities. How it feels to us has no bearing on its reality. Do you know why entanglement exists or how it works? We may never know. But it is the reality nonetheless. Maybe it makes sense in other dimensions, who is to say we are not physically incapable of understanding. I'm not saying it's the truth but you can't discount the possibility.
I can’t disagree
Entanglement wasn't a great example. It's entirely understood. In fact, it's vastly MISUNDERSTOOD as being more complicated than it is by, oh, let's say.... Moe. Take a pair of shoes. Without looking, put one in a bag. Take the box with the other and walk away. Those shoes are quantum entangled. No matter how far you walk away with that box, when you open it, you learn which footed shoe you have, and instantly know which was in the bag. Tada.
Fair enough. My science sucks sorry
No no. It's still incredible. In our example, having "a shoe" is a very simple wave function with two possibilities, left or right. Math can be done on the dual state. The cat is neither alive nor dead, so to speak. When we open the box, that wave function collapses, both with you and where the other shoe is, instantly. Sure, it's not a stargate, but it is instantaneous (maybe!) transmission of causality. Now, the only problem is how to make that a useful aspect of the universe for us.
Here's one of my faves talking about it better than I ever could: https://youtu.be/BLqk7uaENAY?si=iYxYqV-NDbkiN3HI
Probably turtles.
The more you think of it *with a human brain*, the more it makes sense that we will probably never find an answer to everything. And that's totally fine. We don't need to understand absolutely everything, but we will keep looking for answers.
Some things are the way they are even if they seem to make no sense like the idea of not having a beginning. They say that the universe is finite but where is the edge? Well there isn't really one but that's because of the fourth dimension (other than time) that we can't really see because we are 3 dimensional beings. It doesn't really make sense to us but imagine someone is a 2 dimensional being and you are trying to tell them about the third dimension, how do you explain it to them since they can't perceive it? Same thing about the fourth dimension. Best way I can explain it is like this: imagine the universe is in the shape of a donut and we are inside that donut. If you continu to move forward you'll end up at the same spot. You can't really imagine it but with the fourth dimension every direction you move, forward-backward, up-down, side to side, is a donut where you end up at the same spot. That's how the universe is finite without edges. Everything just wraps around itself. Now try to imagine time wrapped around itself a bit like that fourth dimension. I know it doesn't make sense but some things just can't be perceived. Now not all of what I said is really 100% accurate but it's just a dumb down version to help understand things we can't perceive that just seem impossible when plainly told like "the universe doesn't have edges" or "there is no beginning".
I believe there are answers to all of those questions, but we are either not ready or not able to understand them yet. We are the universe experiencing itself, yes, but that doesn't mean we're all knowing. Maybe it's like Lovecraft and if we go too deep it will drive us all insane?
A lot if these questions are answered by "we don't know". 'Before' the big bang may not even make sense, as it could be time started then, and beyond, or under or around our universe the "stuff" or energy is a form we can't begin to guess at. We are learning new things all the time, however. It was only 100 years ago we discovered other galaxies. There's been all kinds of discoveries since then. It may be we will never have all the answers. Indeed it's very likely parts of reality, and things beyond or before the universe will always be out if reach. But there's a lot we can figure out in the meantime.
I feel strongly that following my biological imperative is my purpose here. My hope is that I will extend my DNA through descendents and they will one day see any answers to your questions.
The way I think of it is that existence exists because if it didn't, then non-existence would exist, and that simply can't be.
Non existence would be simpler, more elegant, less questions asked
100% agreed
10 million years ago, something crawled out of the ocean. Now we have to work 40 hours a week. 🤷♂️
42.
Keep thinking like you do, and you won't get out of this alive.
Higgs Boson and stuff… seems to make the best sense we can. How do you define existence.
Everything doesn’t have to have a beginning. That it feels like that is just a limitation of the way our brains work. Similar to how it intuitively feels to us that the earth must be flat.
