Paul Davies - Why There is ‘Something’ Rather than ‘Nothing’?

This question haunts me everyday. And I've been doing this since I was a child. What's funny is im almost 40 and never in my life has anyone brought up this question to me. People just assume existence is normal. Being a human being is normal. And the point of life is to make as much money as you can buy as much stuff as possible. This should be the most important question on earth.

This is actually the mother of all questions.

Every time I think about this conundrum, it makes my brain bubble, because, in my mind, there should be nothing, and, in my opinion, the theory that you can have something spontaneously erupt out of nothing, means that it can't really be nothing, otherwise, nothing would come of it. So, in other words, a nothing that can produce something, is not truly nothing. Sometimes, while sitting in my room, I'll look around and have this really profound sensation that this should not exist, and yet it does, so what the hell is going on? The implications are mind-bending and overwhelming.

That was the most succinct explanation of the delayed slit experiment and it’s implications I’ve heard so far

Let's have a full list of all of Robert's obsessions

Paul Davies did as good a job riding the rocket as anyone I've seen on this program. And that, my friends, brings me closer to truth.

Paul Davies one of my favorites

I once had a general anaesthetic. I woke with the bizarre feeling that it was as if I'd died. No sensations, no memories, no thoughts, no pain... it was the most peculiar feeling, because during that period 'I' was literally 'nothing' and yet life was going on all round me, everywhere all over the world, it was just me that was absent from it. I think of that often, and that must be what it's like when we die.

Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.” ~ Karl R. Popper

This is such an interesting topic. Thanks!

His books are great BTW. His work was my first deep immersion in particle physics and cosmology.

I'm on binge watching of all the videos related to this particular question of Robert Kuhn "Why there is something rather than nothing" and Paul Davies's version is the most fascinating one among all the Physicist to whom he has enquired this question. The problem is we are imagining Nothingness always in term of absence of something. We can't have other way around. IMO Absolute Nothingness is impossible to imagine or comprehend until we are stuck in the duality of something and nothing.

It's quite hard to envisage 'nothing'. Laypeople like myself tend to think of 'nothing' as an empty. timeless void, but of course that wouldn't exist if there was nothing at all that existed. I've thought about this for some time, and my view is that 'nothing' precludes its own existence simply because the concept of existence itself wouldn't exist. Bloody hell, that sounds like something you'd hear on a bad episode of Doctor Who.

My #1 question in life.

Wheelers Delayed Choice was one of my favorites!

we chase material luxury, but it's nothing compared to the cosmic luxury we have

The answer is surprisingly simple: because there is something. If there is something then nothing can't be and that's the whole reason why nothing is merely an abstract concept, like zero. Zero doesn't exist, we made it up, same thing for negative numbers, they mean absolutely nothing in reality, we just made them up. There's not a single natural example where negative numbers can be applied. This to say that nothing is just an abstract concept like many others, they only exist in the conceptual form, they have no reality besides the concept itself.

I have no idea what he just said, but bloody hell it was interesting.

Happy to meet again at the Agora! ☺️👽

I am grateful for Paul Davis's books written for the layman. I read "Other Worlds" nearly 40 years ago and it it had a profound impact on the way I saw things.