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Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

#141

Post by arcanon »

avgcorrection wrote: post #85
jedberg wrote: post #30

Biologically? To reproduce. That is the purpose of every living being. But luckily as humans, we have developed brains so big that we realized that isn't the only purpose of life. For humans, the purpose of life is: Pleasure. Doing whatever it takes to make yourself happy, hopefully not at the expense of others. Some people never achieve happiness, some achieve it early with few resources. Some people achieve it over…

You’re confusing purpose with inevitability. Why do organisms reproduce? Because if they didn’t they wouldn’t be around—duh! This is like saying that the purpose of water is to find the path of least resistance.

I thought organisms reproduce because they get horny, they typically don’t get philosophical about it.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

#142

Post by sershe »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #49
thinkingkong wrote: post #14

There is no point. It's up to you to decide what it is that matters to you but if you're looking for some universal direction then that will just lead to frustration. If you're lucky and you have the resources then you're in a position to choose which I understand can feel overwhelming. I would just encourage you to consider the possibility that you've been given a gift and you should cherish it.

Thank you. The problem – or at least, my problem – is that "There isn't any point" leads to a feeling of "This is pointless." Wandering around life feeling "This is pointless" when you do anything seems... suboptimal. But it's true, right? If there's no point, then the conclusion is "This is pointless" for every experience. And it ends up feeling so hollow sometimes. Relaxing and enjoying it is of course the antidote…

I recommend reading Myth of Sisyphus by Camus (the full version, maybe skipping the stuff about other philosophers and where they went wrong). It describes the notion of Absurd, something that arises from the irreconcilability of the consciousness and the universe... and also talks a lot on what is to be done about that.

A crude synopsis is that you can create your own meaning while keeping the pointlessness of it always in view... you can live life, create art, etc. as a meaningless revolt against meaninglessness :)

I also wonder anyway, how would life with a point feel? It goes back to absurdity of human condition; you think you need a point but how does that work? Let's say you achieve the point of life when you are 53, what do you do then? :) Life with an absolute point is not actually a condition I can imagine :)

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

#143

Post by sershe »

avgcorrection wrote: post #84
arpa wrote: post #39

"We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you're dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played." Allan Watts

That might be true in the abstract, as a theory. But when it comes to point-of-life I think it’s better to judge a philosophy based on how a person has lived it. And it doesn’t seem like Watts lived as good of a life as he could.

Thinking about living a "good life" implies knowing the point of living a life :)

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

#144

Post by thunkshift1 »

mbrudd wrote: post #51
serjester wrote: post #24

“What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children, life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until … a distance appears between what…

Some kids would disagree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28861912

Wtf japan, that was dark

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

#145

Post by godDLL »

jedberg wrote: post #30

Biologically? To reproduce. That is the purpose of every living being. But luckily as humans, we have developed brains so big that we realized that isn't the only purpose of life. For humans, the purpose of life is: Pleasure. Doing whatever it takes to make yourself happy, hopefully not at the expense of others. Some people never achieve happiness, some achieve it early with few resources. Some people achieve it over…

Happiness is overrated. Every time in my life that I've been happy I've known I am, I realized at that moment that it is going to pass. Just as I realized every time I was miserable that too is not going to last.

Pleasure is above the speed limit. It's in the definition of it.

And the point actually is to learn to drive and take care of your vehicle, understand the local roads and traffic, and play in that playground, or some other. Not to ecstatically crash it all at an early age, having forgot about the breaking functionality.

It gets easier to do if you realize you're one of many, and can learn from what they did before you got here, as well as now, when you're tackling it. You are never, and have never been alone.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

#146

Post by godDLL »

serjester wrote: post #24

“What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children, life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until … a distance appears between what…

From my own experience this might have only been true before the age of 4 when I woke up to the world. After that only when I am so strongly identified with and attached to what is going on that it's unhealthy. Or when I have gotten it all so Zen that I don't have to decide anything, everything flows.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

#147

Post by godDLL »

You make it up. That question, you made that up entirely. The concept of a point of a life, or lives or maybe, the existence of life.

In the same way you should think of an answer. You should. You.

Because right now it's like you're asking me "Who am I?"

Me. About you. Who you are.

That is not my responsibility to decide. I don't know what you are and what your question is about. You do.

But I know you're a thing like me. Because a similar sentiment arises in me, at times. I've learned to not recognize that as a knowledge-seeking thing, but instead as a form of hunger, or thirst.

An indication that time has passed.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

#148

Post by godDLL »

at_a_remove wrote: post #80

As I have grown older and some of my vim and vigor have waned, the momentum that has hustled me past obstacles and over life's hurdles has similarly decreased, and I find myself wondering the same. The objects I have collected have lost their pallor, experiences for which I have paid through the nose left me hollow, the connections I once thought complex are shallow. Through more than one circumstance of birth I have…

Whenever that happened to myself, I'd start over in a different space. New rules, new acquaintances, new things, and new experiences.

Get out the house. No.

Sell it and move. Move somewhere you would expect to be surprised. Do something you would not expect yourself to do for a living. Experience a new life, a new meaning.

Give it 7-15 years and you may want to do it again. It's good for you.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

#149

Post by godDLL »

thaw211014 wrote: post #31
wsinks wrote: post #8

To make connections in new and surprising ways that you talk about to other people. Or The point of life is to increase entropy. Or The point of life is to secure resources that allow that life to continue on in the way that that life decides to, based on that life’s structure

> to increase entropy Maybe to decrease it.

That endeavour would be pretty much futile, would it not? The momentum in the other direction is built into the world physics, the rules of the game, is it not?

Would that not lead to a frustrating life?

Re: Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

#150

Post by godDLL »

carabiner wrote: post #11

I'm childfree so I'm on the leanFIRE track, pursuing my hobbies in my spare time. When I'm physically incapable of them or I run out of money (around 70), I plan to kill myself.

I don't know. If I sit down with my back straight and close my eyes, I can, in the space of 3-5 minutes, infallibly find the inner joy rising up from my body. Same way that something's kinda tense, and something's kinda sat on – there is a form of joy.

I hear it is never lost, lest you're actually dead or in the process of.

So I don't know about that.

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