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I think the "Universe/life has no meaning" sentence can mean two completely different things: 1. It could have a meaning, but there is none. For example food c

• all2 5y ago
  > There is no color, and could never be. This illustrates the scope of experience we apply to the world. I have never seen a color of running, but somoeone has. Synesthesia is very real and to those who possess it, there is a color of running. There are whole worlds of understanding that we cannot see because we lack the ability to see them. Some we can learn to see, some we deny because of reason or they have faded in our memories, some we dismiss out of hand because, well, "that can't possibly be true". All that to say: you might be missing the meaning of life, the universe, everything because you are not equipped to see it.
  • naasking 5y ago
    > This illustrates the scope of experience we apply to the world. I have never seen a color of running, but somoeone has. Synesthesia is very real and to those who possess it, there is a color of running. Subjective properties are not objective properties. Synesthetes perceive subjective interpretations of objective properties. The perceptual distortions enabled by psychedelics are also not reflecting objective properties of the world, but subjective properties related to the information processing in your brain.
    • all2 5y ago
      You're sidestepping the metaphor. The point is that you and I may not be mentally equipped to observe reality in a way that shows underlying purpose. There's the assumption that the thing yields its purpose when inspected. Consider a screw driver. If you and I see it but lack the knowledge of context into which it was created (driving screws) we would say it is obviouslymechanical, obviously designed and manufactured. A screw driver (or other mechanical apparati) don'thappen by accident. But no amount of inspection, theorizing, or philosophical discourse would yield its purpose or its use cases to us. We assume, by looking at the universe, that it (the thing) will yield to us purpose or reason for being. We can't get that information about the universe from the universe. We need to step back and consider "where did the universe come from". The context of origin may yield the purpose of the thing.
      • pmoriarty 5y ago
        "We assume, by looking at the universe, that it (the thing) will yield to us purpose or reason for being. We can't get that information about the universe from the universe." Unless you can ask the universe about the universe, which some people think they can. Even if they're right, though, I'd argue that you could never know if you got the truth from the universe, if it was lying, or if you were just deluded. People can find meanings in all sorts of things and in all sorts of ways. Doesn't mean they're right.
        • all2 5y ago
          > People can find meanings in all sorts of things and in all sorts of ways. I've been grappling with this recently. Specifically the question of "What amounts to fantasy and superstition and what reflects reality?" Pyschedelics is a rabbit-trail followed from here, as well as the idea that "nothing is actually real, this is just a simulation". And following those is the idea "reality is what you make it" and "you are God". But those conclusions run up against things that we cannot change like death and taxes (the taxes part is a joke, but only kind of). We're left with a dissonance of "all is illusion" vs "there exist things that we cannot change and things that are consistent outside of ourselves". If we were in a dream-state and there was not actual object permanence then I'd agree with the conclusions of the religious pyschedelics crowd, as well as the all-is-illusion crowd. (Except there's some math from quantum physics that shows things don't exist unless you look at them...[0] or something like that. Conversations like this make me wish I took more comprehensive notes.) So I guess it is all an illusion until we touch it. :D That reminds me of the early graphical rendering method "culling" where if something isn't in the rendered field-of-view (FOV) then it doesn't get passed through the graphical pipeline. How this informs the quest to extract meaning from the universe, I don't know. This is a bit of a rabbit trail by itself. I do wonder at the fabric of existence from time-to-time, but I don't wonder at the purpose of it all -- religious convictions being what they are to me. [0] https://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms https://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-... [edit for spelling]
          • 5y ago
• dsego 5y ago
  It could be something intangible, an emergent property, you know it when you find it sort of thing.
• rhizome 5y ago
  Both examples are category errors. In #1 there's no such thing as food without taste, and in #2, verbs don't have physical attributes.