BIG BRAINS GO BUST: HOW EXISTENCE MAKES SMART PEOPLE DUMB

 

BIG BRAINS GO BUST: HOW EXISTENCE MAKES SMART PEOPLE DUMB

 

The ultimate question, philosophers tell us, can be posed in two ways: Why is there anything at all? Why is there “something” rather than “nothing?”  Apparently some people think that if you string a bunch of words together and put a question mark at the end you have constructed a question. Not so fast. Here is a good example of why thinking should have stop signs. Already deluded by Mormonism, Jim Holt drives his delusion further by tackling a non-question. Something can come out of nothing in a specific quantum mechanical sense, but sometimes - notably in human discourse - nothing can come out of nothing. I don't mean to be rude, but surely you're joking Mr. Holt, and Mr. TED!!  https://lnkd.in/gpyn2Hb8

Don’t let it be said that those know-it-all physicists could ever turn their backs on the Big Questions of life, the universe, and everything.  So of course they have answers for the ultimate question.  Why is there something rather nothing?  Alan Guth is the Victor Weisskopf Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He says in order for there to be something rather than nothing the laws of physics would have had to exist BEFORE THE UNIVERSE CAME INTO EXISTENCE! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be6DJ9CbZW8&t=304s).This makes him as delusional as the theologians who claim that there is a God who exists outside of time and space and creates the universe ex nihilo.

Wolfram’s hypergraph is another God substitute.  Stephen Wolfram’s perspective on why the universe exists is that the universe is a computational system evolving from simple rules.  The universe is basically a hypergraph, a network-like structure which evolves by rewriting rules.  Space, time, and matter emerge from these underlying rules and their application (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGC2z3agz_o).

Remember those IQ test question where you were given a list of items and charged with identifying the item that didn’t belong?  For example: horse, dog, cat, tree.  Tree doesn’t belong.  Now imagine a list of all the things in the universe, X to N and including “life.”  Which one doesn’t belong?  Right, life.  We are an accidental addition to the list totally incompatible with all the other items.  And part of the proof for this claim is our pitiful efforts to give ourselves reasons to believe we are special creations in the midst of a cosmic surrealism; to believe it makes sense to ask why is there anything at all.  If you’re not completely baffled and at the same time terrified by the something that exists you are not paying attention.  Listen to the ones who have been paying attention:

Better a hundred times not be born;

But if we must see the light,

The least harm is still to return

Where you come from, and the sooner the better!

Sophocles (d. 406/405BCE)

Well-being is in heaven; But we are on earth,

Where all is but annoyance, worry, and grief.

William Shakespeare, Richard II, 16th century

Men must weep at their birth, and not at their death.

Montesquieu, Persian Letters. France, 18th century

Life is a burden to me, I desire death and I abhor existence.

Oh! That I am never born!

            J. W. von Goethe, Faust. Germany, 19th century

No know-it-all philosophers, physicists, and theologians here, finding meaning in life, the universe, and everything and “explaining” that something exists rather than nothing by turning to the only option they have, the delusion of a God or God surrogates like laws and rules outside of time and space.

 Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a public intellectual, investment banker, author, TV-producer, columnist and commentator.  Kuhn is the creator of the PBS series Closer to Truth.  One of the recurring themes in that series is the question that has been troubling and terrifying Kuhn since he was 13 years old: Why is there something rather than nothing.  In his search for an answer to this question he has traveled the world seeking guidance from philosophers and scientists and overwhelmingly those who claim to have an answer to the question have recourse, as we have seen, to God or a God surrogate.  One scientist, Steven Weinberg, told Kuhn: “We’ll never have an answer to that.”  This is the scientific stop sign that should end the discussion.  It probably won’t because Kuhn thinks like a philosopher and philosophy has no stop signs.  Weinberg concludes with even more wisdom that “the position of human beings is eternally rather tragic....here’s no point in the laws of nature that refers specifically to human beings....We can at least make a point for ourselves; we can love each other and find beauty in things....Facing this essential tragedy we can leaven it with a certain sense of humor.”

 

https://youtu.be/cfmewf2DoKU?si=PJ4uXnRJcES4voxK

Weinberg is the final speaker in this episode.  All of the others babble their way through the interviews mimicking serious thinkers with metaphysical, theological, spiritual, and cosmic nonsense.   

 

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