Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Why Is There Something?

Last fall when Laura and I first started thinking about where to spend this year, the one thing we agreed on was that we would live in a Spanish speaking country because we were both interested in learning the language. We both started using the free language learning app, DuoLingo, to learn Spanish. Like a lot of apps, DuoLingo keeps track of "streaks, the number of days in a row that you meet some minimum standard of work. We've continued to use the app here in Spain. This morning my streak hit 365:


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It was a bit rainy today. I got rained on during my walk/run this morning. But it was a bit warmer, so that helped a bit.

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Nice to have the election behind us.

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Talked to Emily this evening (morning her time). Got a lot of screen time with Benji the bunny!

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I went to my language class this afternoon. It's interesting to me how often student miss class. At 110 euros for 8 classes, I'm not missing any of them, haha. Today it was 3 Americans, a Belgian and a German. We had a nice time.

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On the way home, the sun came out. I took a couple of pictures along the way. The churro and chocolate stand on the corner:


The river was beautiful as always:


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Palma let us know of a "science" lecture series at a bar owned by her sister. This evening a physicist tried to explain why there is something instead of nothing. I've actually read a book on this subject called Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt. Holt's book comes at this age-old question from lots of different angles. Laura and I decided to head over to the talk and see if we could understand any of the Spanish. Unfortunately, the talk was more popular than we expected and there was no room in the bar. We watched and listed at the back for a while, but eventually I got tired of standing. The speaker went at the question from a purely physics approach, not a philosophical one.

My personal response to the question is simply that we wouldn't be able to ask the question if nothing existed. Or, put another way, we can only ask the question why does the world exist from a perspective of existence. Even more simply, the world exists because it exists.

Here's the view from the back: