Born to do Math 85 – “What is the deal with nothing?”
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/05/08
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, this will be our Jerry Seinfeld show, which is about nothing.
Rick Rosner: [Laughing] Okay and to put that in context, I have got this YouTube thing where I argue with a conservative, my buddy Lance, and he wanted to talk about Christian apologetics, even though we are both Jews but apologetics in general, which is the field of established religious metaphysical explanations for religious principles.
Why the world exists from a religious philosophical point of view, you cannot say the world exists because of God. That leads to more complicated metaphysical issues and often these metaphysical issues have been thought about by religious philosophers.
There is sophisticated philosophical reasoning behind things that attempt to be proofs of the necessity of God. That God created the world. So, anyway, one of the topics Lance brought up was the idea of from nothing comes nothing and this is an idea that is pervasive not only in religion but also in scientific thinking.
It is the principle that unless there is some motivating or creative force that the default state of existence is nothingness. That without something to push things along, without a creator or some physical impetus a loaded vacuum.
A vacuum that is packed with energy for instance in physics, without that the default state of being is no being, is nothing. I increasingly have a problem with this and it has led me to think about the idea which we’ve talked about.
For one thing, we’ve talked about the set of all possible worlds. These would be the worlds, the universes, not prohibited by the principles of existence. If you have a complete set of the principles of existence, I do not know if that is even possible, but say you’ve got a fairly exhaustive set.
All the reasons and rules that the universe can exist, then we know because we exist. That is not a null set. That the set of possible worlds that we and by not too tough extrapolation all the past moments of our world and a bunch of future moments – all those are possible worlds.
So, it is reasonable to assume that the set of all possible worlds if it can be enclosed in a set or encompassed by a set contains perhaps an infinitude of possible worlds, which you would think could be of various sizes because we live in a universe that is huge with something 10 to the 85th protons and then a bunch of other associated particles, a bunch of bunch of protons.
A bunch of particles with 10 to the 11th galaxies each with roughly 10 to the 11th stars with each star consisting of roughly 10 to the 58th or more particles protons and neutrons; so, a big-ass universe.
Then it is possible for us to imagine a null universe and a number small universes and by extrapolation you can imagine universes of any size in between. That to me suggests a possible principle that is that there may be no upper limit to the size of a possible universe.
That there is no bias against any size universe under the rules of existence, the principles of existence. Universes of any finite size can exist. That doesn’t mean that any arbitrarily structured topsy-turvy universe of any size can exist, but under the principles of existence there may be no principle of existence that sets an upper limit for the size of the universe, which seems a richness of existence especially when compared to from nothing comes nothing.
From nothing comes nothing means that unless you do some special trick of creation, you cannot have something because the default state of things is nothing, so you have to do some magic or some special physics to have existence come out of nothingness, which is the default state of things.
This bias, it is a crazy bias; it is a special bias; that exists both in religion and in science that everybody is subject to this bias in favor of nothingness being the default state. I do not know how many other beliefs there are that are cross over beliefs between religion and science.
So, it is pervasive. It is persuasive. But we know it is not a prohibitive rule because we exist. Something happened or there is something about the principles of existence that doesn’t stand in the way of existence.
That the “from nothing comes nothing” rule doesn’t rule because there is something-ness and if nothingness ruled then there would not be. So, we already have proof that it is possible to have something-ness.
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