What is "Nothing"?
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- Опубліковано 9 тра 2024
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This video was inspired by “Levels of Nothing” by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, in the book “The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All” by John Leslie and Robert Lawrence Kuhn. www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Myste...
It's also discussed in "Levels of Nothing” by Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Closer To Truth - What is Nothing? • What is Nothing? | Epi...
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00:00 Intro
01:11 9 Levels of Nothing
08:55 Was the Universe made form Nothing?
11:02 Why is there Something Rather than Nothing?
#physics #philosophy - Наука та технологія
Hi all! I have a free science newsletter that goes out once per week to which you can subscribe here sabinehossenfelder.com/newsletter/
If you have a topic for a video to suggest, the best way is to reply to the newsletter. I *do* read as many comments as I can. But, well, it's kind of hard to keep track.
Nothing better on a Saturday than a new Sabine video!
I like your vids🤩. Plz keep hitting us with the ugly truth about our absurd universe. We want more about the void, the "free will" , the uncertainty principle, our inability to test the big bang theory and of course the impossibility of finding the truth cuz we might be living in a cyclical universe 🤕. Thanks Sabine
I just want nothing!!
Is that too much to ask?!
Much love and appreciation (from Egypt) for all the knowledge you share. Thank you Sabine.
You forgot level 10. Sure, you got a level 9 in the box, but the box, you, me, the rest of the universe even is related to "what's in the box" or not in it. It has that relationship just by everything else existing around it. You have to get rid of all that to have true nothing in the box. But then, who would make the UA-cam video??? By similar reasoning, your last question on screen, "why is there nothing rather than something?" has the similar issue. You can't ask the question if "nothing" was the current state. You could also ask, "Why does blue?" Similar thought processes. Or the deeper Drax philosophy hidden in GOTG, "Why is Gamora?!" lol
Imagine half a million members coming here for nothing.
they came here for something that is called "nothing"
@@v3le something Cannot be called nothing. Unless it is erroneously referred to as nothing =D
@@SolidSiren Everything is something. Nothing is everything , Therefore nothing is something. Logick.
@@SolidSiren But something is always being called nothing.
That's kind of the point of the video.
All words are concepts that represent reality, all concepts are themselves something and the concept known as "nothing" is therefore something.
⛓️😉 Nothing is, nothing does? Not to offend, but, this 'alone' & 'jealous', 'always' & 'forever' business love costs us doesn't make sense to your other half. If not the edge of one thing or another, perhaps you not exist? Why do you think men are usually who ask women out? We need reminding. With the 'men having a higher infidelity rate' meaning 'women take more men off of women than vice versa' (& that it be women women should be afraid of & who'll set women free) & what with the relationship you really think is holy being that between you & what male friend of yours .. marriage only being holy by extension as our agreement to you to keep our mits off your friends ..(your now obviously married friends) I'm not sure why else you as men of our own for god knows what reason exist except for your math, which is obviously shoddy.
It's like you want to grow on us, so our reality become yours like we're male & female angler fish. Like angler fish, we aren't monogamous btw. Never have been, never will. It's that you think we want to be yours no matter whether I can't borrow or ripping the label of our drinks, that we can't tell that every day waking up beside you we feel like we're looking down the barrel of a gun. At nothing.
"Virtual particle pairs are like couples you've never heard of that pop up in your newsfeed, destroy each other and disappear back into nothing, … except with maths" - This one killed me, thanks Sabine!
I thought everything could be explained in terms of intersecting fields, like the Boss-Higgins field?
Are you dead?
Me going into Facebook for the first time in 5 years.
wtf I read this as soon as she started speaking through it
I was waiting for a big yellow Pac-Man to come (from nothing) and eat the moving dots. lol
I understood nothing and I absolutely loved every second of it.
I love this comment thank you so much for writing it
There's 2 layers to this comment 😂
chicken or egg? No answer
@@Tethloach1 I'm a firm believer in the chicken.
@@neino36 'But the chickens are not organised!'
"Like most videos on UA-cam, this video is about nothing." That has to be the most accurate thing I've ever heard
I had to pause the video until I stopped laughing at that so I wouldn't miss anything! Hilarious, 'cause it's true!
These jokes being delivered with her somber, straight-faced demeanor is my kind of humor
I am falling in love with this channel.
Everything (something) is dual to nothing.
Being is dual to non-being becoming creates becoming -- Plato's cat.
Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis (emergence) -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic or Hegel's cat.
Alive is dual to not alive -- the Schrodinger's cat superposition.
Particles are dual to anti-particles, spin up is dual to spin down -- the Dirac equation.
Schrodinger's cat is based upon Hegel's or Fichte's cat and they stole it from Plato.
Duality creates reality.
The big bang is an infinite negative curvature singularity and Gaussian negative curvature is defined with two dual points -- Janus holes/points:-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_curvature
Points are dual to lines -- the principle of duality in geometry -- non null homotopic.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Synthesis or emergence is created by duality = Janus points.
Is that not what is known as "deadpan"?
@@MikinessAnalog She might ride the line of dead pan , but saucy dry is a more accurate description in my view . . . hehe .
@@fractalfelt But is it the line of little white lies . Or better known as " Saving someones Feelings " ?
Sorta like a bonus round when gambling on the outcome of life .
Pulling so much content from nothing is really something. Keep up the great work!
Once upon a time it was called fantasie and imagination. No it's called science.
@@mj7335 Exactly. See The Logical Leap by David Harriman. Science is basically induction from conceptualized perceptions of concretes, not deductions based on the arbitrary.
