"Why is there something rather than nothing?" goes the famous question. But what if the answer is that there is precisely nothing. Philosopher David Pearce argues that because amplitudes in quantum mechanics are complex numbers, summing two amplitudes can yield zero, and this could apply to the universe as a whole. Having two ways to do something in quantum mechanics can make it not happen. The information in the universe adds up to precisely zero.

Why does “anything” exist? Intuitively, there shouldn’t be anything to explain. Bizarrely, this doesn’t seem to be the case. One clue to the answer may be our difficulty in rigorously specifying a default state of “nothingness” from which any departure stands in need of an explanation. A dimensionless point? A timeless void? A quantum vacuum? All attempts to specify an alternative reified “nothingness”—an absence of laws, properties, objects, and events—just end up smuggling in something else instead. Specifying anything at all, including the truth-conditions for our sense of “nothingness,” requires information. Information is fundamental in physics. Information is physical. Information, physics tells us, cannot be created or destroyed. Thus, wave functions in quantum mechanics don’t really collapse to yield single definite classical outcomes (cf. Wigner’s Friend). Decoherence—the scrambling of phase angles between the components of a quantum superposition—doesn’t literally destroy superpositions. Not even black holes really destroy information (cf. Black hole information paradox).

So, naturally, we may ask: where did information come from in the first place?

Well, perhaps the answer is that it didn’t. The total information content of reality is necessarily zero: the superposition principle of quantum mechanics formalizes inexistence.

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Because amplitudes in quantum mechanics are complex numbers, summing two amplitudes can yield zero. Having two ways to do something in quantum mechanics can make it not happen.

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On this story, one timeless logico-physical principle explains everything, including itself. The superposition principle of quantum mechanics formalizes an informationless zero ontology—the default condition from which any notional departure would need to be explained. In 2002, Physics World readers voted Young’s double-slit experiment with single electrons as the “most beautiful experiment in physics” (cf. The double-slit experiment). Richard Feynman liked to remark that all of quantum mechanics can be understood by carefully thinking through the implications of the double-slit experiment. Quite so; only maybe Feynman could have gone further. If Everettian quantum mechanics (cf. No-collapse quantum mechanics) is correct, reality consists of a single vast quantum-coherent superposition. Each element in the superposition, each orthogonal relative state, each “world,” is equally real (cf. Cheap Universes “Universe splitter” app). Most recently, the decoherence program in post-Everett quantum mechanics explains the emergence of quasi-classical branches (“worlds”) like ours from the underlying quantum field-theoretic formalism (cf. Wojciech Zurek: Quantum Darwinism). The universal validity of the superposition principle in post-Everett quantum mechanics suggests that the mystery of our existence has a scientific rather than theological explanation.