Why is there something rather than nothing?
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185Ṁ1024000
27%
If there was nothing, we couldn't ask this question
13%
Nothingness as a state has zero entropy and so is vulnerable to processes that increase entropy, eventually creating something.
12%
Our universe is a complex mathematical construct that innately “exists” e.g. even though nothing in our physical world is a perfect circle, we seem to think that that circle somehow “exists”.
31%
It is a brute fact, and necessarily so.
17%
This question is managed and resolved by Manifold.
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I don't know how this market resolves, but I'm pretty much 100% confident that this is the correct answer, at least assuming that "something" means "something contingent".
@JosephNoonan I envy your certainty. To me 'brute fact' emanates self-confidence and positivity. My distant science education offered 'vacuum fluctuation' ('ex nihilo'?), which I think is full of self-doubt and leads to the existential torment and dread that could lead someone to ask the question in the first place. I would also be happy to be convinced that the question or asking it makes no sense.