why is there something rather than nothing?

>>9884050
there isn't. you're lying to yourself about having a self and the capacity to lie.

>>9884050
The only reality in which you can ask this question is a reality where there is something.

I see the's responses to this question a lot. Read it again, he is not saying 'prove that there is something as opposed to nothing', rather 'assuming that we agree that there is something ad opposed to nothing, why is this the case'

>>9884050
>why
you failed

>>9884495
what the fuck kind of stupid reply is that

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Your question implies the whole of reality is based on something besides itself, that is to say, that past "events" have determinating power over present ones (and these over future ones), when reality seen as a whole would not make a separation between causes and effects, and so their relationship would work both ways. What this (likely) would imply is that what you want is not this knowledge but a principle on which you can control or determine the future, as an escape from the present, as clouded by the past; therefore you're working under the assumption that things have to be "easy", or that they need to be reduced to their very basic truths to be true, when in reality difficult/ease (or potential/actual) is a matter of dimension, and reality does not operate on what is easy or not.

>>9884546
Brainlet, please

>>9884539
KEK

There is both something and nothing.

>>9884638
what if "nothing" is also something

>>9884552
what is REALLY difficult? not difficult from our perspective, but from divine perspective, difficult-idea perspective?

so god can punish you for sinning

how could there even coherentely be an answer to this question?

it kind of pressupsos that there was nothing, and from it, and for a reason, something came. why you ask? why did it come?

well, for there to be a reason, something would have to exist (a reason is something), and so it wouldn't be coherent. there can literally be no reason for something coming from nothing (because the reason for that somrthing comeing from nothing is itself something, which leads to a regress).

why is there something *instead* of othing?

this question too, seems incoherent to me. it's like it treats nothing like a state of being. like an either/or, two states in which nothing to one side and being to the other. of course this is nonsense, "nothing" is a concept bound with a human culture and language, and history. you're treating nothing like a 'thing' that exists outside of human experience, practices and minds.

reasons are a result of the worlds being. reasons existing within the context of human conversation/questioning, which the world produced. you're trying to apply this to where it's incoherent (before the world, before language, before culture and questions)

the world is absurd and it's necessary inexplainable, turtles all the wsy down

>>9884050
Wrong question.

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>>9884675
You're going at it wrong. You're conceptually zigzagging like a motherfucker. Change "difficult" with any other polar category; for example, what is really hard or big? You think the divine would measure up the whole universe and find the one biggest/hardest thing. That's not how it works: the divine would accept all the perspectives of the world, even those that completely left out others in scope. What you percieve as soft or hard is only so from your perspective, with the organism you are, from the center of consciousness from which you try to escape. The truth is that reality is stupidly gradual; the mind can make it infinitely so as seen in Achilles and the Tortoise.

"The wise man looks into space and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too big, for he knows that, there is no limit to dimensions." [Zhuangzi]

Now if you're asking what the thing labelled as difficulty is, it's a bit more complicated, but it comes down to, I think, expectations and experience with a certain object, the receptivity one has to it, the luck factor, and so on.

Say I try my hand at the bass one day, without much care. Not knowing exactly what I'm doing, I have some fun, have some vision of how I could improve, but ultimately leave it at that one test. Now having done this, I wouldn't consider playing the bass mesmerizingly difficult. That doesn't mean I would belittle it, but I would think if I routinely went at it I could get to a more-or-less decent level. It wouldn't be so "difficult". Now, the funny thing is that an advanced bass player *could* be mesmerized by what a genius bass player does!--because he has no way to get around how he does it. But to me, the post-pseud, the genius bass player is one among hundreds who I recognize as a better, so I can enjoy him all the same. (Not to say the advanced couldn't enjoy him; but that kind of thing often turns to fanaticism; which is not that bad a thing so long as it doesn't get out of hand.)

I fucking love Tame Impala

Read the first few sentences of the Bible?

>>9884546
What the fuck kind of stupid reply is that

>>9884050
Because nothing cannot be.

>>9884833
Hilarious that /mu/ used to love them and then as soon as normies found out about them they acted like they never did

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A random quantum fluctuation in the fields.
Next question?

>>9884050
"Nothing" is an abstract concept that has nothing (heh) to do with reality. You ask this question because it's a human mode of thought to think in dichotomies (up - down, left - right, am - am not, existence - non-existence) but just because you can imagine what "nothing" is like doesn't mean it's relevant to our universe. You might as well ask why unicorns don't exist, the logic behind your question being "I can imagine them, but they don't seem to exist, there must be a reason for this". I hope I don't need to explain why the question doesn't make sense.