Doh! Something from nothing. Wish I'd said that.
Thank You, Sabine, for treating varying philosophies and beliefs with respect, as you in fact continue helping all groups learn more, and even become more excited about science. :)
Hi Sabine, Thanks for Nothing!
Loved your video which helps clarify how little most of us actually know about Nothing even though we may use the term frequently (and frequently inaccurately).
I've been working on my own personal philosophy working from 'Nothing' and starting on up from there. So, imagine Nothing is ALL there is, no matter, mass, energy, observers, observations, interactions, just limitless, completely empty of everything Nothing. Nothing is the ONLY 'thing' the only one 'thing' (or is that none thing?) This would be indistinguishable from a uniform limitless 'thing' that is constant universally. Nothing then is nothing, one thing and everything, all at the same time. And if that were the true case then we don't exist and we are all just figments of Nothing's imagination - which it could not have as that destroys the concept of no observation or observations etc. Also if Nothing and One thing are indistinguishable from each other there could then be a minimum of two 'things' and we could in theory go on to have an infinite number of 'One Things' that are unlimited by time or distance and none of them would be able to interact with any of the others.
But what if one thing was the exact opposite of Nothing and for some reason they were inextricably bound together... I wonder what the result might be?
Maybe God is the ultimate Nothing that's a barrier against things getting back to Nothing. Rather than creating, Nothing would simply sustain anything and avoid that being equated with it at all costs. I can conceive of a Nothing that fits this idea, which is where you can ask questions but Nothing could give an answer to the questions
Sabine is the only person I’d tune into to hear about nothing.
Many are forced to hear about it from relatives on every major holiday.
I'd add Michael Stevens to the list. I watched a 40 mins video of his trying to figure out if chairs exist.
@@crowemagnum1337 I think I’ll sit that one out.
@mike I get to listen to it for several hours every day 😃😐😞
Other than Seinfeld. He did a whole series of shows about it!
this is the cutest thought experiment I've heard in a while, you literally just wanted to give your friend an absolute nothing box to make them happy for their birthday. It might break everything in the universe but atleast you gave your friend what they wanted :)
When you break it down like that, it really is :D
Well, they would still get the box though, which is something. But at least now we all know to better not give an "empty" box to someone who wants NOTHING 😂😂😂
no but then its not.... 'nothing', its still a birthday present, what they wanted. Even tho that shouldn't be possible-
Love your channel, your content and the honest delivery spiced with dry humour Sabine. I remember a period in the '80s when physics and eastern philosophy/religion started dating. (I think) Fritjof Capra started it with 'The Tao of Physics'. There were others as well such as Gary Zukav's "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" . Books such as these were generally entertaining/thoughtful without going too von Daniken in how they presented their material. This reminded me how much I enjoyed the intersection of physics and philosophy.
Thanks Sabine. You explain very deep and complex things with clarity and an infectious energy!
It's amazing that Sabine has the ability to make us think very deeply about nothing at all. Now that, is something!
*NO... NO.. NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!*
@@PlatonicPluto Next video - "Paradox".
Something from nothing and nothing is free.
@@blueskies792 Nothing isn't free. It's pretty expensive co create 17th century vacuum, let alone level 9 nothing
@@blueskies792 Dire Staits.
Sabine is getting better and better- hilariously scientific and scientifically hilarious. Don’t you just love her! She’s fabulous. This video on nothing must be one of her best ones.
I feel the opposite. She used to display a little dry humor which I liked. Now she has joined the legion who build the presentations around a comedy routine. I doubt it is her doing. I find it distracting and annoying. Modern audiences are like little children I guess, you need to entertain them to get them to listen.
@@PraiseDog Ha. Disabling the likes in your own crappy videos. Show some integrity, buddy.
@@PraiseDog ... Say what?
@@PraiseDog Science is seriously SERIOUS!
Science is the art of Measuration. If it can't be measured, it's not SCIENTIFIC.
How does one measure humour?
As a teacher, I have often found that light humour can enlighten not just children, but also those of any age without understanding or even interest in a subject much easier than 2,000 pages. LIGHTen up.
@@capcompass9298Some levels of science can only be done by ghosts at the time.
As someone who has occasionally felt compelled to read a bit into ontology, this was one of the most interesting explorations of this subject I've encountered.
There is still something in the box: the 9th level of nothing is in the box. They said they wanted nothing for their birthday but you gave them something that has at least a definition. We can talk about it so clearly it is something :)
Is that how nothing becomes something?😏
P.S. I might also like to add 'something' here, with credit due to the original posting that sprouted this philosophical musing.
Isn't level 9 part of the Eisenberg Uncertainty eternal postulate, that the very act of communicating the idea of nothing makes that nothing a something, notwithstanding the use of semantics?
I mean what you are describing would fit into the platonic ideal of 'nothing' and thus be removed at lv8. The fact that we still talk about the idea of it being nothing despite the deliberate stipulation that such ideas be removed is imo just a limitation of either human thoughts in general or english in particular, or maybe it's just my personal lack of imagination.
Either way, you shouldn't be able to talk about the emptiness of a lv8 box, and possibly shouldn't be able to even entertain the idea of a lv9 box containing anything. This all sounds very weird, but then again lv3 empty boxes are probably already physically impossible.
well, to be pedantic, you're getting a BOX, and that's "something".
No, that got removed in step 8. Note that step 8 requires the annihilation of all reality. Happy Birthday!
Only one being knows what true nothing is.
I spent half of the video laughing. Both at the non-chalant delivery of humor, and the absolutely absurd directions I would never have imagined going myself. I mean that as compliment - she kept subverting my expectations all I could do was enjoy the ride. Brilliant combination of education and entertainment.
I enjoyed the eloquence of your and other comments almost as much as the video.
The paradox that keeps me up at night isn't the notion of nothing, but rather how Sabine can be so ordinary in her delivery, and yet produce such engaging content at the same time.
(I promise this is a compliment, haha - great video!)
I was thinking about that and it would super neat to see out takes of her breaking character.
dead pan humor is a real talent 🤣
it's a video about nothing
It's that low-key sense of humor that does it for me.
This is possibly one of the funniest science videos I have watched (and not a smile).
Next video "The Infinities of Infinity".
If you turn Infinity into a fraction (one over infinity) there is/are infinity fractions between each whole number. How say you?
I've been binging your channel since I've discovered it a few days ago. I love how you give every idea a fair chance! I also have a subject request: would you be interested in covering the idea of "Elektrosmog"? Somebody I know claims to be very sensitive to it, and I am sceptical about the whole concept (not her symptoms, but the way she attributes them to electromagnetic pollution or whatever). But since I've watched your video on 5G, I think that maybe I shouldn't dismiss her idea off-hand.
Recently found this channel and I am in LOVE!
4:15 -- the best part of Sabine's humor is that it is as on point as it is unexpected
I saw nothing
Well that's something..
I want to start telling ppl that it's 'en pointe' not 'on point'. One down, 7 billion to go.
@Sinna It's still 'en pointe'. (Two down, 7 billion to go).
She’s a savage 😭💀
Steve Pinker's favorite joke goes as follows. The student asks the teacher "Why is there something rather than nothing?" The teacher responds, "Ah, even if there wasn't you still wouldn't be satisfied."
I just found your channel today and holy moly you have good videos!
Your English is also easy to listen to since mine is bad.
SO MANY IDEAS i love this channel, videos never disappoint
12:56 All I can think of is the anthropic principle: if there were nothing, we wouldn't be here to ask "Why is there something?"
Everything (something) is dual to nothing.
Being is dual to non-being becoming creates becoming -- Plato's cat.
Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis (emergence) -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic or Hegel's cat.
Alive is dual to not alive -- the Schrodinger's cat superposition.
Particles are dual to anti-particles, spin up is dual to spin down -- the Dirac equation.
Schrodinger's cat is based upon Hegel's or Fichte's cat and they stole it from Plato.
Duality creates reality.
The big bang is an infinite negative curvature singularity and Gaussian negative curvature is defined with two dual points -- Janus holes/points:-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_curvature
Points are dual to lines -- the principle of duality in geometry -- non null homotopic.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Synthesis or emergence is created by duality = Janus points.
There can only always already have been something, just because nothing cannot ever be. The only being that truly comes from nothing, is that being which is never what it is: namely yourself as pure subject.
@@duprie37 nah dog, at some point for some amount of time there was literally nothing in all directions forever.
@@CaptainMisery86 If there still was "time", then it wasnt truly nothing. If there was literally nothing, nothing could come to exist.
Since there is something, we are here to ask "Why isn't there nothing". The anthropic principle doesn't answer the question why, or how, just that it is so that things exist including ourselves.
The box needs a big warning: Always think OUTSIDE the box. To think inside the box would ruin it.
But the box has no “inside”
Brilliant
@@AdrianBoyko If that's true, how can it be a box? Example: If you have a steel cube that you say is a box that doesn't have an "inside", then the material the box is made out of becomes the thing that is inside the box.
@spaz what box?
@@SG2048-meta .
you are a great teacher, you make simplify a very complex idea.
This video is a goldmine. Thanks Sabine!
Even a level 9 box of nothing would soon have a cat jumping into it. Unless it was dead.
At that level of nothing, the cat wouldn't even know there was a nothing to jump into, dead or alive.
Ha ha 😂 you must be a physicist (scholar from Schrödinger) - good comment 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
......isn't that resolved at five or six???
Mayhaps that box would have infinite cats in it, some of them dead.
@@Eliphas_Leary, but, if it contains something, even possibilities of the set containing 🐈, both dead 💀, dead/alive, and alive, it loses levels of nothing?
Like many others, I got to know Sabine with her book “Lost in Math”. Since then, she is a value in my life.
This discussion about 9 levels of nothing reminds me of the opening sentence of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s masterpiece Tractatus: “The world is everything that is the case”. I am a mortal bookworm with a computer science degree, not a philosopher. Here is my subjective interpretation of the sentence and connection to the discussion.
By “the world”, Wittgenstein actually refers to the whole universe. I understand this sentence somewhat as: “Anything that we can say is limited to be about this universe”, in a more open form: “The expressive power of human language is specific and limited to express facts about this universe.”
I think anything beyond Level 5 is beyond the expressive power of human language, whose origin is our universe full of things, and designed to talk about things. It does not mean that we cannot construct sentences about these concepts, but it means that the meaning conveyed by these sentences will have to be distorted just as an irregular piece of glass distorts the image behind.
Even Level 5 is problematic. Look at the sentence “Sometimes virtual particles can become real” at 5:17. As you would think deeper and deeper on the definitions of “real”, “virtual”, “become”, “can” and “sometimes”, you may notice the distortion introduced by the lens of language.
Almost certainly, we cannot construct a sentence about a place where “there are no laws of nature”, and expect it to be free of problems.
