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This one is about answering a fundamental question. Why something rather than nothing? Or equivalently, why does anything exist at all? This is clearly a hard question. It’s not even clear if it is a meaningful question. Certainly not the kind of questions we answer everyday, nor a scientific question.

Time is valuable and everyday you choose how to invest it. When investing money we are not confident about the return, since the market is too complex. Likewise, in life we are not confident about what to do, since we cannot see the bigger picture. Too complex. So when investing we create a portfolio, we diversify. We try to maximize what we can get for a given level of risk.

All this to say that spending time on this question is a really bad idea. Too risky. Sure, the payoff is big (if you care about it), but it’s not even guaranteed to be authentic. It’s like looking for a mythical treasure that is likely to be just that: a myth.

So, should I spend time on it? Probably not. Yet I did.

When I spent time on it and stared at the answer I got I thought: shall I share it? Probably not. Yet I am doing it.

The main driver is: If I hadn’t written it, I’d want to read it. So here we are.

This is not about discussing related ideas or circling around the hard question. This is a concrete shot at it.

Too much writing already, to state something simple: nothing exists.

The paper explains how to make sense of it, how to unveil the illusion. Trying to make sense of it in the language we are capable of. The core idea is that our perceived reality emerges as an illusory self-referential interpretation of Nothing. But fundamentally it is all a dance around the core 2-word statement. A more fitting paper would probably have been:

Title: nothing exists

Abstract: nothing exists

Conclusions: nothing exists

If you care about this question, I hope this piece, or any equivalent of it, will reach you in some way. Have a good read! If you have references and related materials, comments or critiques feel free to reach out!

Paper: https://philpapers.org/rec/PIEOON

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