The minimal explanation for what is going on still requires that something must hold the state of the universe and execute its transition function. This prime mover, the basic Turing machine ticking away in the void is a debt that freaks me out.
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Replying to @Plinz
That's remarkable only if the transition function is very complex. I suspect it's extremely simple. Even repeated operation of XOR produces remarkable emergent behavior (e.g., http://eloquence.github.io/elixor/ ).
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Replying to @xirzon
No! I know that a minimal finite state machine for performing universal computation is incredibly easy to make. And yet, how is there something rather than nothing? Does that not blow your mind?
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Replying to @Plinz
It does not, because I think the question is ill-defined. What is "something", what is "nothing"? It becomes more interesting if you define it in terms of entropy.
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The universe started out with extremely low entropy and is trending towards extremely high entropy. It is neither "something" nor "nothing" - from the perspective of an observer, only change exists.
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If you try to build a model with an absolute observer, so you can absolutely define entropy, there is still the question how that highly ordered starting state came to be. It may also be an infinite cycle, and yet what computes it?
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