I personally think a lot of language distortion is similarly the main cause of why we see the sub-atomic quantum world “weird”. In describing the double slit experiment, for instance, we often talk about the “poor” electron trying to “decide” which slit to pass through, and then with not enough time to decide, it goes through both at the same time. Clearly, the language and its constituent metaphors, evolved to express facts about universe at our human scale is introducing distortion.
I am grateful to you Sabine for the thought provoking episode, you have a visible impact.
Distortion introduced by the lens of langıage... 🤔🤔🤔
👍
I also immediately thought of Wittgenstein when we started talking about the lack of mind to conceptualise the box
If you want to go further, modern language is simply a distortion of old language, with ancient words getting distorted into similar metaphors, which become dead and then simply describe abstract concepts or new objects. So when you speak about distortion introduced by the lense of language, you have to question way more than one would usually like to question and it is certainly not limited to concepts outside this universe. I'd also argue Wittgenstein is probably not referring to language distortion. We already have to distort our language quite a lot to explain and grasp things very much "being the case". And after a while we do not recognize a former distortion as a distortion anymore.
You raised some thought provoking ideas thank you! I see it in a similar way it I don’t think language is the limiting factor but instead intelligence. Much like animals could never understand the universe in the way humans can we are incapable of understanding concepts that are beyond our universe. Even if we found a way to increase our intelligence or ascend to a higher level of understanding or awareness, intelligence itself is still a concept from within our universe
“The world” is all of reality, not just our universe. As far as I know at least, I’ve heard it used in a couple philosophical arguments and defined as such.
I have watched a few of Sabine's videos and they all make me laugh, I like her sense of humour; at 8:34 this one cracked me up. I also agree that something cannot come from nothing and how can we trust scientists who come up with incomprehensible formulas. Thank you, Sabine, for presenting information in an understandable way.
I can see that clip coming up on Apologist channels - "Even a scientist says you can't trust other scientists!"
@@Cheepchipsable Of course you can't trust scientists, unless they're also experts in every other field like epistemology, modal logic, philosophy etc etc.
A "scientist" who doesn't understand the difference between Inductive methods of science, where large, randomized, controlled samples with experimentation that can be repeated at will; and the other things they ramble on about, pertaining to abductive reasoning, that can never be repeated, like infinite parallel universes, multiverse, conditions prior to expansion, the definition of "nothing", and so much more, they literally have no idea what they are saying (a vast majority of the time), needs to say a lot less on such subjects.
They're trying to deduce such explanations into existence, just as apologists do for God, except that apologists rely on things like good metaphysics, modal and propositional logic, whereas a vast majority of "scientists" don't even know what they are (nor do they need to, if they'd stick to their jobs, instead of making silly annunciations pertaining to things like philosophy and religion).
Thank you for posting this. I think a deep dive is needed into “nothing”.
I love how she puts down physicists and cosmologists that try to get away with creating a universe out of nothing, but not really NOTHING.
Everything (something) is dual to nothing.
Being is dual to non-being becoming creates becoming -- Plato's cat.
Thesis is dual to anti-thesis creates the converging thesis or synthesis (emergence) -- the time independent Hegelian dialectic or Hegel's cat.
Alive is dual to not alive -- the Schrodinger's cat superposition.
Particles are dual to anti-particles, spin up is dual to spin down -- the Dirac equation.
Schrodinger's cat is based upon Hegel's or Fichte's cat and they stole it from Plato.
Duality creates reality.
The big bang is an infinite negative curvature singularity and Gaussian negative curvature is defined with two dual points -- Janus holes/points:-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_curvature
Points are dual to lines -- the principle of duality in geometry -- non null homotopic.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Synthesis or emergence is created by duality = Janus points.
@@hyperduality2838 The dualism is what we need to think beyond. We have hit a wall of understanding
@@jayrathjen1127 Concepts are dual to percepts -- the mind duality of Immanuel Kant.
Relax dude I am hitting you with the 4th law of thermodynamics!
"Entropy is a measure of randomness" -- Roger Penrose.
Syntropy is a measure of order.
Randomness (entropy, uncertainty) is dual to order (syntropy, certainty).
Certainty is dual to uncertainty -- the Heisenberg certainty/uncertainty principle.
From a converging, convex (lens) or syntropic perspective everything looks divergent, concave or entropic -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
All observers have a syntropic perspective according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
My syntropy is your entropy and your syntropy is my entropy -- duality!
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics!
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non-teleological physics (entropy).
Mind (the internal soul, syntropy) is dual to matter (the external soul, entropy) -- Descartes or Plato's divided line.
There are patterns of duality hardwired into physics, mathematics & philosophy.
Schrodinger's cat is based upon Hegelian philosophy or metaphysics but the books do not tell you that.
Bosons (symmetric wave functions, waves) are dual to Fermions (anti-symmetric wave functions, particles) -- wave/particle or quantum duality.
Bosons are dual to Fermions -- atomic duality.
You and your mind are built form atoms hence duality.
Energy is duality, duality is energy.
Energy is dual to mass -- Einstein.
Dark matter is dual to dark energy.
That is the good news.
Good news is dual to bad news.
The bad news is that main stream physics is currently dominated by materialists or teleophobia.
Teleophilia is dual to teleophobia.
Signals (patterns, order, predictability, syntropy) are dual to noise (randomness, unpredictability, entropy).
"The brain is a prediction machine" -- Karl Friston, neuroscientist.
Making predictions to track, targets, goals and objectives is a syntropic process -- teleological.
There is a dual process to that of increasing entropy namely syntropy.
