Comment 14 by Chrysippus_Maximus

Nothing's happening here.

prior to quantum physics, everyone gave metaphysical nothing a free pass on existence

That's a strange claim. I'm pretty sure almost no one thought that nothing existed.

I'm still trying to get my head around this. But I think it's more about humans always assuming that "nothing" is a viable option. Which means we have to ask what we mean by nothing. It's not a word that can be approached intuitively, though it often is.

If I ask the question, "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" (which I haven't quite let go of), the onus is on me to understand what the idea of "nothing" implies , and whether it means anything at all in a real sense.

Physicists have more to say on the subject than anyone else I can think of. The pursuit of "nothing" has yielded a tremendous amount of information about reality.