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After being a father, now I see life as a recursion, a recursion to pass on life. On micro-scale, it means being good parents, to pass on accumulated wisdom, or
by a_c 3y ago
After being a father, now I see life as a recursion, a recursion to pass on life. On micro-scale, it means being good parents, to pass on accumulated wisdom, or the lack of, to children. Then scale the recursion to extended family, community and maybe whole humanity. I've internalised the feeling that things that help the recursion are things worth doing, and the smaller the scale, the stronger the feeling is.
- quonn 3y agoThe reproduction of life can never be meaningful by itself, in part because a single life is already countless moments and the problem is the same. I think what you perhaps want to point at is the opposite: the fact that _a_ life is finite and therefore things worth doing/things that are meaningful look beyond that - and the wider they look the more meaningful they can be.
- shanebellone 3y ago"therefore things worth doing/things that are meaningful look beyond that - and the wider they look the more meaningful they can be." Are "meaningful things" qualified by the persistence of their consequence?
- quonn 3y agoNot necessarily, so I wrote „wide“. By wide I mean wide in space and conceptually this also extends to wide in time. So there is are multiple positions in space at the current time and likewise there are multiple positions in the future and they all equivalently can be touched or not.
- patcon 3y agoI'm also a strong believer in recursion being a key feature of living processes and intelligence..! A book you might like: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691145471/the-recursive-mind https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691145471/th...
- LiveTheDream 3y agoI subscribe to this theory as well. Another earlier book about the topic is I Am A Strangle Loop by Douglas Hofstadter[0] [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123471.I_Am_a_Strange_Loop https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123471.I_Am_a_Strange_Lo...
- atuladhar 3y agoThe typo (Strange -> Strangle) gives this comment a very surreal vibe.
- dghughes 3y agoYou have to wonder if that is how reincarnation concept came about. People seeing themselves in children or anyone knowing you see the same. I don't have any children I wish I did both to pass on the family line and to see myself (and wife if I had one) in my children.
- IIAOPSW 3y agoI exist because I want to exist. I want to exist because I exist.
- Kinrany 3y agoTrying to do what evolution does but on purpose is like going downstairs to help gravity.