One of my university professors said once in a class: The world could have not existed, and the chances of it not existing were infinitely greater than the chances of it existing. — Amalac
Physicists at CERN in Switzerland have made the most precise measurement ever of the magnetic moment of an anti-proton – a number that measures how a particle reacts to magnetic force – and found it to be exactly the same as that of the proton but with opposite sign. The work is described in Nature.
“All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist,” says Christian Smorra, a physicist at CERN’s Baryon–Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE) collaboration. “An asymmetry must exist here somewhere but we simply do not understand where the difference is.”
I'd be interested in how you find it supports you (if this is the correct term) in life. — Tom Storm
I don't agree with the idea that nothing exists is non-sensical or meaningless for the following reason.
If we're to ever give a satisfying answer (satisfying, at least in my opinion) to the question, we have to accept the idea that there might have been nothing and then figure out how there can be something now. — Roger
Yes. I've made your argument many times. Usually I am ineffective in getting the point across. It comes up a lot in discussions about the multiverse. — T Clark
By the way your professor was being vague and imprecise when (s)he spoke of "infinitely more likely." I don't know what that means and neither did they. That's why I like the example of a trillion coins. That's an experiment that's physically realizable. We don't need to appeal to infinity to see the essential mystery. Any particular sequence of coins is extremely unlikely, but some outcome must occur. — fishfry
Their opponents, however, could retort that their intuition is that the «scenario» of the universe not having existed is «simpler» than the «scenario» of the universe having existed, and therefore more likely. From this, they could then say that it is always more likely for anything to not exist, rather than for it to exist, and that this is also true for the whole universe. This seems to also be the position of Martin Gardner in «The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener» where he talks about the ontological argument, he says: «There is nothing that exists, Hume said, including the entire cosmos, whose non-existence entails a logical contradiction. The idea that everything would be simpler if nothing existed may leave us in deep anguish, but there is nothing inconsistent about it.» — Amalac
Like I said in my OP, I think the reason he, like Martin Gardner, says that is beacuse of an argument like this: — Amalac
And so, if we continue like that, we could say that the simplest and therefore most likely (infinitely more likely) scenario was that nothing existed at all. — Amalac
They would not argue that a universe without a rock or without the sun or the milky way is infinitely simpler, they would argue: the less things there are in it, the simpler the scenario is. And it reaches its simplest state when there is absolutely nothing in it, where infinitely many things don't exist (or at least where a huge amount of things don't exist). — Amalac
I am not the one using those terms, but rather my university professor. — Amalac
But you are right in that it probably doesn't make sense when taken literally. — Amalac
Perhaps he was trying to say: It was far more likely for the universe not to have existed, since such a scenario is far simpler than the scenario in which the actual world exists, for the reasons given before.
What would be your response to that then? — Amalac
I forgot to get back to you on this. I read your essay. I enjoyed it. You and I definitely see the world differently. But then, that's no surprise. — T Clark
It is great when someone sets an example as to how feedback can be given with respect even if we are in disagreement. Thank you, and in indeed, we disagree! — Gus Lamarch
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