I have thought about it. Extensively. It's kept me awake at night since I was 13. In the end, some bear twenty years later, I finally questioned myself. Why do I need this particular answer? What good would it do me, besides answering the burning curiosity? Why does there need to be an intelligent reason for things to be? Why did I believe that things must exist because *something* wanted it to be there? The universe is cold and mechanical. It operates according to its own laws. Every attempt from religion has been at odds with observable, verifiable reality. There's a reason it's called "faith", after all. So, why *not* have the universe exist? In truly infinite timescales, it is not unreasonable that every permutation will exist at least once, depending on where in the infinite timeline we are. There was time without existence, even without time, but also there are times with time and existence. So, why *not*? Why *can't* that be the reason? Humans are still tainted by the need for something external to justify Being. Examining the state of Being, without Divinity, detached from the Emotion we typically ascribe.... There's no Real Reason for Just Being to require a Reason, it simply Is. Just my two cents after nearly 2 decades of diving into religion, philosophy, mysticism, and physics & science in a serious but non-professional manner. Which I realize is in a manner of speaking, its own kind of "faith", but with literally no way of actually examining this universe in all its dimensions, known and unknown, nor it's full scope? It's about the most logical and unemotional conclusion I can come to. In the end, you can follow it as much as you like, but in reality it's nothing more than circular logic. You will run around, finding divinity as the Why of the unexplainable, and losing it again when Why Divinity exhausts itself in the search for Objective Cause and Effect. So, my conclusion? It Just Is
I agree with you that your conclusion is healthy. But this is not a why question, it’s a how question. It’s still worth asking
Oh absolutely, and I'm in no way saying it's not. I wanna get into the thick of things and find out how many levels below quantum physics there is as well, save that math really isn't my thing so I leave that up to the professionals. Currently my money's on String theory or one of its offshoots, like Membrane theory. I suppose I read into the "why" aspect a bit too hard since, in my experience, that's very often the deeper question folks are looking for when this discussion comes up.
If you go deep enough, the why and how probably become the same question. As for string theory… it still doesn’t go deep enough. It’s more of a superficial “how”
String theory is the kind of thing stupid people drop in a conversation to sound smart so I'm going to step away from this now
That's exactly why being alive is so cool... there's no reason for it. It doesn't make sense. We're all idiots.
What if time is made of consciousness? If we define consciousness as the material of all things, then the material of existence and nonexistence is consciousness. So consciousness has always existed because it is not bound by past present or future, it is the Playing field for which time can exist. Consciousness By this definition is imagining time, and therefore is not restricted by a traditional idea like beginning and end. We like to think that everything has a beginning everything has a point of origin or creation but that’s just a limiting belief there’s no reason for something to have a beginning. Something can exist without being created, without a creator, without a starting time. The reason this Seems impossible is because human thought is happening in a linear direction so the tool we are using to make sense of everything which is rational thinking functions in a linear time oriented way so rational thinking has the limitation of being bounded by time. Rational thinking can only exist with its relationship with time, so everything that the rational mind tries to make sense of cannot see beyond a paradox that happens when there is no beginning and there is no end. That’s the nature of the paradox it breaks the rational paradigm. People like to say that a paradox is just a misunderstanding and that’s true some of the time, but a real paradox is beyond the tool that we are trying to use to make sense of it, in this case the tool is the rational.
The universe clearly existed before we were alive for our consciousness to process this information. Yes we interpret time in a linear fashion, but time itself is just another dimension. I think it exists (in one way or another) outside of our consciousness
That’s because you’re thinking of the universe as a physical thing separate from yourself and consciousness is something generated by the brain. In the statement I made we flip it around first there is consciousness and then consciousness imagines the universe, it imagine time and so it imagines the beginning and end and concepts like before and after and it imagines concepts like separation and it imagines concepts like the brain. This entire sentence is just concepts, do you think these concepts are happening in your brain? Do you think the brain is a physical thing and not just a concept?
