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Why is there something and not nothing?

#131: June - Aug. 2014 (Non-Fiction)
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Chris OConnor

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Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

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David, that was a bit deep for me at 1:00 am. I'll try to reread it tomorrow when my brain is fresh. ;-)
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Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

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Why is there something and not nothing?
Well, if you believe that the universe is composed of electrons, neutrons and protons, and that these are the building blocks of matter, then in fact you must accept that the majority of existence is the space between those three things, which is scientifically nothing.

So the real question is, "Why is there anything?"
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Interbane

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Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

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David, that was a great post. I know you were simply dropping by to promote your book, but I hope you stick around.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

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Hi again,
I am not just promoting a book, it would be bullshit to say that I would not be pleased to have that as a consequence of conversations, but my agenda is very social by nature. I have a regular job that is very satisfying to pay my bills, and the whilst the idea of being a successful author is appealing for practical reasons, the real agenda is bullshit busting. (I hope that is not too profane for the rules of the posting?) The daily consequences of belief systems caught like a viruses, can be watched on every channel in every country.
In response to The Wizard, two comments up. You are not really getting that the space between protons neutrons and electrons is still something. It is "space time" and the quantum foam of probability, which is why there is no such thing a zero vacuum energy. The vacuum fluctuates according to the probabilities of quantum mechanics. This does not preclude a context for space time as "not space time", but what you are trapped in conceptually is existence as being fundamentally "thing like". Most of what matters is not things. Processes are what happen to things in time. In fact "thing" cant be genuinely separated from "process", but lets ignore that. We care about people even after they are dead, though they are evidently neither things or process at that stage. Politics is not things,its a process, but it certainly matters. Rejecting a material view of existence does not necessarily mean embracing magical thinking, just expanding the scope of what constitutes causes.
In short a lack of physicality does not imply a lack of existence.
Beliefs are mental processes constructed to anchor the mind for action and make sense of the world. Most personal beliefs are created to manage insecurity...ouch. Beliefs are not actually necessary. Science was created to prevent beliefs from ossifying, so that unlimited gradual progress in knowledge was possible. Beliefs are not things either, they are just patterns. Scientific belief patterns are meant to be reflections of natural processes and the degree that they fail the tests of their ability to predict changes in the physical world is proportional to the how fast they are changed. (usually anyway)
The ultimate answer to your question as to why there is anything at all, is that when consistent patterns get presence, they are there, and persist in change until time has evolved them to their natural conclusion. Kind of like a song.
Answers that don't match our preconceptions are annoying aren't they...
My question is where do you observe all these processes and things from? Is it a brain? Is a brain what "being" you ultimately is? If it is, then you are just patterns observing patterns. There may be more to you than that.
Cheers
David
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Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

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David Rain wrote:My question is where do you observe all these processes and things from? Is it a brain? Is a brain what "being" you ultimately is? If it is, then you are just patterns observing patterns. There may be more to you than that.
We are more than patterns. We are also the substrate, the medium onto which the patterns are formed. Even within these substrates, there are more localized patterns that give them primary and secondary characteristics. Patterns of matter, layer after layer.

Carrier argues that all science is reducible to the most basic fields, physics or quantum physics. The reason we require the more complex fields, such as organic chemistry, is because the patterns that emerge when stuff starts clumping up is more than a single field can handle. More than a person can specialize in during his/her lifetime. The higher you go, the same thing applies. The basic building blocks act the same, but in aggregate there are emergent patterns that are complex enough to require entire disciplines. Patterns upon patterns.

I love the visual in this article. Scroll down to the black backdrop image. http://www.wired.com/2012/06/measuring- ... plinarity/

The lowest levels are the pink to the right, circling around clockwise and increasing in complexity, building upon or being used within those nearby.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

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You are absolutely right about science, Physics is the all there actually is in science and the other disciplines are developed for exactly the reasons you express. I love the images on the link, especially the network ones that show intuitively how science is a knowledge network of information like the neural structures that create it. Patterns can be very powerful when they represent real processes, like the patterns of language. Science anchors itself to consensual repeatably observable patterns, not beliefs.
The idea as to whether or not we are the substrate can be confusing. It depends on where you place "you". Consider a portrait; the paint or medium, is used to represent something. The substrate is not the subject. The patterns in the substrate create the portrait OF the subject. Our identities are dynamically repainted portraits.
As to the material substrate that composes our nervous system and body as a whole, it is constantly in flux, so identifying "you" with the substrate is weird because the atoms that used to be "that you", are elsewhere mostly now. Clearly the patterns within the material and their time based processes are what create "you".
The more mysterious distinction is found by noticing that a pattern doesn't experience itself. Whenever we measure something we use something else to measure it with. This is due to things and processes and their discrete (mathematical term) nature. We can "know" our identity but our identity is fluid, much more so than we realize generally. What we "know" our identity with is mind.
Consciousness is an evolved process that reveals mind. Yes there is a distinction. flying insects did not create the physics of flight, they discovered the physics through the process of evolution. Those physical laws of nature are not things or substrate or even processes. They are a higher (or more fundamental) set of patterns that control the emergence and evolution of substrate and process in, and as, time.
The next obvious question is what is the physics of mind.....? Science revealed this not by finding it, but by finding everything else fundamental it possibly could.
I hope that stimulates some thought anyway.
David
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Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

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I dig what you are saying there interbane.

