Start here · Step 1 of 8

Difference: the tiniest possible "something"

We'll begin as small as we possibly can. Not with atoms or particles or minds, but with something even simpler: the idea that things can be different.

The blank page and the dot

Imagine a completely blank sheet of paper. No dots, no lines, no folds, no colour, no texture. Just an idea of featureless emptiness.

Now imagine you put a tiny dot on it.

Suddenly there is something you can point to: there. The dot is only interesting because it differs from the rest of the page. If everything looked exactly the same everywhere, there would be nothing to notice, nothing to talk about, nothing to experience.

Informational Ontology starts from this simple idea: to exist, in any meaningful sense, is to differ.

Difference without details

Notice what we haven't said yet. We haven't said what the dot is made of, how big it is, what colour it is, or who is looking at it. All of that comes later.

For now, all we care about is the most minimal thing you can say: something is not the same as something else.

You can play the same game in other ways:

Two rooms separated by a wall: "inside" vs "outside".
Two musical notes: higher vs lower pitch.
Two moments in time: before vs after.

In each case, once you can honestly say "this is not exactly the same as that", you already have difference.

Deeper insight: why start here?

Many philosophies start by assuming matter, or minds, or logical laws. IO tries to go one step more minimal. If you deny that anything ever differs from anything else, there is nothing left to hang any idea on—not even the idea of "you" making that claim.

So we treat difference as something you cannot coherently get rid of. It is not a conclusion; it is the starting point.

What to carry forward

For the rest of this journey, you only need to remember one thing from this step:

Wherever there is anything at all, there are differences. No differences, no world.