From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jun 16 2002 - 23:06:11 MDT
Emlyn O'regan wrote:
> I understand the fundamental idea that nothing *cannot* exist, by
> definition; there must always be something. I think the more useful question
> is always "Why does this particular something exist, rather than some other
> something?"
This sounds to me like the ontological proof for the existence of God. Why
must there always be something? If you know this, do you know what kind of
something there must necessarily be? Nonexistence of any matter, space,
information, computation or *anything* seems like the default state to me.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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