RE: Why is there something instead of nothing?

From: David Barrett-Lennard <dbl.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 14:46:53 +0800

The set of everything U is ill defined.

Given set A, we expect to be able to define the subset { x is element of
A | p(x) } where p(x) is some predicate on x.

Therefore given U, we expect to be able to write S = { x an element of U
| x is not an element of x }

Now ask whether S is an element of S.

- David



> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Levy [mailto:glevy.domain.name.hidden]
> Sent: Monday, 17 November 2003 2:15 PM
> To: everything-list.domain.name.hidden
> Subject: Re: Why is there something instead of nothing?
>
>
>
> John Collins wrote:
>
> >One interpretation of
> >the universe of constructible sets found in standard set theory
textbooks
> is
> >that even if you start with nothing, you can say "that's a thing,"
and
> put
> >brackets around it and then you've got two things: nothing and
{nothing}.
> >And then you also have {nothing and {nothing}}
> >
>
> Why start with nothing? Isn't this arbitrary?
> In fact zero information = all possibilities and all information = 0
> possibility.
> of course, (0 possibility) = 1 possibililty
>
> What is not arbitrary? Certainly anything is arbitrary. The least
> arbitrary seems to be everything which is in fact zero information.
> .
> Start with the set(everything) and start deriving your numbers.
> To do this, instead of using the operation set( ), use the operation
> elementof( ).
> Hence one=elementof(everything) and two = elementof(everything - one);
> three = elementof(everything - one - two)
>
> George
>
Received on Mon Nov 17 2003 - 01:49:20 PST