Why Nothing Rather Than Something?

Leibniz as a classic enlightened asked:

• Why is there Something rather than Nothing?

Baudrillard as a postmodernist turned the question around into

• Why is there Nothing rather than Something?

Let me illustrate with an example from my own experience with the department of Numerical Analysis NADA at KTH:

• NADA in Portuguese means Nothing. So NADA = Nothing.

The story is told in Simulation Technology, BodyandSoul and NADA, and in short tells that rather than using anything connected to the educational program BodyandSoul, the leadership of NADA in the name of Björn Engquist chooses extinction: The new Bachelor program in Simulation Technology ST which is to start in the Fall at NADA according the decision of KTH, which would have saved NADA from disintegration into Nothingness, will not be allowed to start. KTH says Yes!, but NADA says No! The Soul say Yes! but (a part of) the Body says No!

Why? Because ST is connected to BodyandSoul = Something.

So we see that NADA prefers Nothing before Something. This is of course fully logical because we live in a postmodern time where values of enlightenement are no longer important.

Some quotes by Baudrillard:

• The great person is ahead of their time, the smart make something out of it, and the blockhead, sets themselves against it.
• If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.
• Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.
• Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.

PS January 31: I had a one-minute talk with the appointed leader of NADA Anna-Karin Thornberg, in the absence of NADA's spiritual leader Björn Engquist (former advisor of AK), during which Anna-Karin frankly informed me that nothing by my hand and mind could ever be used at NADA, as long as Björn Engquist was in charge. A clear message that Nothing is preferred before Something, if that Something is connected to my name. Academics at its best.