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Comment by caloriesdont | Hacker News Reader

> our universe requires a "sustaining cause" (as with a picture on a TV set).

Diving further into this, there's a hot debate about whether the universe does require a sustaining cause (the Existential Expiration thesis), or whether it can just exist unless something stops it from existing (Existential Inertia Thesis)

Personally, I am inclined to think that things tend to keep existing unless something stops them from existing, and that the universe therefore needs no sustaining cause.

https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHEIA-20

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Check out Śūnyatā: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81

Here's how Mitta summarized that page: "The term 'nyat' is used in Early Buddhism to refer to the emptiness of all things. This emptiness is seen as a meditative state, an attribute of objects, and a type of awareness-release. The term is used to emphasize the deceptive nature of all things, and to show that they are all ultimately worthlessness and vacuous."

Now we ask it directly to compare it to a monitor (I'm pastel-mature-herring):

pastel-mature-herring~> Discuss this likening emptiness to a blank computer monitor.

victorious-capuchin*> One way to think of emptiness is to liken it to a blank computer monitor. Just as a blank monitor contains the potential for any image to be displayed on it, so too does emptiness contain the potential for any and all things to arise within it. Just as a monitor cannot display any image without the proper input, so too does emptiness require the right conditions in order to give rise to anything. And just as a monitor will eventually return to its blank state when the input is removed, so too will things eventually return to emptiness when the conditions that gave rise to them are no longer present.

pastel-mature-herring~> And if someone understands this, what does that say about them?

victorious-capuchin*> If someone understands that emptiness is like a blank computer monitor, it suggests that they understand that everything is ultimately emptiness and that everything is ultimately impermanent. This understanding can lead to a sense of detachment from the things of the world, and can ultimately lead to a state of liberation from suffering.

> https://philpapers.org/rec/SCHEIA-20

Some back and forth between Schmid (author of the paper) and Feser (whose arguments it is critiquing):

* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2021/07/schmid-on-aristotel...

* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2021/07/schmid-on-existenti...

I personally think that time, and all dimensions (including the 3 that we typically thing of as "space") are simply caused by a few axioms: there is the concept of "something else" (that is, 1 != 0, there is at least 2 possibilities); there is "something" of which can we in at least 1 of those 2 possible states, but not both; there is something to a way in which the answer to the question of state can be known; there is cause -> effect. When taken to the infinite complexity, you end up with coalescing densities of state all of which cannot be simultaneously true and there fore

Maybe, but the capacity for "something" to "stop something else from existing" seems to depend on laws, and the laws themselves seem pretty contingent. Why are the laws sustained? If the laws changed and things themselves caused their own demise, things couldn't just go on existing. So what keeps the current laws on the books?

What about the law of conservation of matter? When have you seen anything cease to exist, and not merely transform?

Isn't the question about the universe existing really asking where energy/matter came from? How the energy and matter are configured is a different question entirely, it seems.

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