Why is there something, instead of nothing?

Why is there something, instead of nothing?

Philosophers are always pondering such questions like why is there something instead of nothing (thanks Jason Fraze for the question prompt) I don't think that this is really an answerable question.

However I would like to ask the question is there such a thing as nothing? In other words is there a place in the universe that is totally devoid of an existent thing?

After spending much too long on the subject I have concluded that no, nothing cannot exist. (In my proof I will prove that non-beings cannot exist, nothing is a subset of the non-beings set).

Proof:

Suppose that there are actually two possible classes of things...beings and non-beings. Assume that a set of non-beings exists. These non-beings are defined in that they are the compliment of the set of all things that are beings (In other words non-beings have no existence). But the set of non-beings is definable. And all things that are definable have a reality (however limited their reality is). But this is a contradiction in that non-beings must not have a reality for they are the compliment of all things real. Therefore by the law of non-contradiction, a non-being, or a nothing cannot be said to have existence or reality.

So what does this mean in practical reality? I'm not sure, but it brings a few thoughts to my mind that there cannot be such a point in history that nothing existed. So at the very least the Big-Bang theory falls short in explaining the universe. For even prior to the Big Bang, there was something. And before that there was something, so on ad infinitum. What is the answer to this "infinite regress" as Aquinas called it? God.

Why I Want to Live off the Grid - Part I, Interdependence, or how the TV is the Devil

Why I Want to Live off the Grid - Part I, Interdependence, or how the TV is the Devil

In High School I quickly became a teachers pet for a paper I wrote called "Television: The Work of the Devil?". Most people who know me, know that I am a well-meaning Christian, and I must first say that this paper was not about the moral evils of television content (though indeed I do find most television content unsavory). It was rather a look at how television has influenced our culture, our selves and our sense of well being. But first and foremost it looked at the ways in which television is a mind and creativity destroyer.

Being on the grid necessarily implies dependence on a larger framework for sustenance. Now to be clear we must reaffirm that one can never be fully independent. No man is an island to quote John Donne. In fact let's review his poem here; it speaks volumes about the very core of humanity.

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - Meditation XVII

Knowing that we are all interdependent and connected means that in some way we have a very sincere and natural need for human interaction. How sad is it then that the average American spends about 5-7 hours watching television a day? In fact, if we sleep for 7-8 hours and work for 8-9 hours, that leaves us with about 1-3 hour of totally free interaction with our friends, our spouses, people we don't know or haven't yet met, much less our grandparents and other distant relatives. To put this in perspective, 5-7 hours a day of television watching a day works will end up being 20-30% of one's lifetime.

At this point, it strikes me that when we talk about off the grid living, we are really talking about a way to become more interconnected with life, humanity, and the environment. An off the grid lifestyle is paradoxical then in that our images of an off-the-gridder is a solitary person in a cabin, by himself, who is kind of nutty and has a very long and disgusting beard (if he is a male of course). However, on the grid people seem to live in nice suburbs with all the modern conveniences and are quite content with the status quo. Thus the paradox is that not having to depend on the modern infrastructure (independence) will lead us to greater interdependence (an independence conditional on other more immediate human beings). However the dependency on modern conveniences has led to a great deal of Independence in the on-grid person...so much so that they often lead lives of quiet desperation and loneliness.

I believe that the first step to getting off the grid of mental dullness, the grid of contentment with the status quo, the grid of normality and blandness is to get rid of our televisions...or at the very least to get rid of cable television and to remove the television from the prominent spot in our living rooms. I think that real life has enough challenges, adventure and mystery to never get bored.

I hope in the next few posts about getting off the grid that we will begin to further understand what it means that get off the grid, and why it is the best thing we can do. We will further understand that becoming independent will lead to interdependence because, in essence, getting off the grid means changing our dependencies to a much more local set of people...something known as interdependence.

A Random Walk Through the Stock Market

A Random Walk Through the Stock Market

Have you ever taken a random walk in the park? If you say yes, then chances are, you are incorrect. Nearly everything we do has purpose and direction to it...if only because our minds have trouble doing anything without it.

The Stock Market exhibits a mathematical phenomena we call a Random Walk. A truly random walk in the park would mean that one starts off in the middle (or somewhere else), spins a four sided dice and decides to take a step forward or backward, left or right, based on the dice roll. Now aside from the question about whether a dice roll is truly random we will say that the path taken by our dice rolling park-walker is random. It may even look like this...

So how does this relate to the Stock Market? If we look at the stock market as a random walk in a 1 dimensional park, or a tight rope, than the price is randomly walking from low to high....or at least it is very nearly randomly walking. Google has been marching upwards for a while, while Microsoft has been backpedaling for a while now. But for the most part we can look at a stock as a very indecisive tight rope walker, he flips a coin and takes a step forward, flips the coin again and takes another step forward, flips the coin a third time and goes back, etc. etc.

So how can we take advantage of a random walk? Let's say that you and a buddy go to see the random tight rope walker. Let's say that your friend likes to gamble. He says to you....I'll bet you $1 that every time the tight rope walker flips that coin, you can't predict whether he will go backwards and forwards. Unfortunately, your friend is unaware that you are an expert in coin flip pattern recognition, and you are able to predict heads or tails with 55% accuracy. As the hours wear on you begin to slowly increase your profit. In fact, if you plotted your profit, it may look something like this...

Thus, a random walk not only describes the movement of the price of a stock, but for a day trader, it describes the value of his bank account. Therefore, one can nearly always make money in the stock market, provided one can predict the next general movement of the market with only a slightly better than 50% accuracy level.

So the real question is....why spend time trying to predict whether my favorite stock will shoot up 20 points in the next month when all I need to focus on is predicting the up and down movements and letting the laws of probability and Random Walk work in my favor?