Something Not Nothing

By Gens Kohl

‘Snap back to reality’ is a set of 17 big questions and answers centering on the human experience of fundamental existence, reality, physics, emergence, knowledge and consciousness. It explores the nature of emergence, the limits of knowledge and the future of humans and offers definitive answers from leading edge basic science to how the world really works, what it is ultimately made of, what time is and whether mathematics is real.

What is reality, why is there something rather than nothing and what are we doing here? These used to be considered philosophical or metaphysical questions, but huge inroads have been made in finding scientific answers in the last decades. This book is about fundamental answers, about getting close to the end of a regression of ‘whys’ to a point where no further explanations are required.

The author’s unique approach cuts directly to the chase in answering these big questions. There is no history of physics or build-up of arguments or personalities, just answers where we have them or the best formulated questions where we don’t. The perspective is one more of analytical philosophy than popular science but always with clear cut positions on the issues. Rarely has a book come along that draws only on leading edge big science to describe what the world is really like and how we experience it. The conclusions drawn are always thought provoking and in some cases controversial.

The core audience for this book is anyone who wants their core beliefs about reality and what we are doing here developed or even fundamentally revised. For the time poor, short attention span audience, who want quick answers, this book will certainly change the view of everyone who reads it. Every ten minutes spent reading will yield powerful new insights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gens Kohl
• Release date: Aug 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301747481

Gens Kohl

Gens Kohl is a leading thinker and perpetual student on the topic of existence. A broad ranging career in policy making, technology and business led him to reflect on the big questions of human flourishing, consciousness and the fundamental physics of reality. An extraordinary life spent developing software in Washington, mining gold in Africa, lobbying politicians in Berlin, dealing art in Kyoto, financing risk in London, testing altitude in Nepal and building brands in Brazil served to provide Gens with a big picture perspective on how people think, how society reaches forward and in wondering ‘how come all this anyway?’

Book preview

No matter what you believe about existence, this book will shred and reassemble those beliefs

How is there something and not nothing? The basic question of philosophy and science through the ages may be nearing an ultimate answer in new fundamental physics. Humanity has in its sights for the first time an outline of where all of reality really came from.

Gens Kohl explores the leading edge of big physical and mathematical concepts, peeking under the covers of the very structure of reality. This journey requires an open mind, as intuition, time, logic and even meaning itself break down in realms that are far removed from the savannah we evolved to understand. If everything in reality is in fact a computation, does that mean we have free will? Does it mean there is no inside black holes? Take the red pill and find out.

Something Not Nothing

by Gens Kohl

Published by Gens Kohl at Smashwords

Copyright © 2013 Gens Kohl

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright

reserved above, no part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,

or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without

the prior written permission of the copyright

owner of this book

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Why do things get complex?

Emergence

The hierarchy of emergence

How fundamental is emergence?

Is emergence observer dependent?

The emergence of space and time

2. How do we see ourselves?

The emergence of consciousness

Characteristics of consciousness

The evolution of consciousness

Other types of consciousness

Consciousness and reality

3. What is reality?

Reality is elusive

Experiential envelopes

Simulations

How real is our universe?

Reality is relative

4. Are we free?

Free will

Modelability

Incompleteness and determinism

Control

Free will is usual

5. Is mathematics real?

Is mathematics fundamental?

Is mathematics a human construct?

Science or tautology?

Mathematics and language

Is all existence just mathematics?

Is mathematics about all possible worlds?

6. Why do things happen?

Fundamental events

Emergent time

The speed of light

Entropy

What is now?

The boundaries of time

7. What can we know?

What is knowledge?

The limits of human knowledge

The problem of scale

Emergence and non-intuitive realms

What is truth?

8. How do things exist?

Something not nothing

What is existence?

How do things exist?

Why does the universe exist?

What caused the universe?

What is the purpose of existence?

9. Where do things end?

Are singularities natural infinities?

Quanta and fungibility

Eliminating infinitely small and large

Dealing with infinite potential

10. What are we?

Wildlife

What made us?

Creating our reality

11. Are there others?

The emergence of sentience

The probability of sentience

Where is everyone?

Search

Contact

General characteristics of sentients

Artificial sentience

The purpose of sentience

12.What is the universe made of?

Fundamental stuff

Information

Space

Particles and forces

Mass and energy

Gravity

Black holes

13. What is outside our universe?

The extent of the universe

Space outside the universe

Other timelines

Many Worlds

The multiverse

The greater reality

14. What happens where we live?

In the beginning

Where are we now?

Future of the universe

Existential challenges

15. How does the universe work?

The search for explanations

Dualities

Relativity

Quantum mechanics

Computability

Unification

Many Worlds

Theory of Everything

16. Why is the world perfect for us?

Fine tuning problems

Solutions to fine tuning

Tautology of the Anthropic Principle

17. What will we do?

Human flourishing

The future isn’t what it used to be

The next 100 years

The next 100 to 1,000 years

The next 1,000 to 10,000 years

In the long run

Footnote on death

18. Glossary

19. Bibliography

Introduction

Why is there something rather than nothing? What is existence? Why do we experience time? Do we really have free will? What is everything ultimately made of? How much can we know about the world? Does reality end at a black hole? This book asks the big questions centring on the human experience of fundamental physics and reality. We explore emergence and existence, consciousness and sentience, mathematics and computation, always attempting to get closer to the end of a regression of ‘whys’ to a point where there are no further explanations about reality.

