RE: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?

Tue, 06 Jan 2015 23:06:07 -0800 

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2015 9:06 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to 
dialectics?

 

Chris,

    Hi.  I admit that something and nothing may be more of a comedy gold mine 
than I first wrote.  It's nothing to sneeze at! :-) Although, I wonder if 
people who aren't interested in this stuff (e.g. almost everyone) would find it 
funny?

I think most people are more interested than their conscious quotidian minds 
may be themselves aware of… and this is the key – IMO --to why jokes about 
nothing can crack people up and drive them into side-splitting laughter at 
times. Nothing is so central to our central fear.. the fear of our own personal 
death… of returning to nothing. Nothing funny about that, you would rightly 
say, but, because such fears are rarely faced and people devise innumerable 
means of ignoring, re-redirecting, hiding from, burying, rationalizing etc. the 
things they cannot face, this carefully unexamined space within acquires a 
latent potential that – by an adept comic who knows nothing – can be released 
in an earthquake of laughter.

    It sounds like we're pretty much in agreement on a lot of things.  A couple 
of comments on your comments are:

1.    It sure is hard to visualize the "absolute lack-of-all", I agree.  What I 
try to do is to shut my eyes and try to imagine the universe and all its volume 
collapsing down to just my body and then just my mindscape.  Then, I push that 
darkness of the mindscape off to the side into a little point and try to 
imagine getting rid of that point.  I've never pushed it all the way away out 
of fear that it may not be so good for your health, but it helps me think that 
only once it's all gone, including our mind, do we jump to the outside and see 
the "absolute lack-of-all" as the entirety of all there is and thus an existent 
entity.  But, it's possible it's just my imagination

Nice meditative visualization. The last bit you mention about the sudden 
quantum jump – at the very instant when everything including the last vestige 
of self is gone and the state of all-nothing is first reached – in that 
sub-femtosecond or less instant – the observer perspective quite suddenly (in 
some quantum salsa) on the outside looking in… gaining this crucial outside 
perspective on the all-ness of nothing.

I used to do visualization the other way… how vast can we imagine our minds? 
Perhaps, one could say, both roads lead to the same place. When I have tried 
this exercise I would expand my inner sense of the volume of space my mind 
extended to and enveloped from the room I would be meditating in… to the 
neighborhood above the trees… to the perspective of the clouds and the much 
vaster territory seen from that POV… and more… zooming out, holding the focus. 
Each time, at some point it I would lose it, on occasion from the vertigo in 
the mind; on others due to mundane interruptions – like some sound from my 
immediate environment that kicked the more primitive survival pathways of the 
brain, up into override mode. Have not done that in some time, but it was an 
interesting exercise of holding a focus on this particular mental perspective. 

I kind of suspect there may some ultimate symmetry in the limit of both the 
very big and the very small.

2. You mentioned

"...the set is a pure conceptual entity, it never the less is also imbued with 
a rich set of operations and properties. Even the empty set is a non-trivial 
conceptual entity."

>>I don't think of the existent entity that I used to call the "absolute 
>>lack-of-all", which is similar to the empty set, as a conceptual entity 
>>because in the "absolute lack-of-all" or the nullness inside the empty set, 
>>there would be no mind for it to be conceived in.  It's a real existent 
>>entity, IMHO, just like an electron is a real existent entity.  Who knows 
>>what's inside an electron.  All we really know is that it's an existent 
>>entity.  "Electron" and "empty set" are just names for existent entities.

I would say that this is a central premise of all mathematical hypothesis. All 
we know of elementary physical entities – like electrons – are what we can 
measure about their properties, in moments of observation. From many sequenced 
measurements we can measure dynamic behavior.

2.    When I was talking about removing all things thought to exist in order to 
get to the "absolute lack-of-all", I don't think there's still a container 
left.  Instead, I think that that that "absolute lack-of-all" itself is the 
container.  That nothingness would be the entirety of all there is and thus the 
grouping, or container, defining what is contained within.  That nothingness is 
both what is contained within and the container.

Nice Daoist ring to this: “nothingness is both what is contained within and the 
container” okay, I see your POV. Then the container of this all-nothing, is a 
dual aspect or POV, of nothing.

4. In regard to the auto-catalytic nature of the existent entity/empty set, I 
totally agree.  But, my vote for what the multiplication operation would be is 
that:

o If the "absolute lack-of-all" is a grouping defining what is contained within 
and thus an existent entity, a grouping is the similar to a surface or edge 
defining what is contained within and giving substance and existence to the 
thing.

Do you then view – e.g. maintain a perspective on – nothing as being a zero 
dimensional bubble with nothing inside (or outside for that matter), but one 
which is imbued nevertheless with this duality of having an edge or surface? 

One could make the point that this boils down to a duality of perspective: the 
within perspectives; and the containment of all (of nothing) perspective. The 
surface/edge is the global containing one  (the bird’s eye view); whilst every 
other infinitely possible perspectives are within.

Perspective of course implies an observer. Which poses some interesting 
problems for something out of nothing.

o If you have this initial surface, what's next to the surface?  The "absolute 
lack-of-all".  This new instance of the "absolute lack-of-all" is itself an 
existent entity next to the surface of the original entity.  In fact, I think 
new identical  "absolute lack-of-all" existent entities would cover the entire 
surface of the original entity.  

One view of all of the duplicated nothing is that it is all illusion – 
self-reflection gone infinite – that reduces down instantaneously to nothing 
AND all…. Form the ALL perspective. It is the Grand Illusion. Conjured out of 
nothing, but it is beautiful, terrifying too J -- so immediately-self-apparent 
as alive within us, driving our being to ask the question.

The question we ask about nothing.

o Each of the new "absolute lack-of-all" existent entities would repeat the 
process and you'd have an expanding space composed of these "absolute 
lack-of-all" existent entities.  

You seem to be hypothesizing a form of eternal inflation, of nothing, 
rubber-stamping out more {} ad infinitum. I like it.

    This would be my vote on the autocatalytic mechanism for how this initial 
entity/empty set could replicate itself.

It does seem to lead naturally to the kind of runaway process, which, I believe 
is what is required, in order for existence to become manifest. 

Cheers,

Chris

    See  you.

                                         Roger   

 

 

 

 

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