>>9885788
fields are something

>>9885872
They aren't.

nothing is a spook of your brain, there can only be something

>>9885788
Nice dubs.

Has anyone else been kind of surprised that we haven't seen much "quantum" bullshit spouted at all, over the last few decades? I always figured that was all set up to be the next great scientism buzzword. You could say "quantum" and then just vomit words out of your mouth and the average layman would eat it up. But it feels like that hasn't happened. Am I misinformed? Naive?

>>9885880
Quite the opposite, really. Quantum consciousness, quantum computing, quantum immortality, quantum information, quantum imaging, quantum of solace, quantum leap, just to mention a few. Also, a lot of people try to make "smart" jokes about Schrodinger's Cat. This very day I found someone on 4chan who did it and gave him a lecture about his own stupidity. See:
>>>/jp/17468994
>>>/jp/17470039
For your own good I recommend studying at least the basics of QM, including the formulas, (I apologize if I'm mistakenly assuming that you haven't already) to avoid falling prey for that kind of pseudo-scientific bullshit.

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>>9884546
Google Anthrophic Principle, you will understand that he gave you the only correct answer.

>>9886118
The OP asked WHY not HOW.

>>9886284
The poster >>9885788 gave you the why but I doubt anyone on /lit/ has a clue what the hell he's talking about (including myself).

i find the more interesting question is why are we so obsessed with asking these big unsolvable questions and pondering reality and doing generally stonerish stuff like watching OP's gif

strange behaviour for an animal

>>9884552
fuck going on /lit/ was a mistake I need to read more books because I can't understand any of this

>>9886354
you're anigger is why

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>>9884050
There is nothing. It's something that's in question. Something needs clarifying

>>9884552
>Your question implies the whole of reality is based on something besides itself, that is to say, that past "events" have determinating power over present ones (and these over future ones), when reality seen as a whole would not make a separation between causes and effects, and so their relationship would work both ways.

What part of his question implied that projectard?

>>9886354
Yea read a bit more and understand that anons response was retarded and completely irrelevent to op's question

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>>9884050
Clarify "something"

>>9886284
There is no answer to why, it just is.

>>9884788
>turtles all the wsy down

John?

Look up Heidegger's Being and Time

In science we have to be particularly cautious about 'why' questions. When we ask, 'Why?' we usually mean 'How?' If we can answer the latter, that generally suffices for our purposes. For example, we might ask: 'Why is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?' but what we really probably mean is, 'How is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?' That is, we are interested in what physical processes led to the Earth ending up in its present position. 'Why' implicitly suggests purpose, and when we try to understand the solar system in scientific terms, we do not generally ascribe purpose to it.

One thing is certain, however. The metaphysical 'rule', which is held as an ironclad conviction by those whom I have debated the issue of creation, namely that "out of nothing nothing comes," has no foundation in science. Arguing that it is self-evident, unwavering, and unassailable is like arguing, as Darwin falsely did, when he made the suggestion that the origin of life was beyond the domain of science by building an analogy with the incorrect claim that matter cannot be created or destroyed. All it represents is an unwillingness to recognize the simple fact that nature may be cleverer than philosophers or theologians.

Forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today.

>>9886534
Shut the fuck up you atheist retard

>>9886362
Heidegger just uses phenomenology and a clever use of language to hide from the fact that he's turning nothing into a thing.

Plato already addressed this question. We really can't speak of nothing. The moment we do we reify it and make it into something.

>>9884050
>Something happened
>Intent may be involved

>>9884495
While this is true, are you simply assuming that every possible world is attempted or gets a try? This is by no means a lesser assumption than theism.

>>9886571
The multiverse is not real. It is the potential direction we can or could have taken this world.

>>9886534
most reddit post I've ever seen

please, die

>>9885957
I hope this is bait
let people make jokes

>>9884050
There no such thing as nothing. To determine nothing there has to be something. And that is why there is something rather than nothing.

>>9886558
Quality post

>>9884050
YOU WILL NEVER COME CLOSE TO HOW I FEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL

>>9886377
The
>why

>>9884050
To answer your question requires relativistic terms: I can only discuss nothing in terms of something, and something in terms of nothing; they are poles of the same thing (like hot and cold are an expression on a spectrum of the presence of heat?) - so, to discuss nothing vs. something, it would necessitate a discussion about what they are actually measurements of. However, the real problem you'll run into is that this is a pointless discussion because you aren't even discussing "nothing," you're discussing the abstract concept of it - which is something - so you are actually talking about something vs. something; which is a waste of time.

