5 ms·

Not saying you're wrong, but it leaves the question of what the point of life is to the universe.

by dekken_ 4y ago

elevaet 4y ago
Why would/should/could there be a point? Life just is, doing life.
- dekken_ 4y ago
  This is a tautology.
  - harperlee 4y ago
    Wasn’t it intended? Self-reference as a way to say “this has a loop shape”.
    - dekken_ 4y ago
      perhaps it was, I don't accept it is my point
  - elevaet 4y ago
    Life is recursion
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
Unless one believes in supernatural creators, observers and judges, there is no point in anything and existence, life and consciousness are all unlucky coincidences. We are an absolutely pointless long term consequence of the natural process of evolution, that can start anytime the environment for life is just right.
- dekken_ 4y ago
  > Unless one believes in supernatural creators, observers and judges, there is no point in anything and existence This is your opinion. There are other possibilities.
  - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
    > There are other possibilities. They are unprovable but irrefutable delusions or part of frameworks people made up to come to peace with the truth. Examples frameworks would be pitiful reasons to exist like "keep the species alive", "keep the family line going", "I need to be behave this and that way because my deity will judge me when I die" etc.
- mistermann 4y ago
  If this is true, why do atheists get so bent out of shape when you don't comply with their scriptures?
  - dron57 4y ago
    Atheists don't have scriptures. Religious people love thinking about atheism as just another religion and will bring up all kinds of examples like Stalin and Mao commited attrocities in the name of religion. In reality atheists don't have anything in common with one another. There is no shared belief system or a set of scriptures for atheists. Stalin and Mao did however have a shared belief system and it wasn't atheism.
    - mistermann 4y ago
      > In reality atheists don't have anything in common with one another. This seems unlikely. > There is no shared belief system or a set of scriptures for atheists. Large quantities of those I talk to on the internet seem to disagree.
  - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
    By all means, don't follow "our scriptures", whatever those may be, but accept that we consider anything anyone would call "faith" and belief in the super natural somewhere on the scale between magical thinking and mental illness.
    - mistermann 4y ago
      If people were so forgiving when it's time to walk the talk. Regardless, this (particularly, the conceptualization of the supernatural) is somewhat of a variation of the kind of thinking that I'm referring to. I don't disagree that this isn't formally documented in scripture, but nonetheless it seems to have somehow ended up broadly installed in minds (both theist and atheist, to be fair), not unlike how various behaviors can be observed in theists despite it not being a part of formal scripture.
morgangiraud 4y ago
Understanding itself.
- dekken_ 4y ago
  I don't disagree with this, but it might only be a partial answer.
0xBABAD00C 4y ago
> what the point of life is to the universe Life is the evolution of (increasingly) complex adaptive systems in non-equilibrium state, driven by external energy and enabling a new regime of faster entropy increase, thus faster descent towards the "heat death". This is contrary to the popular belief that life somehow goes against the 2nd law of thermodynamics. In fact, it is the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the universal drive towards higher-entropy states (we are essentially specs of dust in a slow-motion explosion, since the Big Bang), that enables life-like systems to evolve under the right conditions to accelerate the slide towards a higher-entropy state. Specifically in case of carbon-based biological life, one succinct tongue-in-cheek way to put it is "life's purpose is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide". See the "Nick Lane" discussion thread from today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32392937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32392937
a9h74j 4y ago
Precisely at this juncture, one answer from Alan Watts was: Some apparent problems are created by language.
la64710 4y ago
As a signal processing machine what the brain understand as the universe may not in some reality have a point

Not saying you're wrong, but it leaves the question of what the point of life is to the universe.

elevaet 4y ago

Why would/should/could there be a point? Life just is, doing life.

dekken_ 4y ago
This is a tautology.
- harperlee 4y ago
  Wasn’t it intended? Self-reference as a way to say “this has a loop shape”.
  - dekken_ 4y ago
    perhaps it was, I don't accept it is my point
- elevaet 4y ago
  Life is recursion

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

Unless one believes in supernatural creators, observers and judges, there is no point in anything and existence, life and consciousness are all unlucky coincidences. We are an absolutely pointless long term consequence of the natural process of evolution, that can start anytime the environment for life is just right.

dekken_ 4y ago
> Unless one believes in supernatural creators, observers and judges, there is no point in anything and existence This is your opinion. There are other possibilities.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  > There are other possibilities. They are unprovable but irrefutable delusions or part of frameworks people made up to come to peace with the truth. Examples frameworks would be pitiful reasons to exist like "keep the species alive", "keep the family line going", "I need to be behave this and that way because my deity will judge me when I die" etc.
mistermann 4y ago
If this is true, why do atheists get so bent out of shape when you don't comply with their scriptures?
- dron57 4y ago
  Atheists don't have scriptures. Religious people love thinking about atheism as just another religion and will bring up all kinds of examples like Stalin and Mao commited attrocities in the name of religion. In reality atheists don't have anything in common with one another. There is no shared belief system or a set of scriptures for atheists. Stalin and Mao did however have a shared belief system and it wasn't atheism.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > In reality atheists don't have anything in common with one another. This seems unlikely. > There is no shared belief system or a set of scriptures for atheists. Large quantities of those I talk to on the internet seem to disagree.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  By all means, don't follow "our scriptures", whatever those may be, but accept that we consider anything anyone would call "faith" and belief in the super natural somewhere on the scale between magical thinking and mental illness.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    If people were so forgiving when it's time to walk the talk. Regardless, this (particularly, the conceptualization of the supernatural) is somewhat of a variation of the kind of thinking that I'm referring to. I don't disagree that this isn't formally documented in scripture, but nonetheless it seems to have somehow ended up broadly installed in minds (both theist and atheist, to be fair), not unlike how various behaviors can be observed in theists despite it not being a part of formal scripture.

morgangiraud 4y ago

Understanding itself.

dekken_ 4y ago
I don't disagree with this, but it might only be a partial answer.

0xBABAD00C 4y ago

> what the point of life is to the universe Life is the evolution of (increasingly) complex adaptive systems in non-equilibrium state, driven by external energy and enabling a new regime of faster entropy increase, thus faster descent towards the "heat death". This is contrary to the popular belief that life somehow goes against the 2nd law of thermodynamics. In fact, it is the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the universal drive towards higher-entropy states (we are essentially specs of dust in a slow-motion explosion, since the Big Bang), that enables life-like systems to evolve under the right conditions to accelerate the slide towards a higher-entropy state. Specifically in case of carbon-based biological life, one succinct tongue-in-cheek way to put it is "life's purpose is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide". See the "Nick Lane" discussion thread from today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32392937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32392937

a9h74j 4y ago

Precisely at this juncture, one answer from Alan Watts was: Some apparent problems are created by language.

la64710 4y ago

As a signal processing machine what the brain understand as the universe may not in some reality have a point