In our lifetimes we may discover a full physical explanation of reality. Fundamental physics is a science that may bring closure to the subject of existence by way of ultimate answers to the questions posed above. In anticipation, I have tried to give some partial current answers to how the world really works and why we see it the way we do. All of us should have some understanding or beliefs on fundamental reality and therefore the reason for our existence. In our enlightened age we should not have to go through life without having a good answer to the basic question ‘How is there anything?’

Here are some of the conclusions I arrived at:

- Everything we experience is the result of a computation

- Mathematics doesn’t exist waiting to be discovered, it is created

- Consciousness is a tool to model our own and other minds

- The macroscopic flow of time is an illusion created by microscopic events

- The basic building block of everything might be fungible quantum bits of information

- There can be final answers as to how the world exists

- Humans will be extinct before reaching the average lifespan of earth species

- We can never ever know more than a tiny fraction of everything

- There is only one type of existence, physical existence

- Our universe runs independently on itself and not on something external

- We are unique because we evolved, in the future most sentients will be artificial

- Existence is just the ability to relate to other things

- The universe is very young and has a very long future ahead

- There is probably lots going on outside our universe

- We have free will because we are impossible to model

- Infinities don’t exist, even in theory

- We see the world through ‘savannah goggles’ because we evolved there

- There is plenty of sentient life in the galaxy, just far away

- The evolution of intelligence is of existential importance to the universe

- Taxes will outlast individual human death

- There is no inside a black hole

I have tried to cover a lot of ground in a very short space by cutting to the chase on all topics. You don’t have to read sequentially but can pick it up anywhere. Some basic knowledge of science will help, but if you are still struggling with something, skip it, it will probably be explained again in a different way later.

Hopefully you will find some important insights in this book. Researching and writing it changed what I believed about the world, if you read it, it will change what you believe.

Back to Table of Contents

1. Why do things get complex?

Before we begin to tackle some of the more fundamental questions around existence itself, we should deal with the important topic of why things get complex, why the simple elemental building blocks of reality result in the richness and complexity of the world we live in. If we can explain how complexity emerges, then we will only need to explain how basic elemental components of existence came to be.

We say that complexity is emergent, it emerges from simpler components. This process of emergence is from a human experiential perspective the most important phenomena in all reality, for it allows consciousness and all the wealth of the world to exist.

Emergence

Emergence is a process whereby novel structures or properties arise when a large number of simpler components interact according to simple rules. Emergence creates the world around us and examples are everywhere. In liquid water, large numbers of identical molecules interact when their outer electrons encounter their neighbours. If we zoom out from these repetitive and relatively simple interactions we observe structures and properties such as density, temperature, viscosity, compressibility, heat capacity, boiling, freezing and conductivity that were not apparent at the level of individual molecules, but result only from the interactions of these individual molecules. Most properties of things are not inherently embodied in their elemental units but result from information about interactions between these units leaking through the environment to a point where they can be observed.

Emergence can be understood as reality bootstrapping itself. Large quantities of information process themselves and create more complex processes and outcomes by doing so. Complexity emerges from repeating the same interactions, or computations, between many simple components many times over. ‘Computation’ is used in a very broad sense as any interactions between bits of information. Emergent properties are the results of computations or programs.

An emergent property can usually only be perceived from a macroscopic perspective and not at the level of individual components; up close the emergent feature is not apparent. Intelligence cannot be observed in neurons any more than weather in molecules of air. The emergent property will often be unexpected to the observer because it is not contained or defined in the individual components.

Consider the vast array of complex structures (including all of human achievement) that can emerge from a cloud of homogenous gas as it forms a solar system; or the complex behaviours of computer artificial life based on a few simple rules. Emergences (emergent things) can be described with new empirical rules that summarise the results of very large numbers of repeated simpler processes or computations. For example a rule or law linking the temperature and viscosity of water can be developed from observation (or from first principles by calculating the repeated complex interactions of water molecules).

In this way the phenomenon of emergence yields not only the properties of things, but also the laws of nature. There is no law of nature that says 2+2=4 but every time the computation is carried out the result is in fact 4. This is how reality works, every time a computation gives the same result it feels like a law of nature is being enforced. The laws of thermodynamics result from huge numbers of particles interacting, exchanging information and therefore computing. The apparent laws governing the behaviours of things emerge each time relevant things interact, for example the laws of gravity emerge locally whenever massive bodies interact and exchange information in the form of gravitons. Laws of nature don’t exist independently; they emerge locally as required when things interact.

The hierarchy of emergences

Emergence is not a directional process toward any goal; it just reflects an underlying tendency for things to get more complex. As each level of interaction or computation embeds itself in reality, another level of features can emerge above it. We can illustrate a hierarchy of emergences currently extant in our universe beginning with the very fundamentals of reality - although our first few steps may still be speculative. In each case, the emergent feature at any level contains the components and programs of all the lower levels.

1. From the random nothingness of quantum foam quantum bits (qubits hold 2 values simultaneously) emerge.

2. Space emerges as the feature describing the separation of qubits.

3. Events occur as qubits interact with their neighbours, local time emerges.

4. Patterns and programs emerging in the early universe lock in hidden dimensions of space which cause particles and forces to emerge.

5. Particle and force interactions result in many features of the universe, including chemical elements.

6. Varied and sustained chemical interactions result in the emergence of life.

7. Life results in emergences such as evolution and ecosystems.

8. Sentience emerges as some life intelligently analyses itself