Ask Lemmy

“I don’t know.”

The trick is not to follow that with “therefore…”

It is what it is.

Selection bias.

If it didn't exist, you wouldn't be asking.

I don't.

I don't care if it's actually real because it feels real enough.

‘The chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy.’ -Douglas Adams

Awhile back, I decided that I needed to compartmentalize my areas of concerns into two overarching categories, things I can affect, and things I cannot. The latter category is not to be worried about, planned on, or otherwise take away from the things I am able to work on.

But theory is always fun, so I enjoy the concept of being a cosmic accident after many billions of other cosmic accidents that came before me. I am no more or less important than any other collection of atoms and will continue to exist in this configuration with minor changes until such time that I don't. There doesn't need to be a grand plan, or a special meaning behind any of this, but I can see the allure of believing that those accidents which led to us being something more.

It's been many years since I read it but the 'explanation' in Lee Smolin's 'The Life of the Cosmos' sounds the most convincing to me.

I'm the book, as far as I understood it, he suggests that theory of evolution applies on the biggest scales too. New universes form when a black hole collapses. Our Universe is just one of the universes that all have slightly changed values of the universal constants, like the way evolution works. There are many universal or physical constants in science, some of the most widely recognized being the speed of light in vacuum c, the gravitational constant G, the Planck constant h, the electric constant ε0, and the elementary charge e.

There is a very narrow range of these constants where 'normal stuff' of the universe like formation of matter can happen and heat death of the universe can be avoided. We just happen to be in the right universe with the perfectly balanced constants, in the right corner of it, at optimal distance to an optimally sized star, tilted at an optimal angle, with a moon at the right distance to help evolve life capable of developing a fediverse where we can mull this over.

Evolution, nothing special about it.

After a bit of light reading and asking people who know more about philosophy than me, it seems I lean to absurdism. My take is that there is no reason for the existence of the universe or the evolution of humans. It was merely a series of random events that happened to end up the way it is. So it is what is is, I don't let myself be bothered by it.

But that doesn't mean life has no meaning per se. I'm already here, so I might as well make the most of it and live my life to the fullest. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but that puts me in the category of absurdism, rather than existential nihilism.

Something's gotta be, may as well be this

On a more serious note, I have absolutely no basis for this whatsoever but I think it's likely there's an antimatter universe somewhere, and that that and our universe spontaneously came into existence from nothing. 0 = -1 + 1. I mean, it's almost certainly nonsensical to the people who study this stuff but it's a fun idea

It's a metaphysical question.

Metaphysical cosmology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the world as the totality of all phenomena in space and time. Historically, it formed a major part of the subject alongside ontology, though its role is more peripheral in contemporary philosophy. It has had a broad scope, and in many cases was founded in religion. The ancient Greeks drew no distinction between this use and their model for the cosmos. However, in modern times it addresses questions about the Universe which are beyond the scope of the physical sciences. It is distinguished from religious cosmology in that it approaches these questions using philosophical methods (e.g. dialectics).

Cosmogony deals specifically with the origin of the universe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_there_is_anything_at_all

You can theorize about it, but for most theories, you aren't likely going to be able to do much to test them.

We just don't have any knowledge that we can get from the world that would let us make much of a call on it. Nothing we're going to learn is likely going to let us provide an answer.

It also probably won't provide much useful predictive power about the world, which is normally why we want to gain knowledge.

It's like asking whether there are decoupled universes that we can never interact with, or why the specific physical properties of the universe are the way they are -- we can maybe dig deeper within physics, come up with simpler or more-accurately-descriptive models but at some most-primitive level, that falls off of physics and into metaphysics. At that level, physics can only say "this is the way things work", not why.

So I'm not going to worry too much about it. There are hard questions that we don't know the answers to that are within the realm of testability, and that do have predictive power.

It's a long lasting, constantly evolving, multi-versal fluke.

We can't see, experience, or detect most of the universe — read: existence — let alone measure it. That pretty much means, to me anyway, we can't explain it.

