Other options - please elaborate. — Benj96

I hold to "none of the above, because we don't know the answer".

It may not be 'sexy', but isn't this the only honest answer?

But if Fred needs us to procreate, is Fred just masturbating then?

Don't be so anthropocentric!

I mean, if we are his/her eyes, ears, and arm and hands, they let us create a black hole, an ejaculation into spacetime...

Fair enough, it's Saturday night! Beer Time again! have a good evening EugeneW!
Thanks for sharing your views with me!

Good question during the drinking: "Is the...hick...universe...hick...hick...masturbating and...hick!...eja-hick!-culating into empty HICK..."

Have a good time Stephen! :starstruck:

One more thing though. Please don't see me as a god lover or a preacher of the gospel.

I hold to "none of the above, because we don't know the answer". It may not be 'sexy', but isn't this the only honest answer? — Theorem

It's a very modest answer. And if you don't know the answer then it's honest. But what if we know?

I was thinking perhaps it would be true (or false for that matter) if you just stopped and didn't ask the next question in the infinite regression that the liars paradox creates.

Fair enough. So, do you know?

To be honest, I think I know. Not because I'm the chosen one or whatever BS, but because I'm interested, gave it a lot of thought, and somehow my subconsciousness made all parts "click". The puzzle pieces fell into the right place. It clicked.

Have a good time — EugeneW

Thanks, It was a nice wee evening but everyone is down due to Putin's War on the Ukrainians.

One more thing though. Please don't see me as a god lover or a preacher of the gospel. — EugeneW

I don't, I see you as someone who is taking part in Pascal's wager.

I was thinking perhaps it would be true (or false for that matter) if you just stopped and didn't ask the next question in the infinite regression that the liars paradox creates — Watchmaker

Such an action on your part is an example of what I am trying to say. Your act of will would be effective in that it would allow you to prevent that which cannot yet be understood from having a possible detrimental affect on your psyche. In my opinion, this is a sensible/logical/valid/healthy response until new knowledge is gained. Constant contemplations of infinity has sent some deep thinkers mad.
I don't believe in infinities, but I cannot currently explain them so I acknowledge them, I don't spend time thinking about them, Impose a personal value and I move on and I think about that which I can conceive/perceive.
I also don't care if anyone calls me a 'cowardly thinker' for not 'smashing my brain' against 'infinity/paradox/impossible/immovable meeting irresistible etc,' I prefer my mental health and I don't care about the opinion of such people.

I think that it is valid, by 'act of human will' and within an 'instant/measure of time' to 'observe' a proposal of logic such as 'this statement is false' and impose, using a simple measure of personal preference, any ONE of the values true/false/paradox and then just move on without causing any important detrimental effect on the rigor of your current scientific or philosophical deliberations.

I hold to "none of the above, because we don't know the answer".
It may not be 'sexy', but isn't this the only honest answer? — Theorem

A very reasonable position to take. One that allows people to just 'move on' and try to concentrate on the areas of science and philosophy which we can advance. We should never abandon the search for the true origin story but we have hardly learned how to crawl towards correct knowledge let alone walk or run towards it. We just don't have the know-how or the technology yet. Only our best geniuses can move us any distance at all, towards the correct origin story and I for one, am not in that league.

I take more of a relational view, like RQM (Rovelli). — noAxioms

X exists relative to Y iff Y measures X. But there is no meaning to X exists or Y exists since it isn't expressed as a relation. — noAxioms

I'm not sure I fully understand your algebraic/relational argument here but are you talking about Rovelli's proposal regarding the measurement problem?
The collapse of the wave function due to the act of observation?
I think he suggests that this affect is only local, between the two systems X and Y involved.
The waveform only collapses from the standpoint of the observer not from the standpoint of the Universe.
Is this what you are referring to? and do you mean you cannot find out the origin story of the Universe by the act of experimental measurement?

To be honest, I think I know. Not because I'm the chosen one or whatever BS, but because I'm interested, gave it a lot of thought, and somehow my subconsciousness made all parts "click". The puzzle pieces fell into the right place. It clicked. — EugeneW

Interesting, and that's fair. Despite my comment about 'honesty' it's genuinely not my intention here to simply accuse others of dishonesty.

