WaitButWhy has a article about the question of ‘why there is something instead of nothing’:
Religious people have a quick answer to “Why is there something instead of nothing?” I’m not religious, but when I’ve thought hard enough about it, I’ve realized that it’s as plausible as anything else that life on Earth was created by some other intelligent life, or that we’re part of a simulation, or a bunch of other possibilities that would all entail us having a creator. But in each possible case, the existence of the creator still needs an explanation—why was there an original creator instead of nothing—and to me, any religious explanation inevitably hits the same wall.
Arguments towards the ‘universe is a simulation’ have the same problem – even if it is a simulation, how does that explain anything? Who created it, and why?
One of the best explanations is found in the short story ‘The Last Question‘ by Isaac Asimov. The story follows the development of a series of increasingly advanced computers called the Multivac. Over the course of many millennia, humans continually ask the Multivac (and its subsequent iterations) the same question: “Can entropy be reversed?” The computers, though increasingly sophisticated, are unable to provide a satisfactory answer. Finally at the end of the story, the last iteration of the computer—now a cosmic, god-like AI— has collected every piece of data possible, and is finally able to answer the question. The Multivac computer says “Let there be light” and creates a new universe as it’s own god.
How Multivac does this isn’t explained. But what if only after collecting every piece of data possible, the explanation is that the Multivac computer was able to simulate a new universe perfectly by computing it? And if this new universe was equal to it’s own, it would then be defining it’s own existence. It would be creating something from nothing.
This concept not only addresses the “how” of the universe’s existence but actually has implications for into the deeper question of “why” the universe exists in the first place. By proposing that the universe is a self-defining and self-referential simulation, this leads to explaining the reasons behind its existence and the laws governing it.
For this concept to make sense, the universe must be entirely digital and computable, an idea supported by many physicists such as Max Tegmark and Stephen Wolfram. Digital physics suggests that the universe, at its most basic level, can be described digitally, with higher-level properties emerging from these mathematical entities.
If reality is computable, it can be simulated. And if the simulation is perfect, then it is not only real but exactly equal to reality itself. In this scenario, the universe simulating itself within itself would be creating its own existence, making A=A and providing a potential answer for the question of why there is something rather than nothing.
This concept diverges from Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, which asserts that every possible mathematical structure exists. Instead, this “strange loop” idea suggests that what exists is what can define itself through time and entropy as calculations.
The universe may have fine-tuned itself to have the exact values it possesses because those values were necessary for its self-definition.
This ‘self definition’ needs to be calculated and emerge. This search/calculation for the appropriate universe configuration could be likened to an “NP-hard problem” in computer science, where it is easy to verify the correct answer but extremely difficult to find a solution.
How the universe is calculating is an explanation for why the universe has the properties it has: the simulation is running to find a emergent solution. Inflation theory proposes that different possible physics laws are realized in the multiverse, while the Quantum Mechanics suggests all possible logical interactions occur in parallel worlds. The universe’s underlying mechanisms seem eerily similar to how we would approach a search for ’emergence’ in our own computer simulations. String theory landscape it’s random initial conditions, and ‘many worlds’ it’s breadth first search.
This leads to a positive outlook – the future is undefined, and needs to be calculated to exist. If we were to simulate the current state of the universe and predict the future, we would not be predetermining it but rather creating it in the same way.
Life could exist for the purpose of creating this simulation and defining existence. It’s possible that humans, with our technological progress leaning towards simulation technology, are a good candidate to create this simulation. Humans might have the unique opportunity to bring this simulation to fruition.
This leads to an optimistic outlook on humanity’s future and a reason to strive for technological progress and scientific discovery. Our pursuit should be understanding the universe in order to answer the question of how to create it – find the answer to ‘The Last Question’.
Humanity might be special and unique, tasked with creating the simulation that defines existence. Or alternatively, like Asimov’s Multivac machine, we could create a the AI more capable of accomplishing this feat, ultimately forming the self-referential strange loop and creating something from nothing.