Explaining existence, then, is limited to explaining my own perception of existence. To be brief: The things that exist got here the same way we did and use the same materials and rules. Conscious beings stay in the universe by maintaining consciousness; for us, that generally means being alive, awake, and alert — in that order. Upon death, consciousness ends, or departs, or continues (no one knows) and our corporeal form goes back to existing as atoms in other states within the environment. Present existence, then, pregnant by the ghosts of all existences that has gone before and is carrying to term all existences that will exist after. It's an endless, cyclical flow of atoms, energies, and absences. A crossroads of Space and Time culminating in experiential states and chains of causality. Billions of years in a blink.

Other conscious beings may operate or perceive differently. We can't individuall confirm or know. That's another of those rules.

That said, we only get to ride this existence thing for a short time. Build up your XP and use your one and only life doing good. Not necessarily well, but good.

Imagine standing outside of Time and Space and making a divine survey of the grand tapestry of the possible. It would look like math painted onto bubbles that glow from within, I think. That's what Existence may be.

I think, therefore I am.

I just try to pay bills man

It's likely nothing caused the universe to exist, since there's no reason to think causality even exists outside the universe.

The best I can ever do is learn more about the universe we live in. I don't think we may ever have concrete answers for any of those questions. We may not even be asking the right questions to begin with. Science youtube channels scratch that inch for me though. PBS Space Time, Astrum, SEA and Arvin Ash's channel are some of my favorites. Content a bit more in depth than the most basic but presented in a way a smooth brain like myself can mentally digest.

Arvin Ash Astrum SEA Space Time

I don't. Fuck it.

I can't for lack of evidence and aside from curiosity I don't really need to. It is interesting to ponder.

Scientific theories exist but I'm not sure how one can reliably determine which, if any, are the better explanation.

If nothing existed, it would not be possible to raise a question of this - or any other - type.

So that is that determined.

Whether anything beyond my instantaneous perception of thought relating to this question exists is another matter. I can't prove it. I wouldn't really say that I do 'explain' it either. I merely have an experience of it.

Probability. Nothing is impossible, only improbable.

So no matter how unlikely it is that the universe exists, and that there is sustained, complex life on this one; probability says that at some point; given enough time, enough iterations, etc it would have all lined up to create our little blip in time...and in some likelyhood, others too.

Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.

Yes.

I couldn't possibly. This shit don't make no sense.

I shrug and go play a videogame. There's nothing I can do about it no matter the answer.

There was nothing. And immediately as consequence the negation of nothing, a thing, emerged. Nothing and a thing cannot occupy the same locus. Thus a place apart came into being. The first thing fell apart. Thus two nothings were. But this couldn't be so two things emerged. And so it went until there was a universe with increasing entropy and chaos for all.

Asking why is meaningless, it's an artifact of how our brains are wired.

Our brains are evolved to try to understand the world around us in terms of reason; if this happens then that happens. It makes sense when looking at the chain of results that cascade out of the fireworks of creation; chemistry, biology and physics. The arrow of time points one way and we have evolved around that premise.

It doesn't mean that our intuitions are correct or even vaguely headed down the right path. We're a victim of that arrow of time, the path of the world we live in.

I don't really think about it much and just take what science's best guess as probably the truth.

I’m in the “we’re living in a simulation” camp. I just think it’s mostly unattended. Every once in a while the being running the simulation comes back and pokes at the console or upgrades their computer and we have some innovation. The invention of fire, agriculture, the Renaissance, space race, etc.

It explains why we keep thinking we find the building blocks of the universe, then discover something smaller (gpu upgrade). Or why there’s a universal constant speed (cpu clock).

I just hope the Bering doesn’t get bored and end the program for the last time like I eventually did to my sim city.

The totality of manifestation, and everything therein, is consciousness itself, the Unicity. All there is is consciousness, not aware of Itself in it's noumenal subjectivity, but perceived by Itself as phenomenal manifestation in It's objective expression. ... such understanding must comport the realization that there is no individual entity as such. What we think we are is merely an appearance, an insubstantial shadow, whereas what we really and truly are, is consciousness itself, the formless Brahman.

• Ramesh Balsekar

Any of y'all heard of this guy named God? Look it up