Why is there something rather than nothing?
Asked by
jangles (
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December 31st, 2009
Most of you have the good sense to pass up this question. But under this question is another, more clear question. Just because a question is grammaticly correct, does that mean it merits an answer?
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66 Answers
Because if there was nothing, we wouldn’t be around to contemplate why there isn’t something.
And nope, not every question merits an answer, even if it’s grammatically correct.
“Just because a question is grammatically correct, does that mean it merits an answer?”
It shows more effort went into writing the question, so it’s more likely to get answered.
What do you mean ‘under this question’?
...because I need answers…
No.
I look at all the Fluther questions and avoid most.
Sarcasm, im not sure your response makes logical sense. Not everything can contemplate existance and if those things that did contemplate existance, lost the power to do so, things would still exist.
Traditionally the philosophical answer to this question is “Why Not?” but dressed up in very dense philosophical verbiage. See Leibniz in his essay “On the Ultimate Origin of Things,” (1697) or more recent work by Oxford’s Richard Swinburne.
Who says this is something rather than nothing?
@jangles What is there not to make logical sense of?
We’re always questioning bout what isn’t there.
Presently, things exist. Thus, we question why there isn’t nothing.
So, if nothing existed, we would question why there isn’t something. But if nothing existed, we wouldn’t be around to question in the first place.
Things exist so we can question why they don’t not exist.
@Simone_De_Beauvoir Under the question of “Why is there something rather than nothing” there is the question of “Just because a question is grammaticly correct, does that mean it merits an answer?”
Kelly, I’m not sure that there is a such thing as nothing. It only exists as an idea, which doesn’t merit real existence, unless were talking about neurons in your brain. Then, in that sense nothing can exist as an idea. But an idea is something and therefore there is something rather than nothing.
And also, if there were nothing we wouldnt be having this conversation.
@Sarcasm yeah, I got that…I found it ironic, the wording…never mind…happy new year!
Everything is something, including nothing.
It doesn’t logically make sense because the question isn’t “is there something or nothing” and so your proof of the compression of existence is irrelevant. Things do exist, even when we don’t comprehend them or think about them. They are still there.
To quote one of my favorite quotable people:
“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.”
—Oscar Wilde
And:
“To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.”
—Oscar Wilde
But then:
“One creates from nothing. If you try to create from something you’re just changing something. So in order to create something you first have to be able to create nothing.”
—Werner Erhard
All of this means that there is nothing or we wouldn’t have something, and that we can speak of nothing ‘til the cows come home and still be content.
@jangles “and so your proof of the compression of existence is irrelevant”
Whaaa?
Im sorry i ment comprehension. Not compression
I liked it better as compression. It made me think of tesseracts. I like tesseracts.
No. A lot of really, really stupid things can be said grammatically.
Also a lot of really intelligent things can be made to look stupid by lack of attention to grammar.
Wrinkles in Time = tesseracts
The first time I ever heard of tesseracts was in a book called “A Wrinkle In Time” by Madeleine L’Engle.
Tessearacts are the basis for dimension hopping and time travel.
@Kelly_Obrien – Actually, the first time I heard of them was in a science fiction short story where an architect had constructed a house in the form of an opened up tessaract, and during the house-warming party it refolded itself into four dimensions and disappeared.
In geometry, the tesseract, also called an 8-cell or regular octachoron, is the four-dimensional analog of the cube. Madelaine L’Engle just used the idea to formulate her version of dimensional and temporal travel. It existed long before she used the word.
Ah. I haven’t read that book in a very, very long time.
A tesseract is a four dimensional cube, by the way. Extending 90 degrees into the fourth physical dimension.
I don’t know why, but I feel obligated to say that.
@Darwin Heinlein’s And He Built a Crooked House!
It’s because we’re nerds.
@Darwin @Grisaille I am glad you did. I had forgotten! The tesseract is a very interesting figure.
@Grisaille: I was so prepared to type your exact first answer before I read it.
I also encountered tesseracts in A Wrinkle in Time, and then again, much later, in that video of Carl Sagan trying valiantly to explain the fourth dimension.
For the record, though, every question merits an answer.
@Grisaille – Yes! That was it. I can never remember titles.
@absalom His explanation in Cosmos confused the hell out of me. I don’t know where I was intellectually at that point but I remember grasping my head in anguish. The way he described how an object can (EDIT:) disappear just by moving a fraction of a millimeter into another spacial dimension was much easier on the brain.
