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Comment by holoduke | Hacker News Reader

The fact that there is something, just something can drive me crazy. Why is there something and not just nothing.

In the end, if you go all the way back through the chain of causation (whatever causation even looks like outside of the bounds of reality we know within our universe), whatever it is that resulted in our universe (whether it be the big bang or a god or alien that created the bing bang or a higher being that created said god or alien)…at some point, something must have come from nothing. It’s the only inevitable truth, and it drives me crazy too.

Unless the universe always existed. Why should there be nothing and not something?

And don't say "entropy". For all we know, the big bang occurred after a previous heat death.

Isn't this only true if there is no physical infinity? I know it's-turtles-all-the-way-down is impossible for our brains to comprehend, but causality breaks down when infinities are involved. Another thing is that if space-and-time itself was born at some point (as they say), then talking about "before" and causality doesn't make any sense either.

But yeah, to your point, thinking that there was never "nothing", and that there always was "something" is equally mindblowing.

I don't see why it should feel bothersome.

To ask what came before the first moment is to apply a concept, time, where it no longer applies.

Similarly, suppose you knew everything. No matter what it was, how much information it was, you'd still be able to ask, "What's beyond that?" But being able to form those words doesn't imply the question means anything.

I feel the same way you do. It drives me even crazier that more people don't feel this way.

The simple answer is the controversial answer. Life needs something to spark it from nothing to something. That's more evidence of a demiurge than anything else.

What made the demiurge?

If we're just having fun here, then I'd say it doesn't have a creator. Which is not a concept humans are capable of understanding. It could be the demiurge is eternal, forever and always. The concept of time may have been an invention by such a creator.

Sure, but time isn’t necessary for a causal chain. Even if from the perspective of the demigurge it has always existed, in some causal (or anti-causal depending on the laws outside our reality) way it must have spontaneously come in to being (Or, if the demiurge was created from another being, eventually the chain of causation comes back to some being spontaneously coming into existence). You can’t avoid the “something came from nothing” reality, even if what came into being first came into being in a way that from a human perspective seems timeless.

The human perspective is not the correct/absolute reference frame.

The Creator must not have "come from nothing". Him always existing as the ultimate entity - even before/outside the existence of time itself - is not difficult a concept for us to grasp.

It’s difficult to talk about this when the concept of time is so deeply embedded in our language. To a timeless being (or universe or whatever), there would be no concept of “first”. “Always existed” would only make sense to a time-bound creature, as would a chain of causation. Even to call it a timeless “being” is to use a word that is in some sense chained to time.

There is this super cool phenomenon where pairs of matter and antimatter will spontaneously come into existence in a vacuum and then neutralize itself. I always liked to intuitively connect that with an equation that looks really complicated, but just comes out to 0 = 0 when you simplify it. Add to that cellular automata that based on extremely simple rules can show mindblowing outcomes. I feel these things together give an intuitive feeling about a possible origin of this something we are looking at. I think Steven Wolfram voiced similar thoughts. Of course one might go further and ask why laws of physics exist at all...

You mentioned some good things but also cast a large net. Are you referring to the Casimir Effect? Am just vaguely familiar with some of the general concepts but very much recommend this video on the topic, by a Prof/physicist

"Casimir Effect and Black Holes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRcmqZkGOK4

Yeah, reading about the Casimir effect seems like that's what I remembered. I hadn't read about it since it was covered in high school 20+ years ago. And yes, this entire line of thought is more an intuition than even a theory. But having something at all appear in a vacuum and seeing how complexity can arise from very simple rules is such an inspiring combination to me.

It’s a beautiful question. You can reason a bit from knowing there is something instead of nothing, when nothing is clearly an option :)

I agree — it’s a question that takes one right up to the limits of human cognition. Another question like this: “is the universe finite or infinite?” One or the other must be true, yet both options will eventually melt your brain to contemplate.

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