Syntropic processes are dual to entropic processes.
@@hyperduality2838 And orange isn't dual to red, so please stuff it. Your useless duality is useless, which is dual to useful in all it's degrees of usefulness, which you lack.
@@stylis666 Colours are actually dual -- electro-magnetic energy.
Duality leads to the 4th law of thermodynamics! Your comment is asinine.
The 10th level of nothing is Sergeant Schultz, "I know nothing, NOTHING."
Or Manuel ua-cam.com/video/nX7CeTXoxyU/v-deo.html
11th...no box
12th: ...
... No comment!
I wonder if Germans consider Hogan's Hero's as offensive?
@@MrWildbill My dad absolutely thought Hogan's Heros was offensive. He was born in Germany in 1935, and his father - my Opa - was sent to die in the Eastern Front for the crime of meeting with others in a church basement. He thought a TV sit-com about living under Nazi rule was beyond belief, and it was forbidden in our house. Nazis were never anything to be taken lightly.
There is another level of Nothing missing from the list. Level 0 if you like. It's the absence of something expected to be there. For example a series of opaque jars that normally contain cookies. When asked what is in jar 1, you may answer Ten chocolate chip, Jar 2 contains five biscotti, Jar 3 may contains the crumbs from custard cremes but that can be described as 'Nothing'. In the present box in the video, if it contained bubble wrap and a piece of packing tape it would still be classed as empty or containing nothing because when compared to expectations, it contains nothing.
I remember taking acid and on the come up remembering a conversation about the wetness of water with my brother in law. This led me to a completely different understanding about what nothing might be or not be.
This is like a Seinfeld episode, it’s a story about nothing. We all know how well that went!
That was just a fancy marketing phrase, in order to make it seem extra funny or "special". It wasn't unique though because Seinfeld was just a situational comedy, and all sit comedies were/are about nothing. Lavern & Shirley, two broke girls, three's company, etc, etc, they all were about nothing, no main plots here.
Ended up in jail for, uh.. doing nothing?
Just a friendly reminder that Seinfeld groomed a kid and everyone was fine with it.
Pretty well I'd say
@Evi1 M4chine and I believe it's impossible to read especially your second part without immediately thinking, "but that's Trump politics, basically .. isn't it?"
"I really think people are way too respectful of all the stuff physicist make up and get away with, just because their maths is incomprehenseable" Hut ab für dieses ehrliche Geständnis einer Wissenschaftlerin
It really feels like physicists just become philosophers at that point, with all methodological problems of philosophy attached. But instead of using language, they are using math, which may make their findings even less useful ironically.
Incomprehensible
@JoniWan77 as an aspiring philosopher I would agree with you, but I would caveat that the ‘methodological problems’ in philosophy are intractable.
Recommend looking into ‘the criterion problem’.
Basically it notices that it is by an implicit philosophy of epistemology that we decide any methodology to be ‘good’.
What you evaluate as a ‘problem’ in a methodology will be based on a particular set of axioms, but accounting for these axioms is it’s own identical evaluation problem, and there is simply no obvious way to close that hole in a worldview.
@@thomaskilroy3199 Problem may have been the wrong word. I am myself a student of literature. I simply believe it is important to be aware of one's methodology and how it impacts your findings. The methods of a humanities scholar for example lead to findings, which are very different in nature than those of a scientist. Especially scientists and to a degree economics scholars seem to not be aware of the differences most of the time, which makes their own dealings with similar methodology seem a tad naive and arrogant at the same time in my experience.
@JoniWan77 yes I agree, though it is not always arrogance, but different fields do often forget how to make each other’s methodologies talk to each other.
This is really important thank you very much!
Hello Sabine. This is by far one my favorite episodes. Thank you. I've had an idea rattling around my brain for a couple of decades now, that this episode seems to validate in some fashion. My thought experiment suggests that when you have nothing, you are left with nothing but possibility. I think you said as much also. Then I wondered if in the absence of time, presumably the condition prior to the big bang, if an "infinite amount of time" is actually indistinguishable from "instantaneousness." If we could agree on that, then given just the possibility of a particle popping into existence out of nothing would be a 100 percent surety since all other possibilities (like nothing happening at all for instance) will have been exhausted -- throughout an infinite eternity of nothing happening having played itself out. In my mind, the instant "nothingness" is achieved somehow, "somethingness" must instantaneously show up to fill the void. I'd love to hear some future thoughts that explore this further. ps. Love your videos. Alles gute, Uwe
Hello Uwe, Thank you for sharing your thought experiment and describing it so succinctly as wondering “if an infinite amount of time is indistinguishable from instantaneous.” I’ve likewise wondered about this for many years and keep feeling like it leads to interesting possibilities. Perhaps we could mull it over if there is a way to connect. All the best, William
NOTHING and EVERYTHING exist simultaneously, just as E = M.
We can ask if the number 0 is a true nothing or is it the nothing that comprises everything (infinity) and thereby remains in equilibrium. 0 manifesting as all possibilities, including their opposites (matter, anti-matter)
In such a scenario, the Many Worlds Interpretation seems more plausible, as the probability becomes 1/infinity, which mathematically is not meaningful, but appears to illustrate that every moment can branch out in innumerable ways, and the sum of all such moments/worlds lead to equilibrium.
Time is also an illusion in this framework from the vantage point of the 0, because no change is happening, and everything happens simultaneously. Like if a 0 splits itself into a -1 and a +1, there is no change and therefore no passage of time. The various moments/facets of existence of anything/particle/life-form etc. are akin to different numbers that are already inside the zero and balanced by their opposite counterparts.
