That's an interesting article... I wonder the same thing.

Also, Buddhism has another answer to the question that I didn't see in the article (probably closest to answer 1.1).

Buddhism often rejects dualistic logic... the idea that we can talk about X and not-X, or partition a set of objects/properties into two distinct groups. Arguably, reality itself does not contain these kinds of distinctions, we insert them in our *analysis* of reality.

The idea of 'nothingness' is a negative concept; it's the negation of what we are familiar with:

nothingness == not-somethingness

So what's weird, rejecting dualistic logic, both concepts collapse to a single thing, and 'nothingness == existence' is true. In general, X == not-X.

Not that I agree entirely with the answer, but it's one of the most unusual answers I've heard.