An experiential (400 mike trip): In the beginning there was Nothing — the Singularity. Then a quite literally impossible differentiation occurred; setting of a chain reaction of differentiation and hence Something(s).
This experience parallels the Taoist dictum that from One came Two, from Two Four, and from Four Everything. Of course I was aware of Taoism before I had the experience, so maybe what I "observed" was merely a visualization of a concept encountered decades ago. BTW, this was the closest I ever felt at mental risk. Part of the experience was observing two "flawless diamond necklaces" then descending into an infinite recursion of differentiation: e.g. one necklace had an imperfect diamond, the diamond had a near invisible flaw, a single atom in the lattice was misaligned, a quantum string was vibrating incorrectly, ... . It was actually anxiety inducing as I watched my mind tripping out. davew On Tue, Dec 28, 2021, at 12:50 PM, glen wrote: > It's OK. I fixed your larding format. > > Just like with your challenge to what "possible" means, we have to also > challenge the use of "random". You can't say "experience is random" > without some kind of _set_ or _space_ of experiences from which to > choose. E.g. it makes sense to say things like "There exist a black > ball and a white ball. Choose one at random." It does not make sense to > say "There exists nothing. Choose an experience at random." > > So we need some sense of a set of experiences from which to choose. We > can conflate concepts like "choice", "select", and "random" together, I > think. But we have to talk seriously about what *exists* ... the set of > things from which the selection selects. This is where Lewis has an > advantage. Anything that could exist, does exist. We don't have to > worry about construction of nothing to something, from a little bit of > stuff to a lot of stuff, etc. It's all already out there. > > But to toss in a little more grist just to help skip over all this to > get to the question: > > Then we have to talk about what you're calling repetitions or > regularities ... "laws", rules to which the extant things adhere (or > would/will adhere if we ever got around to > measuring/perceiving/experiencing them). As I've ranted, there are 2 > features we probably want: consistency and completeness. Any 2 things > from the set of extant things shouldn't contradict each other. And the > set of extant things has to be complete. I.e. we can't dream up stuff > that is NOT in the set. > > This is where counterfactuals play a role. When we talk about different > things within a world versus different worlds, we're talking about > contradictions/inconsistencies. But counterfactuals come in 2 senses, > the (broader?) linguistic one (future [plu]perfect?) and the > (specific?) logical one. > > I think we could derive a way of *counting* worlds based on the way we > *count* things within a world. > > Without that minutiae out of the way, back to the question: Regardless > of whether the choice of things from a world, or the choices of a world > is *random* or not, when we talk about regularities/patters over > collections of worlds, is that probabilistic? Or is it a clear case of > sizes/measures of those collections? My guess at the answer is that > every particular world will always be distinguishable (observability) > from every other particular world. There are no equivalence classes > unless we gloss/abstract some predicate/selector/choice. But maybe > there *are* some inevitable equivalence classes ... like > complementarity in quantum mechanics, where something is always > unobservable, unreachable, behind the ontological wall. If that's the > case, then our choice/selection methods must be probabilistic, a > partial versus total ordering/sizing. > > Please remember that I don't *believe* any of this, personally. I'm > simply building a defensible answer to the question "Why is there > something, rather than nothing?" > > On 12/28/21 11:10, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: >> On 12/28/21 09:30, glen wrote: >>> >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds >>> >>> We see something like this in evolutionary justifications of various >>> phenotypic traits, the most egregious being evolutionary psychology, but >>> including Nick's hyena penis and the ontological status of epiphenomena. >>> Yes, I'm posting this in part because of EricC's kindasorta Voltaire-ish >>> response to what might seem like my Leibnizian defense of bureaucracy. But >>> I'm also hoping y'all could help with the question I ask later. >>> >>> Of course, I'm more on Spinoza's (or Lewis') side, here, something closer >>> to a commitment to the existence of all possible worlds. I'm in a running >>> argument at our pub salon about the metaphysical question "Why is there >>> something, rather than nothing?" My personal answer to that question, >>> unsatisfying to the philosopher who asked it, is that this is either a >>> nonsense question *or* it relies fundamentally on the ambiguity in the >>> concepts of "something" and "nothing". Every denial of the other proposed >>> answers (mostly cosmological) involves moving the goal posts or invoking >>> persnickety metaphysical assumptions that weren't laid out when the >>> question was asked. ... it's just a lot of hemming and hawing by those who >>> want to remain committed to their own romantic nonsense. >>> >> Ok, I don’t know whether my nonsense is romantic, but here it is. >> Experience is essentially random. So, to answer the question, there is >> mostly nothing. Indeed, experience seems often to repeat itself, but all >> random processes repeat themselves, and so are still nothing. Every once in >> a while, however, such repetitions are so persistent as to beyond our >> capacity to shrug them off as random, and these experiences are somethings. >> >>> But a better answer might be something like: Because the size of the set of >>> possible worlds where there is something is *so much larger* than the size >>> of the set of worlds where there is nothing. And one might even argue that >>> all the possible worlds where there is nothing are degenerate, resulting in >>> only 1 possible world with nothing. [⛧] >>> >>> I don't think this is a probabilistic argument. But I'm too ignorant to be >>> confident in that. Can any of you argue one way or the other? Is this >>> argument from size swamping probabilistic, combinatorial? Or can I take a >>> Lewisian stance and assert that all the possible worlds do, already, exist >>> and this is just a numbers thing? >> OOOOOPS! My always-slippery grasp on the word “possible” has failed. What >> do we mean, in this context, by “possible”? > > -- > glen > Theorem 3. 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