A universe that existed but had no life in it? Sure, that can exist. I think this is just Tom Foolery caused by a failure of our ability to linguistically construct the question accurately rather than some deep insight into nature of reality. Jeff B says, I'm still a bit confused about interactions and particles in quantum field theory. From your biggest ideas videos, I understand that there is a wave function of field configurations. So in two of these fields interacts, does the wave function branch into interacted and non interacted? And is there a precise way to tell where in the field this interaction will take place?