What answer would you give to the OP's question? I looked back in the thread a bit but didn't find your answer. Apologies if I missed it.

Only our best geniuses can move us any distance at all, towards the correct origin story and I for one, am not in that league. — universeness

Nor am I. :smile:

As usual, when you can see the functioning of something, you say "of course, how else?"

I felt puzzle pieces falling in place, after absorbing all kinds of theories. My subconsciousness helped me. The universe showed itself to me in it's great and amazingly simple true being.

The basic form is an open spatially 4D torus. A 4D Planck-sized (in width) wormhole connects two infinite 4D spaces on which two closed spherical 3D spheres, like two closed 3D branes, move away from the central wormhole, the singularity. Somewhat reminscent to pyrotechnical models and models that allow gravitons to travel in a 4th space dimension while matter is confined to 3D. The gravitons coming from virtual particle states, which are the only ones present in the initial 3D state around the wormhole, can induce negative curvature of the 4D space needed for that state to expand.

Quarks and leptons are made from two massless base fields and are almost pointlike. In reality they are Planck-sized torus shapes, ie, three large dimensions of a 6D space rolled up to circles, like a 2D space can be rolled up to a cilinder on which we can image a tiny circle for a particle. So 3D space is actually 6D and the 4D substrate actually 7D. The small torus shape in 6D is such that the 6D shape fits nicely on the thin 7D wormhole (which has an appearance of 4D).

For visibility, consider the inside part of a 2D torus. The mouth connects two spaces and has negative curvature. Consider the mouth Planck-sized. From this mouth, because of its negative curvature, can inflate two circles with matter into real existence. From the virtuality around the mouth the real particles are excited. BANG! Two mirrored universes.

The 3D branes, expanding on the 4 dimensional space, temporarily are decelerated. As observations have shown. Currently, the universe is expanding again and this will continue into the future, and when all stuff has turned to photons and has diluted into infinity, this will be a signal for a new pair of branes (3D universes), to get virtual particles inflated into reality again. A new time takes off, and again it accelerates all into oblivion again, only to signal for a new start at the source.

This is only a popular outline, but as Einstein said, if you can't explain it to a six year old, then you're on the wrong track. So let's see what's in store...

Does the term skeuomorphic ontology mean anything to you? Any sense can be applied to both of these words.

Or rather, if such a concept were valid in some sense, what could it mean?

What would it mean if I say, for instance, that the liars paradox was a skeuomorphic ontology? What sense could be made of that? This term could be applied and superimposed on any other concept. But what could it mean do you think?

I take more of a relational view, like RQM (Rovelli).
X exists relative to Y iff Y measures X. But there is no meaning to X exists or Y exists since it isn't expressed as a relation.
— noAxioms
I'm not sure I fully understand your algebraic/relational argument here but are you talking about Rovelli's proposal regarding the measurement problem?
The collapse of the wave function due to the act of observation? — universeness

That's a poor representation of Rovelli's interpretation. It makes it sound like humans or things that 'observe' make any difference, which couldn't be further from what he says.
Any interaction between two causally separated systems results in a collapse of the wave function of the 'cause' system in relation to the 'effect' system.

The view, driven to its logical conclusion results in an ontology that doesn't suggest an 'existence' in need of being brought into existence, hence being an elegant solution to the problem posed in the OP. That was my point.

I think he suggests that this affect is only local, between the two systems X and Y involved.
The waveform only collapses from the standpoint of the observer not from the standpoint of the Universe.

Exactly, except I'd not have used the word 'observer'. Measurer maybe.

do you mean you cannot find out the origin story of the Universe by the act of experimental measurement?

The universe (as a whole) doesn't need an origin story, lacking anything that measures the universe. That would require an external observer. Internal interaction only results in self-consistent state.
Rovelli says no system can measure itself, which doesn't mean I can't see my arms, but it means the cat in the box cannot collapse its own wave function relative to the observer outside the box. The live cat cannot measure dead parts despite being in superposition of being dead and alive.