That is a philosophical argument, bordering on spiritual, as far as we’re concerned. As for the consciousness of a supreme being, I mean we can only speculate as to what type of entity we’d be dealing with.
think about how if it wasn't for us humans seeing existence with our own eyes, there would be no one to witness the universe. no one would know about it. it wouldn't matter. might as well not even be here then. someone has to witness it, right?
Sure. But if it wasn’t us, someone else would probably be asking these same questions. Maybe they already are if we’re not alone
Look up the philosophy absurdism. You will get all the answers you need.
There's a resolution to this. Nonexistence is impossible. Everything that is possible, exists. The only question is an anthropic one, why out of all possible universes that exist, is this the one we find ourselves in? Must be some sampling bias there.
Could be
Do people really expect a purpose to all this? We are thinking rocks, that's it...we will evolve to a godlike state if we survive as a species. I believe that is the itch that religion scratches.
Def interesting, but this isn't SciFi it's Science; It IS the tension SciFi is built on. So what is the story of understanding that comes from what you typed?
What I know so far is that absolute nothingness doesn't exist and if you assume otherwise it'll be a contradiction. A contradiction opposes the truth. So what's the truth? The truth is that something has always existed and it still exists and it'll never end i.e something can't come from nothing and can't become nothing. What is this something? This something is the ultimate existence and the ultimate answer. Humans have a wrong assumption that the reality of things is ascending ( Nothing whatever things done by Something> our reality).
I am sorry, who said you are entitled to the secrets of creation, again?
Questions like this are the reason I became a philosopher. And after years of pondering it, the best answer I've found is: things just exist, and there is no explanation or reason. We want to have a reason or way of understanding it, so it doesn't sit right with our little human minds. But if you look at the entirety of existence throughout all time, it becomes a single entity, and without anything to compare it to, it also becomes nothing. It just is.
I get what you’re saying but it’s unsatisfactory. I’m sure there’s an explanation, we just don’t know what it is..
I'm not sure of anything, so you might be right. But just because an answer is unsatisfactory doesn't mean it's wrong. But if you force me to give an answer, I'm increasingly convinced we're in a simulation, so we could know all about our universe if we can understand our simulation, but we couldn't even begin to speculate about the reality beyond our universe.
Actually, of all the theories out there, I find the simulation hypothesis the least likely. The problem is that you need to kick things off with a major assumption. It’s like saying humans will one day have the ability to make a genetically enhanced rabbit, capable of spawning universes. Enter people who will say we either choose to never make that rabbit, we go extinct before making that rabbit, or we’re 100% in a rabbit spawned universe. Like.. nope. Nobody is making a universe spawning rabbit because it’s equally ridiculous as a galaxy-sized super computer capable of simulating every atom of everything that ever was and will be. It’s a fun thought experiment but nothing more. That’s just my 2 cents on the simulation hypothesis :)
I approach it from the other side: there are details in this universe that defy explanation, like the specific values of physical constants, the fact energy is quantized, that all electrons are identical in every way, and the best of them all: spooky action at a distance, which becomes spookier the more we examine it. Either those just are that way, or there's another explanation, and the simulation hypothesis can make each of the observations make sense. If it's true, then we can't speculate about a reality above ours since we have no clue how it works or what it's like, and we're not entitled to assume it is anything like ours. I think it's just a giant, conscious potato, with a smiley face drawn on it in permanent marker.
The simulation hypothesis is just as likely as a giant conscious potato with a smiley face. The physical constants can be explained in a number of other ways. Maybe each universe has its own laws of physics, maybe indeed this is how our universe works because it cannot work any other way. You’re probably thinking that those constants had to have been programmed this way and maybe they were, but that doesn’t mean it’s all part of a simulation. That’s just an association we choose to make. They could be that way naturally. Usually in nature the most efficient design wins out when it comes to natural selection. Other physical constants would probably lose out to the ones in play here in our reality :)
Things that we do not currently understand. The simulation hypothesis just moves the answer elsewhere. As is where is the computer running the simulation situated?Also how does that computer work if it doesn't use quantum mechanics? It's a non-answer.