Tyrrell_McAllister comments on Rationality Outreach: A Parable - Less Wrong

24 [deleted] 17 March 2011 01:10PM

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Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 17 March 2011 08:00:47PM 2 points [-]

Upvoted, but one quibble:

If you, say, claim that "Time didn't exist before the Big Bang" is a complete and satisfactory solution to the problem "Why does something exist instead of nothing?", rather than (as is the correct answer) trying to explain why saying "God" (a) doesn't help and (b) constitutes the cardinal sin of Just Making Stuff Up, then you have lost all claim to any moral victory.

The point of that sort of argument, in my view, is not to propose a satisfactory solution, but to demonstrate why the question isn't meaningful. When a person asks a question like "What caused the universe?", ey is assuming that the universe needs a cause. However, causality is a property of events within a time-ordered system, and the universe is such a system, rather than being within the system. Time and space are unified, so considering them separately (which is what the question does) is erroneous.

This is similar for questions like "why is there something rather than nothing?". Implicit in the question is the possibility that there could have been nothing, and that's wholly unsupported by observation; even the vacuum is full of virtual particles. We may think that we can imagine that possibility, but that doesn't make it viable. That kind of question is never going to have a satisfactory answer, because the underlying premise is faulty.

I agree that it's important to point out how "God" isn't a good answer to those questions, but I think it's more important to point out the flawed thinking which leads to asking the questions in the first place.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 17 March 2011 08:24:25PM 4 points [-]

The question "Why does something exist instead of nothing?" is different from "What caused the Universe?". The former question is not asking about causation in time.

Suppose that your interlocutor grants that some event didn't need a cause, so that the Big Bang didn't violate causality. Well, the occurrence of no event also doesn't seem to need a cause. That is, causality would still have not been violated had nothing happened. So, it still seems reasonable to ask why something happened rather than nothing.

Although not a complete and satisfactory solution, my favorite answer is this one.

Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 17 March 2011 08:52:39PM 1 point [-]

The question "Why does something exist instead of nothing?" is different from "What caused the Universe?". The former question is not asking about causation in time.

Yes, that's true; I tried to distinguish them in my reply, because the point about time and causality doesn't really apply to the something vs. nothing question.

Suppose that your interlocutor grants that some event didn't need a cause, so that the Big Bang didn't violate causality. Well, the occurrence of no event also doesn't seem to need a cause. That is, causality would still have not been violated had nothing happened. So, it still seems reasonable to ask why something happened rather than nothing.

"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." – Murray Gell-Mann (from T.H. White)

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 22 March 2011 11:58:56PM *  2 points [-]

"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." – Murray Gell-Mann (from T.H. White)

Suppose we grant this claim as an axiom. Then, from the fact that X happened, we may deduce that X was compulsory.

But that doesn't tell us why X was compulsory. It doesn't provide us with an argument showing how the happening of X was a compulsory (or even probable) consequence of self-evident premises. Gell-Mann's axiom doesn't tell us why X had to happen, or even just why X happened — never mind the "had to". So it doesn't answer the question "Why does something exist instead of nothing?".

Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 23 March 2011 07:34:22PM *  1 point [-]

As I posted below, I'm not planning on continuing this specific discussion. However, if you're interested in continuing to discuss the general topic, I recommend heading over to this discussion topic that I just started, which addresses some of the same issues in what I feel is a clearer way.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 17 March 2011 11:45:06PM 0 points [-]

What's forbidden about there simply being... nothing? :)

Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 17 March 2011 11:49:00PM 0 points [-]

No, the point is that there's nothing forbidden about there being something.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 18 March 2011 12:05:09AM 1 point [-]

What I meant was, if there's neither anything forbidden about there simply being... nothing, and there being something, what leads to the "something" winning out over the nothing?

ie, even given "everything not forbidden is compulsory", there still seems to be stuff unexplained.