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The meaning of life is to populate the universe
- meric 16y agoLike this? http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html I was thinking about this too the other day. Life seems to (more or less) be a set chemical processes that accelerates entropy in a given universe. Say if you were the designer of the universe and started the big bang. If someone told you to calculate how long it would take until all energy is evenly distributed - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe), the simple way you would calculate this is just to calculate how many generations of stars your universe would support. But if some sort of life (like us humans) arises and populates, say, 10%, of the star systems, entropy would happen a lot more than you originally estimated! Entropy is accelerated by life! In my conclusion, it seems that the ultimate goal of all energy/matter - not just life, is to express itself through the second law of thermodynamics - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics). To use up itself and become static again. That ultimate death is your ultimate goal.
- nazariusk 16y agoInteresting parallel. Life (us - birth to death) within "life" (the universe, big bang to heat death), with death being a result (maximal entropy), but not the goal. Perhaps someday the we'll discover/generate other universes. Death might not always be the final result. From the death of the old, comes the birth of the young. Bah, enough deep thinking for one day :).
- losethos 16y agoWith that attitude, you will not get laid. I had an ephiphany once -- women are terrified of having kids.
- zeynel1 16y ago--this is the meaning of life - there is no other-- he must be a happy person - he found the meaning of life - and he knows that there is no other either he is a total --fool-- or he knows something that we do not know
- zackattack 16y agoI think all "meaning" is constructed. The human brain itself is a meaning-making machine. He's stated a preference.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- zeynel1 16y ago--all -meaning- is constructed-- i agree with you - and if this is true then the meaning of life is what we define it to be - only religions assert that there is only 1 true meaning and its the meaning they defined maybe the blog writer chose the wrong word - instead of -meaning- the word -process- would have been better - in that case we may say that --the fundamental process of nature is a transformation of non-replicating into replicating--
- zackattack 16y agoyeah, i don't know why you were downvoted
- stretchwithme 16y agoLife is it own purpose.
- wturner 16y agoThe meaning of matter is to vibrate really really fast. That is its purpose. There is no other.
- amerine 16y agoMan I love it when John Maynard Keynes gets quoted.
- whatwhatwhat 16y agoExcept of course that life itself cannot be sustained without the abundancy of the stars
- fierarul 16y agoSomebody has been reading Asimov ?
- vl 16y agoOne thing that I don't get is what was before and what is the source of Big Bang. So Big Bang, boom, expansion, star/planet formation, red shift, evolution, selfish gene, humans - I get. But where did the Big Bang came from? Fluctuation from nothingness? Why? From something else? Why? Something existed before and produced the Big Bang? Where this thing that existed before came from then? Doesn't make any sense.
- photon_off 16y agoI suggest directing some of your curiosity towards Google. This topic has been discussed many times before. In short: Your notion of "cause and effect" is not necessarily meaningful or applicable to all aspects of nature. Time could have been created in the Big Bang. Also, it's possible that the entire process was continuous... the closer you rewind towards the big bang, the longer it takes to rewind just a little bit further. http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html
- vl 16y agoThanks for the link, it's interesting read. Even if time is created with Big Bang, and there are probabilistic quantum processes that don't demonstrate "cause and effect" in traditional sense these explanations come down to some singularity and suggest to accept that singularities just happen.
- Locke1689 16y agoThis may be a meaningless question. If the very moments of creation of the universe are indeed the moments of creation of spacetime, what does "before" mean? Moreover, if the universe is "existence," how could we begin to perceive, imagine, or study existence without existence?
- vl 16y ago>how could we begin to perceive, imagine, or study existence without existence? Through the deduction and reasoning. We don't exactly perceive sub-atomic and many galactic processes, but just infer their existence from some or other observation. Presumably "existence" is not entirely detached from "outside".
- Locke1689 16y agoA pithy statement, but a pretty weak argument. Given the entire purpose of the field of philosophy, this paragraph or so doesn't resonate especially strongly.
- photon_off 16y agoI'd have to take the Nihilistic stance that life is without any objective meaning. It appears to me that any meaning, morals, or values that somebody claims are inherent to the universe are merely their own human abstraction; this post included. Yet, that shouldn't (and doesn't) stop anybody from prescribing meaning to things and living "full" lives and achieving happiness. There are two facts that I strongly believe in: We're stuck being humans, for better or worse, and the universe will continue to be indifferent.
- Locke1689 16y agoA decent summary, but I'd still suggest anyone who relates to this answer to read Nietzsche (specifically, The Gay Science and probably Beyond Good and Evil).
- sz 16y agoI'm sorry but without concrete definitions this entire discussion is stupid. (Retroactively defining words to make your position tautological is not valuable either.) The entire article consists of a remark that life is a self-replicating chemical reaction. A more interesting question to debate might be whether this replicating property is an acceptable definition for life, (i.e. can there exist systems that aren't replicating but can be considered life, and how might these arise independently of replicating life?), or what happens when you apply various definitions of life to other systems than the physical universe.
- Tycho 16y agoYou could argue that intelligent life is something that our ecosystem has evolved in order to resist mass extinction due to meteorite impacts. Last time round with the dinosaurs there was no answer but maybe next time we'll be ready. It just about makes sense if you think on then scale of whole ecosystems and meteorite impacts and many planets.