why is there something rather than nothing?

I’ve been thinking on and off about the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” before falling asleep for the past few months. Not much has come from thinking about it. I’m considering actually reading a philosophy book on it, I heard there’s a recent good one about the question but you know, that’s cheating.

Anyway, all I really have gotten to is that in some ways I do think the question is confused but even there I don’t think I really escape it by examining it. So then I started thinking about why I find the question so fascinating and I think it’s because I ask “why” and then look for intent. I mean I don’t feel like when I ask it i’m looking for a causal story. And that’s about it, I don’t think I can get to a place from which to see an explanation and I can’t think of a satisfying one and answers seem to beg the same question again in alternate form.

The biggest way I think it’s confused is that, you know, we don’t experience ‘nothing’ so it seems like a false comparison. Or if you rephrase it to ‘why does the universe exist at all’ or whatever then well, maybe if we could see some non-existing universes then we could compare and understand the difference.

But like I said, I take the “intent” turn when I think of it more and I guess the best answer I come up with is derived from a dream I had some time ago. In the dream I’m talking with God and we’re present in space together observing the universe more clearly than the clearest starry night you’ve ever seen and we’re conversing (non-audibly, why would that be necessary?) with each other. He knows I have these questions and want to know the secrets of the universe. But what he tells me is this — the universe is essentially information and if I knew the answer the universe would implode upon itself. So this particular not-knowing is a necessary condition. If I’d persist he’d communicate something like, “there’s no cause for concern” and then he passed along some sort of infinite peace.

I assume the God I ran into in my dream was the God of the Skeptics because who else returns unending inquiry with peace?

Vonnegut's requiem

Written shortly after he heard his first wife was dying from cancer.

My prayers are unheard,
But Thy sublime indifference
    will ensure
that I not burn in some
    everlasting fire.
Give me a place among the
    sheep
and the goats, separating
    none from none,
leaving our mingled ashes
    where they fall.
... O Time, O Elements
Grant them rest. Amen.

Alabama Shakes

morning commute on DC Metro

Since I started working in VA, I cross the river on my way into the office.  A short respite from the depths.

Jonathan Foer's Ted Talk

The author I mentioned in my previous post --

Moonwalking with Einstein

I finished reading Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer a few weeks ago and learned a lot about memory from it. I was hoping to get some insight into how to improve my ordinary memory but all I learned were tricks to improve deliberate memory techniques. Not that the two are entirely unrelated but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. I do highly recommend as it's a well written narrative and educational (at least for me). It also pointed me to the Rhetorica ad Herennium among other assorted ancient and more modern books on memorization.

your vote doesn't count (but that's no reason not to vote)

If you're like me then you realize that no matter who you vote for this election, you won't be represented on most major policy decisions.  Sure there will be some trivial things like, you know, staving the complete collapse of US society as we know it off by stopping the Republican candidate.  But then you know, a competent government can do bad things much better than an incompetent one.  So it's hard to say.

In any case, your vote not counting is no reason to not vote.  It just happens to be things are bad enough your vote might not be enough to make your vote count so you've got a bunch of other shit to also do to make sure your vote counts next time.

Some Friedersdorfian reasons you might not want to vote for either candidate:

Against Romney
Against Obama

for narrativity (Pessoa)

Men of action are the unwitting slaves of men of intellect.  Things only acquire value once they are interpreted.  Some men, then, create things in order that others, by giving them meaning, make them live. To narrate is to create, whilst to live is merely to be lived.

Fernando Pessoa

against narrativity, part deux

Well, not sure what part it is but it's the current part, the part the I that is now is reading. Thanks Galen.

 'We live beyond any tale that we happen to enact'

Here's Strawson's earlier piece from 2004 which I encountered a couple years ago.

the Don Juan of knowledge

The Don Juan of knowledge: he has yet to be discovered by any philosopher or poet.  He is lacking in love for the things he comes to know, but he has intellect, titillation, and pleasure in the hunt and intrigues involved in coming to know--all the way up to the highest and most distant planets of knowledge--until finally nothing remains for him to hunt down other than what is absolutely painful in knowledge, like the drunkard who ends up drinking absinthe and acqua fortis.  Thus he ends up lusting for hell--it is the last knowledge that seduces him.  Perhaps, like everything he has come to know, it will disillusion him as well!  And then he would have to stand still for all of eternity, nailed on the spot to disillusionment, and himself having become the stone guest longing for an evening meal of knowledge that he never again will receive!--For the entire world of things no longer has a single morsel to offer this hungry man.

Nietzsche Dawn §327

A Nietzschean warning for the philosopher as traveler but I don't think it's a real threat (I mean beyond the pursuit of painful knowledge (and the pain involved in the pursuit of knowledge), illusion being so much more comforting and all that). Just as Don Juan would have a hell of a time trying to conquer every woman on the planet, so too does the Don Juan of knowledge quickly encounter a nearly infinite set. The knowledge of abiding in hell would require some commitment but then in some sense he'd be abiding also in his true love, the chase.

I don't think I'm totally understanding this aphorism.  Maybe I shouldn't take the metaphor so far.