Re: Why is there something instead of nothing?

From: Eric Hawthorne <egh.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 12:19:00 -0800

Norman Samish wrote:

>...
>I don't understand how there can be both something and nothing. Perhaps I
>don't understand what you mean by "nothing." By "nothing" I mean no thing,
>not even empty space.
>
>

I think of it this way.

1. Information (a strange and inappropriately anthropocentric word - it
should just be called "differences") is the most
fundamental "thing".

2. The plenitude, or multiverse (of possible worlds) can be conceived of
as "the potential for all possible information states"
or in other words, all possible sets of differences, or in otherwords,
an infinite length qu-bitstring simultaneously exhibiting
all of its possible states.

3. In that conception, "nothing" is just the special state of the
qu-bitstring in which all of the bits are 0 (or 1 - there are two
possible nothings, but they are equivalent, since 1 is defined only in
its opposition to 0 and vice versa.)
That is, in that conception, "nothing" is a universe in which there is
no difference, and thus no structure. i.e. That
state of the bitstring has zero entropy, or zero information. So it is
truely "nothing."

4. but that special state of the qu-bitstring is only one of the 2 to
the power (bitstring-length) simultaneously existing
information-states of the qu-bitstring. And some of the other sets of
information-states are our universe (i.e. "something.")
and similar universes (everything? or at least everything of note.)
 
Received on Sun Nov 16 2003 - 15:23:39 PST