I'm not in a position to critique this at the level of mathematics or even to evaluate whether it's mathematically meaningful at all. As such, I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I don't see how it answers the OP's question. These 4D Plank-sized toruses and expanding 3D branes - where did they come from? How did they come to have the properties they have?

Why shouldn't a system be able to measure itself? If an observer measures Schrödinger's cat, it is said that the whole of the observer and cat is still in a superposition and that a second observer collapses that superimposed state. So the last observer will always remain in a superposition. Which means the whole universe stays in one. Weird. But it logically follows. So time for a change.



If the universe is eternal and as I described I can think of no other than "them up there".

Basically it says the beginning in time happens in series. After us a next beginning and thereafter again. And before us. Ad infinitum. On that, eternal and infinite 4D space the 3D branes expand in two pieces of infinite bulk connected by a thin wormhole. The branes emerging backfire to their source (the wormhole) and inform when the next two universes (branes) can be inflated into reality (from virtuality).

Simulated universe would still require an explanation for the "real world" it comes from. Unless the logical workings of that world were completely disconnected to ours, which we wouldn't be able to grasp

Benj96: Hi. My view is more along the lines of your first choice "The universe came from nothing. Something is a property of nothingness". My rationale is below.

  Before beginning, it's very important to distinguish between the mind's conception of "nothing" and "nothing" itself, in which the mind would not be there.  When I use the term "nothing", I'm talking about "nothing" itself.  While one can't visualize this directly, it's important to try and get close and then extrapolate to what it might be like if the mind were not there.

    I think that to ever get a satisfying answer to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", we're going to have to address the possibility that there could have been "nothing", but now there is "something".  If this supposed "nothing” before the "something" was truly the lack of all existent entities, there would be no mechanism present to change, or transform, this “nothingness” into the “something” that is here now. But, because we can see that “something” is here now, the only possible choice if we start with "nothing" is that the supposed “nothing” we were thinking of was not in fact the lack of all existent entities, or absolute “nothing” but was in fact a "something".  Another way to say this is that if you start with a 0 (e.g., "nothing") and end up with a 1 (e.g., "something"), you can't do this unless somehow the 0 isn't really a 0 but is actually a 1 in disguise, even though it looks like 0 on the surface.  That is, in one way of thinking "nothing" just looks like "nothing".  But, if we think about "nothing" in a different way, we can see through its disguise and see that it's a "something". This then gets back around to the idea that "something" has always been here except now there's a reason why: because even what we think of as "nothing" is a "something".

    How can "nothing" be a "something"?  I think it's first important to try and figure out why any “normal” thing (like a book, or a set) can exist and be a “something”. I propose that a thing exists if it is a grouping. A grouping ties stuff together into a unit whole and, in so doing, defines what is contained within that new unit whole.  This grouping together of what is contained within provides a surface, or boundary, that defines what is contained within, that we can see and touch as the surface of the thing and that gives "substance" and existence to the thing as a new unit whole that's a different existent entity than any components contained within considered individually.  This leads to the idea that a thing only exists where and when the grouping exists.  For instance, groupings can exist inside a person's mind or outside the mind.  For outside-the-mind groupings, like a book, the grouping is physically present and visually seen as an edge, boundary, or enclosing surface that defines this unit whole/existent entity. For inside-the-mind groupings, like the concept of a car (also, fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, etc.), the grouping may be better thought of as the top-level label the mind gives to the mental construct that groups together other constructs into a new unit whole (i.e., the mental construct labeled “car” groups together the constructs of engine, car chassis, tires, use for transportation, etc.).  This idea of a unit whole or a unity as being related to why things exist isn't new.

