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Re: undefined

#91

Post by card_zero »

smitty1e wrote: post #88
hansifer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with "because of social and evolutionary pressure"?

"Evolitionary" implies some direction and execution scope, does it not? Possibly I'm guilty of over-reading the word.

How does extra scope (like an afterlife) solve the problem of purpose? Now you have two problems of purpose. If I remember rightly, C.S. Lewis in his sci-fi made heaven into an endless series of adventures, which is the minimum necessary to make it attractive. But this still doesn't resolve to an ultimate purpose any more than a finite life does.

Often the question "what is the purpose of my existence?" is a proxy for some less abstract question, I think. Consider Young Frankenstein, and the gag where characters sing "Oh, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you! At last, I know the secret of it all!" because they got sex. Less cynically, it may simply be a matter of identifying comfortable values, in terms of the possible values available in the human condition in the present day. I mean you're unlikely to be honestly asking a question with a giant universal scope, if you claim that it bothers you personally.

Re: undefined

#92

Post by smitty1e »

card_zero wrote: post #91
smitty1e wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Evolitionary" implies some direction and execution scope, does it not? Possibly I'm guilty of over-reading the word.

How does extra scope (like an afterlife) solve the problem of purpose? Now you have two problems of purpose. If I remember rightly, C.S. Lewis in his sci-fi made heaven into an endless series of adventures, which is the minimum necessary to make it attractive. But this still doesn't resolve to an ultimate purpose any more than a finite life does. Often the question "what is the purpose of my existence?" is a proxy fo…

I don't find it contradictory to subscribe to both an individual Destiny and an "universal scope" Destiny of which the individual Destiny is a component.

This Destiny is in tension with Free Will (in my telling).

In retirement, my hope is to produce a lengthy, pretentious exploration of a few ideas that will doubtless help someone's insomnia.

Re: undefined

#94

Post by endgame »

gtest wrote: post #55
endgame wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would it matter if there is no life after this one? If there is no life after this one, maybe you should just "get over it". Because for as long as we are capable of caring, we should care that other people have to live with the consequences of our actions.

> we should care... But that's my question: if there is no afterlife, why?

Do you care about people _now_, even though their existence is finite and at some point anything you may or may not have done to affect them will cease mattering?

Re: undefined

#96

Post by card_zero »

smitty1e wrote: post #92
card_zero wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does extra scope (like an afterlife) solve the problem of purpose? Now you have two problems of purpose. If I remember rightly, C.S. Lewis in his sci-fi made heaven into an endless series of adventures, which is the minimum necessary to make it attractive. But this still doesn't resolve to an ultimate purpose any more than a finite life does. Often the question "what is the purpose of my existence?" is a proxy fo…

I don't find it contradictory to subscribe to both an individual Destiny and an "universal scope" Destiny of which the individual Destiny is a component. This Destiny is in tension with Free Will (in my telling). In retirement, my hope is to produce a lengthy, pretentious exploration of a few ideas that will doubtless help someone's insomnia.

Right, but any identification of the Ultimate Purpose is going to be a very vague bad guess. I kind of like "to learn", but besides that I tend to keep returning to a string bag of mixed values that won't boil down to anything neat.

Re: undefined

#97

Post by posixjfie99 »

klipklop wrote: post #22

[flagged]

I mean if someone says “be kind to animals get a dog” you already know they don’t quite know what “being kind to animals” is. If they say “all humans end up where I am” (even just in terms of age) you already know they don’t quite know what “all humans” is.

At the end of the day though, it’s just an out of touch person trying to pass on something in good faith. Their whistleblowing is an incidental side channel they probably didn’t really mean to get into.

Re: undefined

#98

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #50

One can only imagine what kind of HN account flags a comment like this one I hope the OP makes it through his surgery Perhaps then he can find the time to apologise to those who he believes might deserve an apology

Unflagged, thank you

Re: undefined

#99

Post by bjourne »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #30

> 3. Ethics matter. I don't believe there's any life after this one, but I find myself ruminating on what I've done. In 2015, I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he w…

It's an obvious troll post.

Re: undefined

#100

Post by smitty1e »

card_zero wrote: post #96
smitty1e wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it contradictory to subscribe to both an individual Destiny and an "universal scope" Destiny of which the individual Destiny is a component. This Destiny is in tension with Free Will (in my telling). In retirement, my hope is to produce a lengthy, pretentious exploration of a few ideas that will doubtless help someone's insomnia.

Right, but any identification of the Ultimate Purpose is going to be a very vague bad guess. I kind of like "to learn", but besides that I tend to keep returning to a string bag of mixed values that won't boil down to anything neat.

The reason I don't think Destiny can amount to more than a "very vague bad guess" as an intellectual matter is that such a solution would tamper with Free Will.
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