We like to believe that there is <something> and that there is <nothing>, but what if that’s not true? What if there is only <something>?
Clearly there can’t be only <nothing> since <something> is proven to exist through awareness. I accept the possibility that my mind, my body, my emotions, and even the whole world are complete illusions or delusions, but since I know with 100% certainty that awareness exists I also know that <something> exists. “I think therefore I am” is wrong, in my opinion. Perhaps Descartes meant awareness/consciousness even, but from the perspective of my understanding of thought it seems that there is no proven depth or background to thoughts. Awareness could potentially exist without any computation that runs any thoughts or emotions. Essentially what I mean is: consciousness/awareness is certain, and everything else might not exist at all or not exist in the way we think that it exists. There is simply no ultimate proof for the existence of anything but awareness. Awareness seems to be the only thing that is 100% certain. But even if it isn’t, the existence of awareness clearly proves that <something> exists.
This means that we have two options left. There is either only <something>, or <something> and <nothing> simultaneously. Let’s explore both options.
only <something>
Vacuums only exist from the lens of classical physics. In reality, there are a bunch of universal fields that inhabit all of spacetime. The electromagnetic field, for example, is everywhere within spacetime. Now the thing is that we don’t know if spacetime has a limit, and if it has a limit we don’t know where that limit is and what exists “beyond” the limit. But within spacetime there are these universal quantum fields that are simply present. They permeate spacetime fully, so even if there’s no atom in a given point in spacetime, there’s still <something>. This means that within spacetime <nothing> doesn’t exist. There is only <something>.
For there to be only <something> in general, a few more questions need to be answered tho. One of them is: Is spacetime limited? If spacetime is limited it means that there’s either a different kind of existence beyond it, or that there’s no existence beyond it altogether. If spacetime is unlimited/infinite you might think that it necessarily means that <nothing> can’t exist, but this doesn’t account for different types of existences that transcend spacetime - you can’t think about this stuff in spatial dimensions only.