>>9884050
what makes you think there actually is something?

>>9887213
I think therefore I am.

>>9887263
Using thought as proof of existence seems anthropocentric. The statement "I think therefore I am-"
First sets the conditions of existence then proves itself thereupon.

>I
First sets the condition of separate existence
>Think
Sets the self apart from the condition of let's say... a tree.
>I
Again
>Am
To be


The issue here is that Descartes isn't trying to prove his existence, he's trying to validate a separate existence from the world experienced. If he would have just accepted that he isn't special for having an intellect, that the intellect is more than likely just a more complex and convoluted way of performing the same task as the rest of nature, then he could have been satisfied with existence without ever speaking. However, what you see in Descartes's philosophy is an attempt to overcome the problem of intellect: that there is a limit to what can be measured, therefore one will eventually find a void, a gap in what can be thought of as meaningful, a place where language will not suffice to verify one's existence - most religions try to verify this "zero point" of measurability by referring to it as God or The Void or Krisna Consciousness or Anima or Allah or...you get it.

>>9887341
I guess I'm just trying to say that Descartes was just insecure, and it was important to him that he "be."

You guys should check out:

Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Does_the_World_Exist%3F

I read it a year ago and it was great, it is a tour of modern thinkers pondering this question.

>>9887263
Expand on that

>>9884050
>asking /lit/ this question
Go to /sci/ if you want a real answer. Short answer: the Big Bang.

>>9885957
Only a retard would go there so it sounds like you were talking to a fellow of yours.

I know nothing about philospohy and ignored all the other replies to this thread, but let me break this down in the simplest way possible:

>rather than nothing
This part of the sentence is just meant to distract you. "Why is there something rather than nothing" is effectively the same question as "why is there something," since if there were not something then of course there would be nothing.

We now have this question:
>why is there something
Already this should sound like a ridiculous question. Asking "why is there X" is the same as asking "why does X exist." When X is "something," then our question is "why does something exist." The only alternative to existing is not existing, and so "omething" exists by definition, as opposed to "nothing," which by definition does not. "Something" could not possibly not exist, because if it didn't exist it would be "nothing." The whole idea is tautology.

However, this question has become interesting again recently: there are philosophers who would dispute some of these claims, and if you're really into bullshit I would recommend looking into that

>>9884054
There is something being lied to, therefore there is something.

>>9884050
well what is the difference between something and nothing? faggot

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>>9884050
in order for there to be truly nothing, nothing mustn't exist either, in order for nothing to not exist, something must exist

>>9884050

Over an infinite amount of time, something is likely to happen.

>>9885876
They are

>>9888425
why does time exist

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>>9886573
>a clever use of language
>glossing over heidegger by offing him as clever

Why would you sell yourself short like that. Yes it's difficult, but he's really unpacking the most basic and obvious of subjects. Sein Und Zeit was written in 23? Niggers had a long time to clarify his topic in simpler terms and prove he was guilty of obfuscation and although great efforts were made, his work and its influence continues to build momentum and I predict we have yet to really confront the the impact of this old German mans studies. What heidegger accomplishes, in terms of clarification, is beyond the scope of any thinker before him (Lao tzu) or after him (Fritz Perls). I always return to heidegger. Even when I go off and study Lacan, or Plato or Hegel, Heidegger and his initial questioning remain looming over thought itself. It's crazy to even think about. I contemplated learning German specifically to read him in the original. His concepts of being and worldhood are being taught now at MIT with engineers trying to construct artificial intelligence. His findings are now the bedrock of the study of what it means to be intelligent itself.

You are literally cutting yourself off from the heroin of the philisophical world. Maybe you need time. Read around. But trust me when I say that it's not just cleverness.

>>9884495
I think therefore I am

Anyone wanna touch my poip?

>>9887369
This, because a lot of you are struggling with the basics (and probably don't plan on reading any primary sources on this concept in your lifetime).

>>9885663
>>9884833
there is no reason to go on /mu/ for anything other than recommendations

>>9884050
Why should there be nothing?

>>9888970
By that logic why should there be anything?

>>9884050
I don't know.

