It is important to contextualize what almost all means in this context of a vast and possibly infinite universe. It leaves an incomprehensible number of stars yet to form. It also leaves open a backdoor for a star forming Renaissance if blackhole activity dies down in another 10 billion years.
If we contextualize 95% of all to created stars were created it is still quite a lot dead.
Then taking our context which is our observable universe which is only a small part of universe that we care about - we can certainly say it is dead.
This dramatic visualization of the timeline for the rest of the universe is well worth a watch to get a feel for what we believe the future of the universe to look like [TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA However, when you get to the end (which is perhaps a little depressing!), I'd recommend learning a bit about what we think could come 'after' this peri…
I just watched this and found the ending quite comforting: at the end, entropy stops increasing and nothing happens, forever. After a long week at work, it's pretty much what I'm up for!
In this framework, Stalin and Kim Jong-Il created their own meaning and no one has a basis for saying what they chose is worse than anyone else's choice. To many of us, that is horribly demoralizing.
Sure they do -- I can pick any basis I want for saying their ideas are worse. I can make that basis arbitrary (because I don't like their names), or I can ground it in appeals to things that people value widely. One can get lost in the idea that things are meaningless on a purely narrative/mental basis, but you're embedded in a biological matrix that will very likely re-orient you on the idea that some things matter…
Sure, but if someone doesn't grant that they want to reduce suffering for others, you have no legitimate way to argue to them that they should. You get to pick your meaning and they get to pick theirs.
In this framework, Stalin and Kim Jong-Il created their own meaning and no one has a basis for saying what they chose is worse than anyone else's choice. To many of us, that is horribly demoralizing.
>>no one has a basis for saying what they chose is worse than anyone else's choice. Of course they do! If your parents were killed by Stalin you probably have an opinion one way or the other. That is exactly what this thread is talking about.
Okay, you're right - I can use any basis I want.
There's no shared basis I can legitimately use to argue with them, though, if they don't happen to share my chosen values.
Wikipedia has a page on the Timeline of the far future[1]. It lists a ton of physical and cosmological things that are predicted to happen based on our current understanding of physics. A really fun read that always takes me down a rabbit's hole of phenomena wikipedia pages. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
There's a video on that. The end of the universe: https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA This is so weird to think that for most of its life the universe will be empty and cold. Like what's even the point of all this, of life, of us, if in the end nothing matters, everything decays into nothingness.
There's a video on that. The end of the universe: https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA This is so weird to think that for most of its life the universe will be empty and cold. Like what's even the point of all this, of life, of us, if in the end nothing matters, everything decays into nothingness.
Thinking about this stuff is what prompted my thinking about things like suicide. The Universe is so vast. So much space, most of it with only the barest wisp of gas. Most of the solar systems we see in the night sky may not have life (we don't know yet). And yet here we are, a rare event in a vast Universe. In the end it doesn't matter what you do. What you accomplish or did not accomplish. What awards were won or l…
what I would like to point out is that even though every galaxy rushes away and we can no longer see them eventually, its an amazing thing we were born at a time when they still here and the cosmic microwave background radiation is still detectible at all and we are able to piece together the beginnings and predict the end of the universe. That thought alone inspires me to look for meaning in our existence. I know its an anthropological line of thinking but its what I personally think is amazing about all this.
Wikipedia has a page on the Timeline of the far future[1]. It lists a ton of physical and cosmological things that are predicted to happen based on our current understanding of physics. A really fun read that always takes me down a rabbit's hole of phenomena wikipedia pages. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
There's a video on that. The end of the universe: https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA This is so weird to think that for most of its life the universe will be empty and cold. Like what's even the point of all this, of life, of us, if in the end nothing matters, everything decays into nothingness.
The Universe (humans) gained consciousness and asked ‘Who made me?’
Sure they do -- I can pick any basis I want for saying their ideas are worse. I can make that basis arbitrary (because I don't like their names), or I can ground it in appeals to things that people value widely. One can get lost in the idea that things are meaningless on a purely narrative/mental basis, but you're embedded in a biological matrix that will very likely re-orient you on the idea that some things matter…
Sure, but if someone doesn't grant that they want to reduce suffering for others, you have no legitimate way to argue to them that they should. You get to pick your meaning and they get to pick theirs. It's "do what you want", at the end of the day.
That's what it's always been. Even if there were a moral framework that's provably true, people could still choose to act against it (assuming some kind of free will, even if it's compatibilist). What do you do when someone hears all your arguments and says "so what"? The same thing you have to do in a universe where meaning/morality is not intrinsic: convince those you can, and force those you can't, if it's important to you.
Thinking about this stuff is what prompted my thinking about things like suicide. The Universe is so vast. So much space, most of it with only the barest wisp of gas. Most of the solar systems we see in the night sky may not have life (we don't know yet). And yet here we are, a rare event in a vast Universe. In the end it doesn't matter what you do. What you accomplish or did not accomplish. What awards were won or l…
It helps to think of time as a dimension. Sure, you, anyone or anything will not last measured on this dimension. But it still has a span. You would not call objects meaningless or less beautiful just because they physically end at some point in space. Why is time so different? It is just the fourth dimension of their shape, giving them a more unique character.
The way I think of the universe is: we are the universe discovering itself, gaining consciousness and trying to figure itself out. Our fears are exactly the same as the universe’s. Our curiosity and wonder, also the universe’s. RN, this universe is a child, maybe a baby, and the way it’s expanding, it’s processes and consciousness will simply be on a much different time/space scale, require less energy (cold dark universe) with better understanding of space time, meaning rn it’s already able to appreciate all of time forever and understands that the point is not to go back and change things but to appreciate all presents. So us humans, we will learn at our pace, and if we go extinct, we’ve played our part, maybe another species someplace else will be better suited to carry on our torch or a completely new and different kind of torch.