I wrote earlier that the atoms of our bodies are continuously cycled out so that the material that is you right now is completely different material than that which composed your body eight years ago. The particular dance of atoms that constitutes your brain is the interaction which makes the "you" in you.

I went into this idea in this thread, the infinite human.

http://www.booktalk.org/the-infinite-hu ... tml?hilit= infinite human

The substrate is not the main component. The pattern is what needs to be preserved. But at the same time the subtrate is what is producing, or duplicating that pattern and if it fails in some way that has a long lasting and permanent impact on the pattern that is you. Losing a hand permanently effects your mind. Lots of cool ideas to kick around about the relationship of the material that composes your brain and the dance they do which composes your mind.
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

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Our identities are dynamically repainted portraits.
At every point in time, as thinly as you slice that "point", yes. My patterns remain within recognizable parameters, but are ever shifting from internal feedback loops and external stimuli. The substrate, as johnson points out, is constantly changing as well. Not in characteristic, but in constant granular component replacement. The characteristics of the substrate must be the same, or the pattern couldn't be formed. I think the pattern is more important, but the substrate is nearly at the same level.
The next obvious question is what is the physics of mind.....? Science revealed this not by finding it, but by finding everything else fundamental it possibly could.
I hope that stimulates some thought anyway.
I think we've sort of got the physics of mind. Much of it, anyways. The next step is an analysis that is not a change of degree, but of category. Information is something I've been trying to wrap my head around for a long time. How to compress the concept into a working philosophy that fits all experience. In our minds, the information is an abstraction of the world around us. A running redacted re-creation through senses, and storage of parts of that re-creation. It's above and beyond mere reaction to environment, walking and mumbling and eating and screwing. We're mobile abstraction machines, running around the world taking compressed snapshots of everything in realtime. We capture and store information, and that process develops the pattern that is "us".
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

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I'm being told that someone in this thread just used some pretty extreme profanity. But the post was edited. Please try to keep calm everyone. I don't know who did it but common sense tells us that "Go F#@* yourself" isn't acceptable.

And please don't reply here with the name of the person who did it. I'm not looking for the drama. Just please control those outbursts.
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Re: Why is there something and not nothing?

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The existence of patterns and their expression and realization in matter is not all that there is. The possibilities of patterns are just as real as their existence. This is the informational heart of quantum mechanics and why the many universes theory (multiverse) has grown in popularity among physicists. The domain of possibility is just as real at the quantum level. This is why phenomena such as quantum tunneling are real. The information field of an electron can cross a barrier and despite it being classically impossible, the electron can appear on the other side of the barrier, according to the probability that it can be there. It is the pattern of possible emergence that is primary not the electron. Possibility in pattern is more fundamental that physicality.
Consider for a moment what every possible pattern of existence might be. Add to that every impossible pattern of existence. We can model many impossible patterns in our pattern machine in our head, so despite being physically unrealizable these patterns can still be conceivable and so realized as ideas. We discover configurations by remodeling, but we don't create them but realize them from the infinite scope of the pattern domain of existence. This infinite domain of patterns is only finitely realized into physicality because of the finite nature of the laws of physics, though we have a very interesting window on this whole domain.
So now we have patterns and the physical world, but though our conceptions of our self are always bound to patterns so that conception can occur, the experiencer of the conceptions is what is ultimately "us". What is completely absent, even possibly from being a scientific model, is true continuity. Presence without internal distinction or boundary of any sort. not infinite but not finite either.This is not space time, which is quantized like all physical manifestation. It is not pattern which is formed by limitation and structure even when unrealized. Pure continuity is the true context for all pattern, discretely realized or unrealzed. Consciousness is quantized because it is a function of the pattern machine, but mind is revealed or accessed by consciousness rather than made by it. Mind has a fundamental part in nature. All that discrete existence does have a context, which comes to the "something or nothing" question, which is why I am here. Mind looks like nothing from the frame of reference of things because pure continuity does not have distinctions. Pure continuity reveals distinctions in its presence.
People generally hate the idea that the core of their experience is no different from everybody else because egos are defined.
I certainly don't suggest anybody believe this. You can sit down and just get into the core experience of right now and find out, but that can be very noisy and often unlikely to produce much more than more thinking about experience rather than just experiencing of the core of experience.
Philosophically there are certainly ways to deny the existence of pure continuity. You will find that mathematically it can only be approximated because all mathematics and computation is discrete by nature, and so it is strictly speaking a non mathematical concept. try reading this one: http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/review/disc ... rn-physics
Above the level of being, existence has three parts. The two fundamental ones, Mind and Pattern, and the emergent level of Physicality. The continuous, the patterns and the discrete. This can be thought of as presence, potential form, and form.
My book is free on kindle for the next five days if you want to grab a look. The link is above somewhere.
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