>>9887213
The existence of something is self evident, like this poster highlighted
>>9884495
This question wouldn't be possible to ask of there were nothing and only nothing, since nothing implies the absence of everything and this question is already in itself something, whether it be real or an illusion

>>9887636
The big bang doesn't answer this question at all
If the big bang were the beginning of everything, then before that there was an infinite amount of time of nothing in which another big bang could have also taken place, and probably has. How can we know there was only one, ours?

>>9889084
>before the big bag there was nothing
>therefore there was nothing to prevent nothing from becoming something

Haha, you brainlets need to learn how to syllogistically derive universal truths through abstraction

Is the real more valuable than the fake, in the case that the fake imitates the real better than the real itself? Why?

>>9889143
that's why I posted it in here.

>>9889127
The idea of the big bang that created our universe being the absolute beginning of everything simply doesn't make any sense, and many of the people I know who study science don't even believe this

If before the big bang there was an infinite time of nothing, then there is no reason for there not to have been also an infinite amount of big bangs before ours

I don't know why I bothered responding seriously though since you're just going to post some shitty normie tier meme response

>>9889150
your delusional desu

>>9889152
There can't be an infinite time of nothing since time can't exist within nothingness.

Very flawed argument, your type is more suited for >>>/pol/

I wish you luck, brainlet.

>>9889141
To affiliate with the truth instead of the fake leads to a reassurance.
The fake either reflects, subverts, scrambles, or removes the real.
What comes from that which isn't what it's meant to be?
You could have different purposes for believing in the false instead, but those are often identified as lackluster approaches.
With involvement of the fake, you must accept, else the returns aren't as genuine as the genuine. With the real, you may change it into another form surpassing the fake.

>>9889175
I suppose the fake will always be there, for the appeal is accessibility and ease. To maximize different outsets, it's better to be in search.

>>9889170
upvote xD

>>9888547
Nice blog but I've read a ton of Heidegger. Husserlian intentionality and Heidegger's clever use of language allow him to make you think he's not reifying nothing.

In a similar way you can't actually achieve authenticity because after reading Heidegger you're just thinking in his terms. It would be better to never have read him and make just hung around him or done acid in the woods. Reading Heidegger cucks you out from achieving his project.

Now read Max Scheler.

>>9888547
>His concepts of being and worldhood are being taught now at MIT with engineers trying to construct artificial intelligence

lmao you realize heidegger believed AI isnt possible, right?

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Fucking dogmatic retards and natural scientists in this thread I swear. I will now answer OP's question correctly. Reality as perceived by human beings is affected by causality. There is a set of mathematical formulas representing our something. If you knew those and had enough time on your hands you could calculate arbitrary points in what we call time and come up with exactly what you perceive. The point is what happens in this system doesn't need someone to do calculations, it simply is. There are probably other somethings existing outside of our perceived universe and there are probably parts of our own universe we can't see (read: alternative timelines).

>>9889290
>I will now answer OP's question correctly
>proceeds to not answer OP's question

>>9886573
'nothing' is something you fucking dualist.

>>9884495
Why? You're presuming too much.

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>>9889311
Everyone in this thread is. Fucking brainlets I swear.

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Dude like what if like *hits bong* like reality just can't like dude be comprehended like *hits bong once more* what if our brain doesn't have the ability to understand how it be

fuckin brainlets am i right lol

>>9889324
>Everyone in this thread is presuming too much
>There is a set of mathematical formulas representing our something

Really makes you think.

>>9889290
>fucking dogmatic retards
>is dogmatic

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>>9889349
>>9889359

>>9889290
Mathematics is dogmatic horsepiss.

>>9889324
No, just you and the other STEMspergs.

You are still presuming an existence.

>>9889406
Justify reality.

>>9889406
>horse

>>9889324
Behold, a paragon of abject brainletism!

Such is the fate of a brainlet to never realize his state of brainletness.

He stumbles through life muttering "brainlet" to all those in opposition.

A sad life indeed.

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>>9889413
Reality doesn't exist
>>9889419

>>9889467
What about existence?

>>9889491
Existence is non-slated reality. Whether that exists independently or is merely the absence of something that already does not exist is uncertain.

>>9884050
Because that's only askable if there is something. When there's nothing, no one can ask that.

>>9890000
You're still presupposing existence though.

>>9890029
Well, I'm presupposing a state in which questions are askable because they're askable. In a negation of that state, such questions are not askable. Call either what you want.

