Phil Scanlan
Did Our Universe Write Itself? Who says there’s no such thing as an answer to 'How is there anything at all'? The Self-Writing Universe considers the most confounding puzzle we can ask ourselves - how and why is there anything at all instead of simply nothingness? Generations of human thought have thus far produced the following stalemate: belief in an irrational endless regress or belief in an impossible beginning. Neither theory provides a satisfying answer. Perhaps it’s time for a fresh take? In the The Self-Writing Universe, network administrator Phil Scanlan offers an insightful twist on the age-old problem by asking 'Why not view the puzzle as though it were a computer script that managed to write itself and see what happens?' In Scanlan’s approach, the fact that there’s existence and not non-existence is merely due to some line of executable code that makes existence inevitable. The Self-Writing Universe considers what that code must be like. But isn’t this just another attempt to explain existence by first assuming an existing thing, in this case, a line of executable code? Scanlan’s answer to this question, and to how the code got there, may just tickle your brain in a most agreeable way. 3