Amazingly in-depth analysis of Seinfeld
What's the deal with all this nothing? Lol
I love this video. I tried to imagine nothing once but I couldn't do it. Same with infinity.
Try meditating, it's the easiest way to imagine nothing :p And for infinity you can just start small and go from there. Instead of making infinity big, you keep dividing an arbitrary imagined number. Physically that will have a barrier, but in maths you can just have infinite numbers between 1 and 2 and between every two numbers you put there you can put another infinity of numbers that keep getting smaller and smaller and then you have an infinity within an infinity.
Or here's a way to imagine both at the same time, an infinity and absolute nothing:
Imagine what people do. You know, stuff like singing, walking, falling on their asses, baking a cake, saying hi or giving a compliment.
Now compare that to what all gods have ever done: nothing.
Now compare infinite gods doing what they do to you giving one person a smile to make them feel better: nothing from infinite gods and you did infinitely more than all gods combined ever did in the history of existence. See how easy that was?
@@stylis666 Your comment really was a load of shower thoughts until the last two paragraphs. Those were just facts.
I feel like nothing and infinity are closely related. Nothing is an infinite lack of something.
It is not because of a limitation of your brain that you couldn't imagine those things. It is because you tried to imagine something which cannot exist.
@@KhallDrake nice one
This is beautiful 😯. You have yourself another subscriber. GR8 content.
Outstanding video as always.
The answer I've liked best posits that the absolute potential must have expressions as it can't be absolute otherwise. This is of course more along the lines of philosophy rather than physics, considers the perspective of consciousness without an object, and reverses the concept of nothing to it's equivalent everything, but I still like it.
I also like the tautology of the weak anthropic principle, and like to hope for something along the lines of the strong anthropic principle, but that's just my temperament talking.
Video: "Nothing"
90k people: "Hmm, interesting."
Well that nothing escalated quickly.😁
Seinfeld: I already did that
@@Cyberplayer5 My guess is that is how the universe arose. Keep in mind it's a guess, not a belief.
1:54 "You wanted nothing for your birthday, and certainly, you'll be disappointed if you get air instead." - I'm dead lmao.
This is your best work! Very original
Seen this way it it so very complicated to give "nothing"! It is a great explanation.
In general "nothing" might be described as the absence of something ...
Promises by politicians surely counts as nothing - on so many levels.
That’s a whole new dimension of nothing.
Level 69 nothing is Level 9 nothing + politician promises
Finally a video about me.
I love your time spent on the philosophical aspect of a lot of your topics. Theoretical science without philosophy is like cooking without the intent of eating.
that's a beautiful analogy N.
Man, the dry humor here is fantastic. That and the sciencey bit together are just the knees of the bees. 🥰
My housemate once answered, when I asked him to imagine nothing, that nothing is chaos. Pure goob that cant be seen cant be felt has no form no shape no nothing. And Ive always liked that explanation. its where creation came from everything is nothing and nothing is everything
Slavov Zizek has this great joke about a man visiting a cafe:
The man gives his order to the waitress: He wants coffee without creme. After a while the waitress comes back and explains: “I’m sorry sir, but it seems we are out of creme. Is coffee without milk okey?”.
5:48 - That joke was totally worth it.
Except that she, like most people, got the quote wrong. It should be: "The love of money is the root of all evil."
5:50 lmao🤣
AMAZING!! Thank you.
I remember reading Jean Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness and he states that nothing cannot be, by definition. He describes some of the ideas you put forth.
Correct. If attention is drawn to nothing, it automatically comes into existence and becomes something.
My answer to that is, that given that there is anything, then nothingness is absurd. But, if there were nothing, then anything would be absurd. My belief is that the fact that anything exists is absurd, so there's no point explaining why it does.
Interesting and funny. That was worth subscribing. Thanks for the videos
What my grandmother used to say:
"There are many more things that don't exist in the universe than things that exist."
Interesting....., Any idea what method Grandma used to conduct a complete inventory of the cosmological warehouse that we call The Universe...?
@@Aryankingz Any idea what method Grandma used to conduct a complete inventory of the cosmological warehouse that we call Nothing?
@@Aryankingz I can't ask her anymore because she died long ago and added another non-existence to nothingness.
There you go, an infinity and a nothing explained in one sentence by one wise woman.
I'm curious though, given that she is a grandmother, probably born and raised on this planet, did she include gods in the things that people make up or did she think one or more does exist? People often seem to confuse things that are made up with things that don't make sense to them personally, letting them think that everything that makes sense to them is real even thought there is no indication or even an indication of a demonstrable possibility of that in external reality.
Great sense of humor. Sounds like perfectly done for me.
Much ado about nothing,, loved it. I have nothing to add,, ,, and I wouldn't know what level to add it to if I did, thank you Sabine.
Love seeing Lost in Math on my shelf, and your videos in my feed.
Your works are valuable, and as a physics student, I find your content inspiring! Keep up the amazing work.
On the question of why there's something rather than nothing, I quite like the anthropic principle. If there's nothing, we wouldn't exist to even know that there's nothing.
Yes, but what's wrong with that?
If the question is why there IS something, then the anthropic principle is no answer.
There still could be something even if we did not exist. There was something before we (as humans) or as individuals existed
@@SabineHossenfelder I don't see anything inherently wrong with non-existence, and I think partial nothings could exist. It just seems like 'total nothingness' evidently doesn't exist, since 'something' already exists. (It does feel odd to use the word 'already' when the discussing things which might be outside of time, but I think the point still stands.)
@@bozo5632
It's not the answer to the question, rather it demonstrates the absurdity of the question. Kind of like the Puddle Analogy.
God by the way isn't the answer, unless god is _nothing._
Sabine when I was little I had a high fever one night and tried to imagine nothing. I still ptsd about that moment. Don’t try alone 😅.
(11:20) *SH: **_The most popular answer at the moment seems to be that nothing is absurd."_* ... That translates to _"everything is not absurd"_ because any attributes or properties assigned to "nothing" becomes paradoxical (including the word "absurd"). *Nonexistence* is inconceivable without the presence of *Existence,* and vice versa. That's why the juxtaposition of *Existence and Nonexistence* is as far back one can regress while still adhering to logic.
... And as we already know, anything that is not logical is _illogical._
@@richard_d_bird *"well everything is in fact absurd, so this checks out"*
... Does your all-inclusive list of absurdity include "nothing?"
@@richard_d_bird *"if nothing turns up i'll let you know."*
... It is not possible for "nothing" to turn up because that would require "nothing" to have properties that are able to show up.
*"i don't feel like i've seen nothing yet."*
... In order to see "nothing", this same "nothing" would necessarily have to possess properties that allow for observation. No such properties are attached to "Nonexistence."
As they say, "You'll Own Nothing and Be Happy" - so happiness is Level 10! Gotta remove that too
Gives new meaning to the phrase, “Nothing really matters.”
u are a great presenter. subscribed.
She has the greatest sly jokes.
@Bianca Arlette By following trades do you mean copying her trades,as its done in etoro? Are you giving her your money or the money stays on your account? I have heard about copying trades but have not looked into it but I have an idea of what it is.
@Bianca Arlette I'm glad you advised to look her name online to see her portfolio,this is very important, making your own research is very essential. Thank you so much.
This is a great info, I remember my friends calling me crazy when i started investing in digital assets, now i shut them up with the current growth.
@Zilla Haha, yeah, it's amazing how these scammers are using bots and their fake conversations on Sabine's video, as if they want to prove A.I. has passed the Turing test...but of course they fail BIGLY
I LOVE this video Sabine. Brilliance, logic, humor, everything that makes for an excellent teaching video and nothing we don't need. 😉
I don't know how to explain it, but the understanding that true nothingness is so difficult to create--or... conceptualize?--is somehow very comforting for me.
That was pure charming. Loved it.
That was brilliant. My head exploded half way though, but it was nothing.
I'd suggest two extra levels of not nothingness. The social levels...
Level 10 when asking your partner "what's the matter?"
Level 11 When asking your partner "what are you thinking about?"
And the Hitchhikers Guide to not nothingness....
12 What's the meaning of life? (Clue: it's a universal constant)
You need to downgrade quite a few levels of nothing to acheive those nothings which are somethings they're nothings... Which are.. Somethings... Which... Are.... Nothings... Which then can't be nothings!? Goddamnit so nothing means nothing!
@@marko.rankovic If not something is nothing then is not nothing yesthing? Maybe we're asking the wrong thing and we should be asking if there is not yesthing.
But then what about antiyesthing and antinothing? Is that even a thing?
This is one of the funniest episodes. Already at level 2 I felt this 'nothing' is gonna cost me a lot.
🎼🎵🎶I'm gettin' nothin' for Christmas... from Sabine... cuz I've been nothin' but bad...🎵🎶 😂😂😂
You knocked it out of the park Sabine!! 🤣🤣😂🤣
"Even the best theory can't explain its own existence" Perfect!
Exactly, the 2k page proof at 12:32 can't even apply to nothings 8 & 9 since there would be no truth statements or reasoning to work with.
I heard someone say once "when has someone ever observed a nothing to know it's possible or how it works?". I'm now not convinced nothing was ever a thing, but I did use to buy into the concept.
Fantastic video.
It only makes sense to me that the universe is level 9, empty of all but possibility. Where would anything else come from but possibility? And possibility or potential would always exist.
Possibility interacts with itself to the point where, in pockets, it becomes conscious and aware of it.
As a long time Zen practitioner, I am familiar with this as The Great Void.
Thank you for a great video. I have nothing to add.
This reminds me of an argument I had with one of my psychology professors. He wanted us to each answer the question as to whether the displayed cup was half full or half empty. We were allowed only those two answers.
I was one of the last to answer and I replied that the cup was always completely full. He didn't like that answer.
Just because the answer isn't what we want, or what we are expecting doesn't mean it is wrong.
Given that an atom is mostly empty space, I'd argue the cup is mostly empty.
@@0ptikGhost hahaha good one...so the dilemma still holds. And the pupil still need to face it philosophically.
@@0ptikGhost You're getting far beyond the capability of the average psychology or sociology professor, but that is a sailient point.
"Compared to what" is ever the point of reference, but not the only point of reference.
People think that you'd have to have positive worldview to think that the cup is half full. I think if you have a positive mind you'd be more like: "Full or empty, you have cup, you lucky bastard!".
@@treeofgrowth I think calling space and time "things" is delusive. It would be necessary first to define what a thing is. Because at first glance space and time are not things among the things, they are dispositional aspects of reality. Not to talk about consciousness (not mind).
The answer to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" that I like best is that we don't know if a state of "nothing" is even possible. It may be possible, but we have no evidence that such a state ever "existed" at any time in the past.
I don't think it could have. Just by the fact that there is something now it means that there was never a nothing because there was a future of something implying that that nothing was still something.
