Why Does Anything Exist? - Part II - AlwaysAsking.com

This is Part 2 of the question: Why does anything exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? Wouldn’t nothing have been so much easier?

Every society in every time has wrestled with this dilemma. It’s our most enduring question. For we all seek to know: why we are here?

In this episode we will review the latest answers and use the best available evidence in an attempt to settle this ageless question. With an answer to this question we can orientate ourselves in reality, and understand the reason behind it all.

An answer to this question would tell us not only why we exist, but also what else exists, both within the universe we see and beyond.

Beginning: 00:00
Episode start: 00:26
The Foundational Crisis: 04:42
A Call to Action: 03:03
New Foundations: 03:49
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems: 06:58
Undecidability: 10:17
Hilbert’s 10th Problem: 13:44
Universal Equations: 18:07
The Universal Dovetailer: 22:24
A Story of Creation: 26:28
Ancient Anticipations: 27:30
The Causeless Cause Found?: 33:06
Is it Causeless?: 33:17
Independent of Minds: 33:32
Independent of Matter: 35:06
Is it the Cause?: 36:22
The Cause of Minds: 37:33
The Cause of Matter: 43:58
Is This Testable?: 46:48
Algorithmic Information Theory: 48:12
Confirming Evidence: 50:30
Predictions of the Theory: 51:16
Why Laws?: 54:00
Why the Laws are Mathematical: 58:09
Why the Laws are Simple: 59:59
Why the Laws are Life-Friendly: 01:03:35
Why Quantum Mechanics?: 01:08:02
Irreducible Randomness: 01:12:16
Infinite Complexity: 01:17:37
Quantum Computers: 01:20:56
Why Time?: 01:24:15
A Beginning in Time: 01:26:33
Information as Fundamental: 01:30:06
Observation as Fundamental: 01:34:12
Reviewing the Evidence: 01:39:43
Conclusions: 01:40:47
The Journey Here: 01:43:14
A Strange Answer: 01:44:42
A Triumph of Human Reason: 01:46:25
Open Questions: 01:48:43
Room for God: 01:48:54
Deriving Physical Law: 01:50:13
Implications: 01:52:18
The Universe is a Dream: 01:52:29
We Live in a Simulation: 01:53:55
Our Place in Reality: 01:54:39

Other formats:

[R]

To echo the sentiment of almost every other commenter, these videos are incredible. The writing itself is truly a work of art. I looked into your background a bit, and I'm quite impressed. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and thoughts with the internet.

[peterpta]

This kind of content is exactly what I want to see on Youtube.

[NigelCamden]

I’ve watched hundreds of videos on these themes and this has finally given me that feeling of satisfaction I’ve been craving! Thank you.

[LVaderM]

Part 1 is the greatest youtube video of all time.

[tjthreadgood]

44:50 Exactly. I don’t understand how so many intelligent people seem either to fail to grasp this idea, or alternately frequently let it slip their minds. If one is part of a video game, then the video game is one’s apparent ‘physical’ reality; if one is a part of a mathematical object then that mathematical object is one’s apparent ‘physical’ reality; if you are a part of a multi-verse then that multi-verse is your apparent physical reality. By the way, a mathematical object can contain representations of other abstract objects within it; those representations are not the abstract objects themselves; they are representations of the abstract objects. For example within our own multiverse, we have a concept of the number ‘one’. Our concept of ‘one’ is not the abstraction, ‘one’. Our concept ‘one’ is a part of our own structure. In a sense our concept of ‘one’ is a simulation of the abstraction ‘one’.

[markjones]

I never comment on videos, but the effort you have put in is incredible. Well done and thank you.

[ShahinNe]

Remarkable ! Thank you for collecting all the relevant topics into one beautifully organized video. Quite a compilation thank you immensely

[bishopinskipp]

Hey AA, thanks for another stellla video. I guess things are going to get even more interesting as we go forward, what an astonishing era we're living through. Keep 'em coming.

[rattmandoug]

Quote :
"Those two videos about wtf the universe exist are the best of all videos over all the internet."
-Rattman Doug (2021 from youtube.com commentary section.)

[rupertochavez]

Always listening, Always exciting Always simply, Great work like ALWAYS. NO PUN intended jee jee 😉

[DisplayBeats]

Loved the video mate keep it up! Keen to see more.

[robertsnarunovskis]

Thanks for this beautiful work, the best ever study of this kind, in the first part when we tried define absolute Nothing, we gradually stripped "Something " of all of it's components, like matter and space, until it seems to me that we are left with is just an observer trying to imagine what this Nothing could be like, but in a true Nothing there should not be any observer at all by definition, but then again there wouldn't be any agency trying to establish the nature of this Nothing, as a consequence "Something" can not be observing Nothing, any thoughts anyone on this ?

[gyros]

Thank you for all of your outstanding videos, Jason!! As others have mentioned, your videos are the best on YouTube, and it is awesome that you make them accessible without ads. I have two questions: 1) In this video, you argue that practitioners of mathematics concluded in the 20th century (following Kurt Godel) that they could never develop a fully universal and totalizing equation that accounts for the set of all sets. Yet, at the end of the video, your premise seems to be that reality is precisely the set of all sets (or all computational processes) playing out simultaneously. How do you reconcile this contradiction? I don't think I fully understood this. To me, Godel's insights would seem to lead to a view of reality that we can never comprehend in terms of totality. I also think this view follows from quantum physics. I know many people like to interpret quantum physics in terms of a multiverse, but a different reading of quantum physics places ontological indeterminacy at the center of reality. 2) You seem to be pretty down on materialism in this video. But the definition of materialism you provide (in the first episode) appears to be a rather vulgar one that has been defined in a particular way by the Western tradition (in terms of extension and mechanism). Could your mathematical view on reality be compatible with a certain non-reductionist understanding of materialism? For example, could the mathematical nature of reality derive from the material properties of matter (instead of being an immaterial simulation)? Here is a quote by Terry Eagleton on a related point: "If talk of the human body falls prey to mechanical materialism, then one will find oneself in need of some spiritualistic or psychologistic language in order to cope with everything that such a view cannot account for. It is in this sense that vulgar materialism breeds idealism. The more, in such an epoch, the body is reduced to one object among others, the more overweening will wax the subjectivity which tries to compensate for this humiliation. " —Terry Eagleton/Self-Undoing Subjects. Also, is there any way you could make more videos on the topic of quantum physics and entropy?

[YogiMcCaw]

I'm cool with : emptiness is everything and everything is emptiness. Doesn't need a cause, doesn't need an arrow of time. if you think that it's a depressing assertion, you haven't understood it.
It allows for all the expression of all life and it's highest bliss. No other explanation does that.

[jasc]

Very impressive, one of the best video I ever watched.

[sundancekidd]

The birds don't sing because they have the answers, they sing because they have the songs but we don't know the lyrics.

[POWWOWMIK]

Is this an original work?

It's incredible 👌

[missfriscowin]

Enjoy and see what you did there at 44:42. Concrete solutions with a brick wall picture 🤓👍

[Darisiabgal]

F = G M1 M2/ d^2 is an approximation that works when the observer and the observed are roughly in the same inertial reference frame. A better theory is the description of general relativity. Therefore classic gravity is not a law, and in fact gravity does not exist. Curvature in spacetime does.

[nothingmanofgod.]

What is it the porpose of creating existing nothings nest.😕