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Reason is something God creates. You eat because if you didn't you will die. The designer created that reason through the design. So it is not logical to ask ab

Reason is something God creates. You eat because if you didn't you will die. The designer created that reason through the design. So it is not logical to ask about the reason that made God create the world. So the meaning of life depends on why God takes actions, and we will never understand that. I don't think it is very complex concept. - I believe in a designer obviously. I totally understand if you didn't.

mrwnmonm 6y ago
Downvotes? LOL!
angelbar 6y ago
Its ok... move on
jbay808 6y ago
It's funny you put it this way. I have the same philosophy and am agnostic. Here's how I'd express it. Causality is a concept that exists within a universe, because it's bound to time, which also a concept that exists within a universe. The physical law of causality (which can be expressed as both "events of the present are fully defined by system states at previous times" and the time-reversed equivalent, that the past states are fully defined by the future) are only coherent concepts within the framework of specific physical laws that govern this universe. Not every set of possible physical laws gives rise to causality, or even time. In Conway's Game of Life, the future state of the board is also fully determined by the past, although there is no time reversal symmetry. Judea Pearl's causality is similarly bound to applying within the context of a timeline and universal law. Again in Conway's Game of Life, you can implement Turing machines and run simulations of any scenario. Hypothetically you could have artificial life in such a simulation, which might conduct experiments to learn the physical laws of the cellular automaton that governs their world. But those laws, their perception of cause and effect, only exist within the context of that simulation, and within their simulated timeline. Their "time" is a state variable of the simulation. No experiment conducted by creatures within the Game of Life could determine why their simulation is running in the first place, or why its initial conditions were chosen the way they were. The computer running their simulation is outside the laws of their universe. To ask "what was the value of Conway.simTimeIndex before the Game was started?" doesn't make sense. The laws that govern the commencement of Games cannot be perceived from inside the Game. On our own level, the notion of cause and effect is a concept that is coherent within our universe and its concept of time. To ask whether our universe had a cause, or was preceded by something, doesn't make sense. It might or it might not have; that depends on the laws that govern the commencement of Universes, which we cannot measure from observations inside of our universe. If there is any law of meta-causality or time, on the level of reality at which universes are created, we will not identify it via measurements conducted within this universe.
- Frypa 6y ago
  This was actually a very insightful comment, and I say this as a muslim. What books would you recommend to go deeper into these theme?
  - jbay808 6y ago
    Thank you very much for saying so! It's a philosophy I've assembled myself from many sources, so there's no one book about it, but definitely a lot of sources of inspiration. My understanding of the nature of time comes mainly from Julian Barbour's book "the End of Time", which itself is not an easy read and took me a long time to digest. Although, the philosophy is compatible with more conventional theories of time, as long as it postulates time as a structure that is somehow internal to a universe. There's endless literature about Conway's Game of Life and cellular automata, although since it's used just as a metaphor here, it's enough to just play with the game itself for a while. Greg Egan's "Permutation City", while fiction, is an interesting exploration of the concept of the boundary between a simulated universe and the reality that contains it. For more about how causality in our universe arises as a consequence of specific properties of nature, I'm not sure exactly what to recommend but maybe Feynman's lectures on physics are a good place to start. For other perspectives on causality, Judea Pearl's "Causality" is a classic. But heavy.
- mrwnmonm 6y ago
  I am not a native English speaker, I don't really understand your comment. Sorry. But I am curious about something, do you believe that this life is deterministic?
  - jbay808 6y ago
    No problem! I'll try to make it simpler... We believe things must have causes because, inside our universe, all things are caused by other things at earlier times. That's because our laws of nature are causal, and our universe has a timeline. But the laws of nature inside our universe might not be the same laws of nature that govern the creation of universes. Just like the laws of physics inside a video game aren't the same as our laws, and won't say anything about why the video game started in the first place. I do believe that this life is deterministic, but also that the future is not knowable.

mrwnmonm 6y ago

Downvotes? LOL!

angelbar 6y ago

Its ok... move on

jbay808 6y ago

It's funny you put it this way. I have the same philosophy and am agnostic. Here's how I'd express it. Causality is a concept that exists within a universe, because it's bound to time, which also a concept that exists within a universe. The physical law of causality (which can be expressed as both "events of the present are fully defined by system states at previous times" and the time-reversed equivalent, that the past states are fully defined by the future) are only coherent concepts within the framework of specific physical laws that govern this universe. Not every set of possible physical laws gives rise to causality, or even time. In Conway's Game of Life, the future state of the board is also fully determined by the past, although there is no time reversal symmetry. Judea Pearl's causality is similarly bound to applying within the context of a timeline and universal law. Again in Conway's Game of Life, you can implement Turing machines and run simulations of any scenario. Hypothetically you could have artificial life in such a simulation, which might conduct experiments to learn the physical laws of the cellular automaton that governs their world. But those laws, their perception of cause and effect, only exist within the context of that simulation, and within their simulated timeline. Their "time" is a state variable of the simulation. No experiment conducted by creatures within the Game of Life could determine why their simulation is running in the first place, or why its initial conditions were chosen the way they were. The computer running their simulation is outside the laws of their universe. To ask "what was the value of Conway.simTimeIndex before the Game was started?" doesn't make sense. The laws that govern the commencement of Games cannot be perceived from inside the Game. On our own level, the notion of cause and effect is a concept that is coherent within our universe and its concept of time. To ask whether our universe had a cause, or was preceded by something, doesn't make sense. It might or it might not have; that depends on the laws that govern the commencement of Universes, which we cannot measure from observations inside of our universe. If there is any law of meta-causality or time, on the level of reality at which universes are created, we will not identify it via measurements conducted within this universe.

Frypa 6y ago
This was actually a very insightful comment, and I say this as a muslim. What books would you recommend to go deeper into these theme?
- jbay808 6y ago
  Thank you very much for saying so! It's a philosophy I've assembled myself from many sources, so there's no one book about it, but definitely a lot of sources of inspiration. My understanding of the nature of time comes mainly from Julian Barbour's book "the End of Time", which itself is not an easy read and took me a long time to digest. Although, the philosophy is compatible with more conventional theories of time, as long as it postulates time as a structure that is somehow internal to a universe. There's endless literature about Conway's Game of Life and cellular automata, although since it's used just as a metaphor here, it's enough to just play with the game itself for a while. Greg Egan's "Permutation City", while fiction, is an interesting exploration of the concept of the boundary between a simulated universe and the reality that contains it. For more about how causality in our universe arises as a consequence of specific properties of nature, I'm not sure exactly what to recommend but maybe Feynman's lectures on physics are a good place to start. For other perspectives on causality, Judea Pearl's "Causality" is a classic. But heavy.
mrwnmonm 6y ago
I am not a native English speaker, I don't really understand your comment. Sorry. But I am curious about something, do you believe that this life is deterministic?
- jbay808 6y ago
  No problem! I'll try to make it simpler... We believe things must have causes because, inside our universe, all things are caused by other things at earlier times. That's because our laws of nature are causal, and our universe has a timeline. But the laws of nature inside our universe might not be the same laws of nature that govern the creation of universes. Just like the laws of physics inside a video game aren't the same as our laws, and won't say anything about why the video game started in the first place. I do believe that this life is deterministic, but also that the future is not knowable.