Next, when you get rid of all matter, energy, space/volume, time, abstract concepts, laws or constructs of physics/math/logic, possible worlds/possibilities, properties, consciousness, and finally minds, including the mind of the person trying to imagine this supposed lack of all, we think that this is the lack of all existent entities, or "absolute nothing" But, once everything is gone and the mind is gone, this situation, this "absolute nothing", would, by its very nature, define the situation completely. This "nothing" would be it; it would be the all. It would be the entirety, or whole amount, of all that is present. Is there anything else besides that "absolute nothing"? No. It is "nothing", and it is the all. An entirety/defined completely/whole amount/"the all" is a grouping, which means that the situation we previously considered to be "absolute nothing" is itself an existent entity. It's only once all things, including all minds, are gone does “nothing” become "the all" and a new unit whole that we can then, after the fact, see from the outside as a whole unit. One might object and say that being a grouping is a property so how can it be there in "nothing"? The answer is that the property of being a grouping (e.g., the all grouping) only appears after all else, including all properties and the mind of the person trying to imagine this, is gone. In other words, the very lack of all existent entities is itself what allows this new property of being the all grouping to appear.

Related points are:

1. The words "was" (i.e., "was nothing") and "then"/"now" (i.e., "then something") in the above imply a temporal change, time would not exist until there was "something", so I don't use these words in a time sense. Instead, I suggest that the two different words, “nothing” and “something”, describe the same situation (e.g., "the lack of all"), and that the human mind can view the switching between the two different words, or ways of visualizing "the lack of all", as a temporal change from "was" to "now".

2. Because  the mind's conception of "nothing" and "nothing" itself are two different things, our talking about "nothing" itself (which is derived from the mind's conception of "nothing") doesn't reify "nothing" itself.  Our talking about it has nothing to do with whether or not "nothing" itself exists or not.

3. It's very important to distinguish between the mind's conception of "nothing" and "nothing" itself, in which no minds would be there. These are two different things. In visualizing "nothing" one has to try to imagine what it's like when no minds are there.  Of course, this is impossible, but we can try to extrapolate.

I'm more along the lines of this. At the most fundamental level, the reason for what exists is inherent to it. I put my view on what this might be on page 6 of the comments.

There remains one last thing I haven't figured out. Why isn't everything moving in opposite direction?

The absolute nothing is absolutely nothing. How can something come to be from absolutely nothing? It can't. So there had to be a physical universe always. But how can this have come into being on its own, by the laws describing it physical evolution? It can't be because of these laws. Even if they are eternal, they didn't and can't have caused themselves. Only a divine being could. It needs intelligence. Divine intelligence.

↪noAxioms
Why shouldn't a system be able to measure itself? — EugeneW

That was explained in my post. It would be akin to the cat (or any system) collapsing its own wavefunction, preventing it from being in a state of superposition relative to some other system. Superposition state would then never be observed.

Secondly and a bit more formally, a system at a time is not local, and it takes time to measure something non-local, so no non-local thing can measure itself:
A system at a given time (Y) can measure its past state (X), but its past state cannot measure the later state, so while X exists in relation to Y, Y does not exist in relation to X. If X and Y were the same thing, that would be a violation of law of non-contradiction, so X and Y are not the same thing, and thus no self-measurement has been done by any system.

If an observer measures Schrödinger's cat, it is said that the whole of the observer and cat is still in a superposition and that a second observer collapses that superimposed state.

Yes. That seems to be a statement that X might be measured by Y, but Z may not have measured either, so the state of X and Y is not collapsed in relation to Z. So no objective state for anything. The state of any (X say) is a relation with some other system Y or Z, and not necessarily the same state, as your example illustrates. Hence it being meaningless to say something like 'X exists' without a relation, similar to saying that events 1 and 2 are simultaneous without specification of a reference frame.

So the last observer will always remain in a superposition.

Which means the whole universe stays in one. Weird. But it logically follows. So time for a change.[/quote]Unintuitive maybe, but you seem to be able to follow it. Most don't get that far, balking when it rubs the intuitions/biases the wrong way.

Point is, the universe is not in need of existence if there's no external observer relative to which it is need of being.

Basically it says the beginning in time happens in series. After us a next beginning and thereafter again. And before us. Ad infinitum. On that, eternal and infinite 4D space the 3D branes expand in two pieces of infinite bulk connected by a thin wormhole. The branes emerging backfire to their source (the wormhole) and inform when the next two universes (branes) can be inflated into reality (from virtuality). — EugeneW

OK, but how do we "know" this? You seem to find it extremely plausible, but do we have any way of confirming it, or of eliminating alternative theories?