@Darwin ‘welcome. :)
And to think, if I had not mixed up the spelling of comprehension, then this discussion would have ended some time ago. Ha.
But to absalom i ask why does every question merit an answer?
@jangles
Maybe I should amend my statement: Every earnest question merits an answer. (?)
If someone seeks knowledge genuinely I don’t see why he should be deprived. But that could be a false intellectual altruism speaking.
@absalom
But what if there was a person who genuinely wanted to know what the color blue smelled like, would you think that deserved an answer?
@jangles Much stranger, thought-provoking question have been asked here.
@absalom
But the question is non-sense. It has no real answer.
Whether or not you think it deserving it cannot be answered correctly.
I would say to even give a question like that, a second thought, would waste time, in which better intellectual pursuits could be taken.
Even before I got an answer to “why does nothing exist rather than something?” I hinted that this question had no correct answer, because it doesn’t really even make sense as a question and really nothing was learned from the thirty something responses, except that questions can sound deep and insightful (mostly philosophical ones) but can be complete non-sense.
@jangles – Of course. The color blue smells soft and fresh, but slightly salty.
@Darwin
ha, yes of course. how foolish of me.
There is such a thing as synaesthesia. Someone knows what blue smells like.
@jangles
A synaesthete would disagree.
Edit: Too slow.
is there really an argument now that blue has a smell?
blue is a perception, evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm.
the color blue doesnt give off any real odor.
but i guess i would have to say your right but only because I didn’t phrase the question “does the color blue give an odor, cause by a real physical reaction and not a misinterpretation or disorder of the brain”
@absalom
sorry not “does it give off an odor” thats a question that makes sense
but “what is the odor given off by the color blue”
But who says what is a misinterpretation or disorder of the brain? If you are born with synesthesia then blue may have a smell, and a C chord may have a color. In fact, a degree of it is quite common in musicians and artists and creative folks in general.
Check out this test to see if you have any trace of synesthesia. I took it and got this result:
“There is a 80% chance your brain matter contains grade-A synesthesia!”
lurk, lurk
Great discussion, guys!
@jangles
a grammatically correct question meriting an answer
@Darwin
Ok, perhaps my example wasn’t the best one to use.
the point remains that a question that is non-sense can be grammatically correct and not merit an answer.
@jangles – You mean, like my son asking for the forty-seventh time “Are we there yet?”
i guess in some context that question could be seen as nonsensical
but only if we assume that time does not really exist.
I would never have expected this question to spawn a discussion like it did. Good on ya, @jangles.
<—-Guilty of googling to see exactly what a tesseract was.
Noam Chomsky came up with the question I think you are looking for:
Do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?
But do androids dream of electric sheep?
@pdworkin
Answer being, of course, that furiously sleep ideas indeed green colorless.
P.S. Happy New Year!
@pdworkin
Im so happy that there are other people who know of Noam Chomsky
Because i live in Utah and no one here does ha
Well, I can see why the average Mormon wouldn’t want to know much about an anarchistic, libertarian socialist Jewish New Yorker.
@Darwin
you would be correct
the culture is quite interesting utah.
or boring if you have lived there your whole life ha
I find the Mormon culture interesting but to be avoided as much as possible. But then I believe in female Elders.
You know those plastic sunglasses they hand out every year at Times Square? This year, they’re giving everyone a who wears them a roman helmet.
This decade is going to suck. Or be awesome. Happy New Year!
@pdworkin Here’s a question. If you put two people who taste colors together, will they describe the same thing? Or will the brain interpret blue’s “color” completely different for the two people?
We have no way of knowing that we interpret colors like one another. Vision is a pschobiological phenomenon.
Apparently quantum mechanics suspects that if there is ‘thought’ there is ‘something’. What they don’t clearly understand is if there was no thought, would be there still be something.
@Master Or not. As in the case of sound, above, until waves and particles encounter a sensorium and are interpreted, things may be very, very different indeed.
Our world is a construction of our minds and as to what reality is ‘really’ like we cannot yet say. All we can definitely say is that there is something rather than nothing and this peculiar fact is all we can know for certain. But why should something exist rather than nothing? This question is very deep and beyond any satisfactory answer and, I believe will remain so for all time.
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