If 'nothing' is unmeasurable (and does not interact with anything we can measure) then finding evidence for it might be impossible.
@@alistairgrey5089 Having a "future" implies that time has always existed.
@@c_b5060 that's basically what I said. The existence of existence implies that true nothing never existed.
At least you made me laugh Sabine! I remember a line from Ionesco's Macbett which went roughly "its not nothing, its something".
The nothing you discuss is not nothing itself, it is a thought held by something which holds concepts e.g. mind, consciousness, a biological brain. The concept is not the thing itself, it is a model of a thing, defined by conceiving of the absence of the somethings by which the mind accounts for sensation.
So the nine levels of nothing reflect nine levels in the way we explain something and thus show us something about the way we think.
Thus before conception and after death?
Over the years, in puzzling about why there is something instead of nothing, I found that by using the term “nothingness” in place of “nothing” that I was better able to clarify my thinking, even though it’s impossible for my mind to actually grasp what genuine nothingness would be like. The list of levels of nothingness I have used is slightly longer than the one in your video and included “No Potentialities”.
The question I am always left with is: “How can something - any thing - arise from absolute nothingness?”
Eventually, I decided that because physics indicates that no thing can arise from absolute nothingness, the fact that our universe exists now must mean that some thing must have preceded the beginning of our universe…but that led to the “turtles all the way down” conundrum: What did the thing that preceded our universe arise from, and so on and so on?
And that infinite regression leads to the question: “How can something (that infinite regression of turtles) exist that never began to exist?”
That also leads to the question why must nothing exist?
Herein madness awaits.
I see a logic error in your question "how can something arise from nothingness", because that implies physics (i.e. the law that every action must have a cause). But the existence of physics is not nothingness. From real nothingness no reason is necessary to get physical laws or time or the big bang coming into existence.
Apart from enjoying a very interesting topic, I'm impressed that you've managed to keep straight face throughout the whole video, excellent delivery! Were there many takes? :-)
A good enough answer for me to the "why is there something rather than nothing" question, is that there's only 1 way for there to be nothing but that are countless ways for there to be something.
Interesting argument!
@Arbane's Sword of Agility It doesn't. But the question was why, not _how_ ;-)
I like that answer. And one juxtaposed with infinity is indistinguishable from zero.
Interesting but... How do we really know there's only one way for there to be nothing. There could be zero ways. There could also be one way. That's already two possible ways. 😂
@@biermeester Existence Exists, and to exist is to have identity. There is no such *thing* as a *nothing*. That which exists exists as something, that which has no identity does not exist and cannot take up any space. You can never have a kind of nothing. It's impossible. So your original answer is close, but not extreme enough, there are endless ways for things to be, and never a way for a nothing to be a thing.
Thanks for the box
This was soooo funny :) Love it!!!
I started thinking about nothing over 60 years ago, I'm happy to know it is something. Thank you Sabine for taking the time to go somewhere out of the box with your your take on this invisible, place holding subject...
Love this video, the concept of nothing haunted me when I was younger, very nice to have these different levels explained like this, and your sense of humor really made it fun too :) Thank you for all you do!
Nothing= not anything or non-existence. There you go a definition of nothing that is absolute. Someone once told me nothing is what sleeping rocks dream of, if you want to be poetic about it.
@jimmontg even "non existence" and "not anything" are something, because they are ideas
I understand you, the concept still haunts me to this day, the same as the meaning of eternity.
Loved your 3 answer recap. You're hired.
Sabine, you are most definitely a philosopher. Don’t take that the wrong way! Highest compliment.
You’re a comedian as well. Also a compliment.
Yes, she is all of that. What she is not is a good physicist. ;-)
@@schmetterling4477 In what respect? Curious.
@@cheeseheadfiddle Read her papers. You will have a good laugh. :-)
I love your videos and this one was very entertaining.
I watched it some days ago and now it got me thinking about Nothing.
For me, Nothing is just a concept - with different levels as you explained -. There is nothing like nothing outside our thoughts and concepts, so you can't give someone nothing by giving him something.
If he wants nothing for his birthday, you just don't give him anything. If you do give him the box, there is still the box.
Thanks so much! Super interesting! I'm saving this video to watch again later.
Wonderful video! My own theory is that nothing and everything exist simultaneously in a universe/void that in effect toggles constantly on an infinitismal scale. There is nothing, there is something, all at the same time.
It's quite simple. When we think of the whole of infinite density and extension, filling space-time completely, we realize that fullness devoid of voids is as absurd as nothingness. So, what we have is a space-time filled with varying levels of densities and energy. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
I’ve been a big fan of closer to truth for years. I’m glad to see She’s interested in his thoughts, ideas, and questions as well. She’s so awesome
She was at CTT recently.
@@jareknowak8712 sweet I’ll Mosdef check that out soon. Thx! For t he headz up
Very enlightening. Thank you for "nothing". 😁
I am a regular viewer of your channel, and it's getting better and better (just like expanding universe). Thank you.
1) Is calculus the way we deal with getting as close to zero (nothing) as possible? 2) If you take away time (which is change) do not you also remove any potentials? 2) a Haiku : if there's nothing - it separates everything - if not, nothing does 3) is there the inverse of nothing (infinity)? 4) Why can we use zero in equations but not infinity (is one a real number and the other not)?
I never understood anything but now I finally understand nothing, thank you!
I love this lady. Esp her sly little jokes given straight faced.
Exactly
I find myself softly chuckling ever so often when I listen. Makes my day better.