3 ms·

In an eternity all individual events lose their meaning. An endless life is a meaningless life.

voxl 2y ago
you've painted yourself into a corner, how exactly are you going to define meaning? As far as we know the universe is infinite, and as such all actions fit your description anyway, so why not be infinite along with it?
- lucianbr 2y ago
  I'm sure I read multiple times that the universe is finite. Both in space and time. Not that I agree with the "infinite life destroys all meaning". Just nitpicking.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> In an eternity all individual events lose their meaning. An endless life is a meaningless life One, we don't get an eternity. It's thermodynamically impossible. Two, we're mortal beings with mortal minds. Our trying to comprehend--let alone judge--what an immortal being would consider meaningful is hubris. Three, how does this scale? Is a child's life more meaningfully if it ends early? Why is our present life and healthspan the sole optimum?
- ganzuul 2y ago
  Both GR and QM do things thermodynamics prohibits.
- Kbelicius 2y ago
  [dead]
throw310822 2y ago
Meaningless for whom or for what? There is no meaning separate from a subject.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Meaningless for whom or for what? There is no meaning separate from a subject The philosophical argument for a truly-immortal being being indifferent is that they would, over an infinite timeline, experience every possible experience an infinite number of times. In that frame, preference loses meaning. A being that has no preference is indifferent to what happens around or to them. That, one could argue, is an existence without meaning. That's so splendidly separate from biological immortality as to be a straw man. (The argument also suffers from failing to appreciate that there are many types of infinity.)
  - Barrin92 2y ago
    Far from it being a straw man I think it's already a reality that affects us. In very affluent, safe countries we are so far removed from death or meaning that most people's lives consist of picking a different flavor of craft beer or game from their Steam library. This isn't just the concern of some theoretical immortal being, people have a crisis of meaning already, there's a bestseller with that title probably being published every week because in a way the illusion of immortality we have has already rendered most of what we do exchangeable and banal. Mind you it's no accident that the one meaningful thing most people still have, which is having kids, is precisely given meaning by our own mortality, it's the one transcendent thing that only exists because our lives are finite.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > people have a crisis of meaning already, there's a bestseller with that title probably being published every week People have always been complaining about this, I think Socrates and Cicero griped about it in their times. The problem isn’t distance from death but monotony. The philosophised immortal being has monotony forced upon them. Many people today and in the past self-impose it.
theonething 2y ago
Huh, I think the opposite. If all of this is eventually going away, what's the point?
ganzuul 2y ago
> An endless life is a meaningless life. A mere challenge to overcome.
komali2 2y ago
How does this cause individual events to lose meaning? Have events that happened to the human race as a whole thousands of years ago lost their meaning?
khafra 2y ago
You're not going to run out of atmospheric oxygen, no matter how much you breathe. There is, for your purposes, an unlimited amount of it. That may make all your breaths meaningless. But when I'm meditating, or bicycling up a hill, or face-to-face with my lover, or watching the sunrise on a cold morning, my breath has plenty of meaning to me. Limiting the amount of oxygen I was allowed to use would not lend those more meaning; scarcity is not the same as meaning.

voxl 2y ago

you've painted yourself into a corner, how exactly are you going to define meaning? As far as we know the universe is infinite, and as such all actions fit your description anyway, so why not be infinite along with it?

lucianbr 2y ago
I'm sure I read multiple times that the universe is finite. Both in space and time. Not that I agree with the "infinite life destroys all meaning". Just nitpicking.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> In an eternity all individual events lose their meaning. An endless life is a meaningless life One, we don't get an eternity. It's thermodynamically impossible. Two, we're mortal beings with mortal minds. Our trying to comprehend--let alone judge--what an immortal being would consider meaningful is hubris. Three, how does this scale? Is a child's life more meaningfully if it ends early? Why is our present life and healthspan the sole optimum?

ganzuul 2y ago
Both GR and QM do things thermodynamics prohibits.
Kbelicius 2y ago
[dead]

throw310822 2y ago

Meaningless for whom or for what? There is no meaning separate from a subject.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Meaningless for whom or for what? There is no meaning separate from a subject The philosophical argument for a truly-immortal being being indifferent is that they would, over an infinite timeline, experience every possible experience an infinite number of times. In that frame, preference loses meaning. A being that has no preference is indifferent to what happens around or to them. That, one could argue, is an existence without meaning. That's so splendidly separate from biological immortality as to be a straw man. (The argument also suffers from failing to appreciate that there are many types of infinity.)
- Barrin92 2y ago
  Far from it being a straw man I think it's already a reality that affects us. In very affluent, safe countries we are so far removed from death or meaning that most people's lives consist of picking a different flavor of craft beer or game from their Steam library. This isn't just the concern of some theoretical immortal being, people have a crisis of meaning already, there's a bestseller with that title probably being published every week because in a way the illusion of immortality we have has already rendered most of what we do exchangeable and banal. Mind you it's no accident that the one meaningful thing most people still have, which is having kids, is precisely given meaning by our own mortality, it's the one transcendent thing that only exists because our lives are finite.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > people have a crisis of meaning already, there's a bestseller with that title probably being published every week People have always been complaining about this, I think Socrates and Cicero griped about it in their times. The problem isn’t distance from death but monotony. The philosophised immortal being has monotony forced upon them. Many people today and in the past self-impose it.

theonething 2y ago

Huh, I think the opposite. If all of this is eventually going away, what's the point?

ganzuul 2y ago

> An endless life is a meaningless life. A mere challenge to overcome.

komali2 2y ago

How does this cause individual events to lose meaning? Have events that happened to the human race as a whole thousands of years ago lost their meaning?

khafra 2y ago

You're not going to run out of atmospheric oxygen, no matter how much you breathe. There is, for your purposes, an unlimited amount of it. That may make all your breaths meaningless. But when I'm meditating, or bicycling up a hill, or face-to-face with my lover, or watching the sunrise on a cold morning, my breath has plenty of meaning to me. Limiting the amount of oxygen I was allowed to use would not lend those more meaning; scarcity is not the same as meaning.