>>9890029
Also, I should have noted that it's ok to presuppose existence. It's not presupposition in that case.

>>9884050
Because you perceive things that way

Recommend a good book that goes into this topic please

>>9890161
>its not presuppositon in my special ideologue case
kys

>>9890228
Wow, a real pleb on /lit/. Hi, can I touch you?

Lawrence Krauss, an astrophysicist, came out with a work called A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing.

Perhaps it is for OP to read. Perhaps it is for any and all to realize this is a question to be directed at Einstein, not at Nietzsche.

>>9890256
But if you're this guy >>9890228 you will simply say that Lawrence Krauss doesn't exist.

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>>9890256
>There is a scientific explanation to existence

>>9890267
No, I am implying there will be, at some point in time, a scientific explanation for existence. Until then, there is for us still some value and good fun in discussing it.

>>9890267
>God of the gaps
>I am also dragging religion into a thread about the anthropic principle because I'm confused.

>>9889170
>implying time (and space) aren't absolute
I'm not the anon you replied to but you're working with the assumption that time is relative and behaving as if that was a simple truth.

>>9890330
>the assumption that time is relative

> Theory of relativity is just a meme. Also, my GPS navi doesn't work for some reason.

>>9890330
ITT: Brainlets

>>9890279
No, there never will be. Stop stroking your ego.
>>9890266
He does exist, but he's a nonentity.

>>9890256
Science presupposes everything, it is totally invalid. Philosophy, at least, has the gonads to say that it doesn't matter.

>>9889272
Source? My interest is thoroughly piqued

>>9890616
Source? Are you fucking kidding me? You claim to like Heidegger but don't know this...fucking Heideggerians...

"Nothing" is something. So there being nothing rather than something is impossible.

>>9884833
Innerspeaker was fantastic but then they went dreampop like assholes

>>9890478
>Science presupposes everything, it is totally invalid.

1. Natural philosophers are called scientists today.
So, are scientists philosophers who do not say "it doesn't matter"? Or a new breed entirely? What was Aristotle most of the time?

2. Scientists helped build the tool you used to type that comment.

How is science "totally invalid" if it works? I think someone severely spooked you.

Perhaps read some Bertrand Russell, Roger Penrose or Karl Popper to get get a good dose of logical positivism in your life. Even some of the more relaxing books Hawking wrote.

>>9890267
Science tells us fuck all.

>>9890339
Please stop posting

consider going back

>>9890754
Natural philosophers have always been retards

Direct perception does not validate direct perception

The turds you mentioned are totally irrelevant and I have likely read more of them than you have.
'muh STEM meme' is totally unjustified and totally invalid.

>>9892105
>Direct perception does not validate direct perception
Since STEMspergs have the reading comprehension of a preteen, generally, I'll have to explain this (after all, they've been ignoring it for several hundred years:)
Perception of a computer cannot be justified, that is to say a computer cannot be proven to exist, by the notion of perception itself. One must first validate perception, non-empirical perception, before that may be done with any validity. I can perceive a computer but that does not mean the computer is existent, nor does it mean that it is an object any more sophisticated than a rock. The notion that 'the universe may be accurately perceived', taken as an axiom by some (STEMspergs), still does not apply. I am not perceiving thought, I am thinking thought. The brain/mind/whatever is not a sense organ in the classical sense which scientific axioms are based (to their own suffering). No, regardless of whether there is a mind-body or a mere body including a brain which includes the 'mind' is totally irrelevant, because that still does not mean that what I perceive at one instant is still valid in another. That is, an argument for direct perception in the sense of my experience at an instant cannot validate reflection upon perception as a whole. Logical positivism requires a 'God of the gaps' to actually justify its perverted empiricism, or else there is no logical connection between perception and reflection.
This does not even begin into the notion that perception can be doubted, or even rejected, as a whole. Nor does it into that 'logic' as one conceives it (classically -- yes, even your 'new' logic is still classically axiomatic) is valid. Nor does it into that 'validity' is still requiring some sort of external logic which logical positivism must reject (or else it conjures a 'God of the gaps'.) Logical positivism is irrelevant now for these glaring reasons, and the rest of archaic 'natural' and 'logical' philosophy will die out too if it wants to truly consider itself 'rigorous'. No, 'logic' cannot be spoken of logically and 'nature' cannot be spoken of naturally without presupposing what one already thinks about logic and nature, and perhaps 'refining' from there. But a polished turd is still a turd, not a diamond.