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Why life is absurd

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Why life is absurd

#31

Post by nazgulnarsil »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #27
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #26

In [The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLecJrXpOEU ), Nick Bostrom explores the fact that we refuse to see the massive crime being perpetuated against every human being simply because of the enormity of it. That we have our health ripped from us without consent is monstrous. Yes, yes, [Calico]( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_(company) ) exists. 100 million in the face of death is a…

Richard Hamming has a talk titled "You and Your Research", in which he discusses what sorts of things you should be working on. The summary is that you should be working on important problems. He then lists three of the most important problems that no one should actually work on, time travel, teleportation, and something else that I can't remember off the top of my head. The thing Hamming understood, but which Bostro…

>The thing Hamming understood, but which Bostrom, et al. don't is that sometimes even if something is extremely important or significant the lack of any reasonable approach to it makes it an unattractive thing to expend effort on. At least until a solution is more tractable. Further, the idea that women dying in childbirth is some great tragedy is only true in the philosophy Bostrom and others have adopted. It is one of massive egoism and human-centrism that I think is misplaced. These same people then reject any philosophies that lessen the devastation of women dying in childbirth on the grounds that they are the fictions of lesser minds attempting to placate themselves over their impending death during childbirth. But there is no objectively true philosophy. The whole point of philosophy is to invent a fiction that lets you cope with reality in a productive way.

I find your conception of philosophy unsatisfactory. Furthermore there are reasonable angles of attack we have on aging. We are making great strides in understanding metabolic pathways of aging in animal models, but we need the research funding to attract the researchers to get the work done. We will make significant progress when you can expect to have a bountiful academic career working on it. Longevity research is currently a career dead end.

Re: Why life is absurd

#32

Post by forloop »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #27
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #26

In [The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLecJrXpOEU ), Nick Bostrom explores the fact that we refuse to see the massive crime being perpetuated against every human being simply because of the enormity of it. That we have our health ripped from us without consent is monstrous. Yes, yes, [Calico]( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_(company) ) exists. 100 million in the face of death is a…

Richard Hamming has a talk titled "You and Your Research", in which he discusses what sorts of things you should be working on. The summary is that you should be working on important problems. He then lists three of the most important problems that no one should actually work on, time travel, teleportation, and something else that I can't remember off the top of my head. The thing Hamming understood, but which Bostro…

> The thing Hamming understood, but which Bostrom, et al. don't is that sometimes even if something is extremely important or significant the lack of any reasonable approach to it makes it an unattractive thing to expend effort on. At least until a solution is more tractable.

Life extension has been demonstrated in other species. And medication, such as metformin, has been shown to extend human lifespan (I believe average, not maximum). Anyway, the point is that life extension for humans is perfectly tractable.

Re metformin. From a study[0]: 'Patients with type 2 diabetes initiated with metformin monotherapy had longer survival than did matched, non-diabetic controls. Those treated with sulphonylurea had markedly reduced survival compared with both matched controls and those receiving metformin monotherapy. This supports the position of metformin as first-line therapy and implies that metformin may confer benefit in non-diabetes. Sulphonylurea remains a concern.'

[0] 'Can people with type 2 diabetes live longer than those without? A comparison of mortality in people initiated with metformin or sulphonylurea monotherapy and matched, non-diabetic controls' http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dom.12354/abstrac...

Re: Why life is absurd

#33

Post by aikah »

discreteevent wrote: post #17
chuhnk wrote: post #5

As someone who believes in Islam this is an extremely thought provoking piece and I love it. It makes you think and question existence. It makes you wonder about what we're doing here and how life would be different if we existing at a different point in time and space. Just such interesting topics for conversation. Life and the universe.

Maybe one can see religion as simply a rational response to the absurdity of life as described in the article. Life is patently absurd and yet we are rational. Why is that? We don't need to be. The answer for many is that there must be something more. For others the something more is itself absurd. But it doesn't mean that it is an irrational response. Its quite the opposite. It's an attempt to make sense of somethin…

> Maybe one can see religion as simply a rational response to the absurdity of life

The problem is that religion doesn't answer anything(or gives absurd answers,backed by nothing but faith and fishy philosophy),isn't rational because it is not fasifiable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

What is clearly absurd is religion.

Re: Why life is absurd

#34

Post by forloop »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #31
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Richard Hamming has a talk titled "You and Your Research", in which he discusses what sorts of things you should be working on. The summary is that you should be working on important problems. He then lists three of the most important problems that no one should actually work on, time travel, teleportation, and something else that I can't remember off the top of my head. The thing Hamming understood, but which Bostro…

>The thing Hamming understood, but which Bostrom, et al. don't is that sometimes even if something is extremely important or significant the lack of any reasonable approach to it makes it an unattractive thing to expend effort on. At least until a solution is more tractable. Further, the idea that women dying in childbirth is some great tragedy is only true in the philosophy Bostrom and others have adopted. It is one…

> Longevity research is currently a career dead end.

David Sinclair[0] is wealthy and well known for his work in longevity. He Sold his company to GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million.

D Sinclair's earlier work was on resveratrol, and there's some more products coming. Well, actually one has arrived—in the US at least: http://www.elysiumhealth.com/

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sinclair_%28biologist%29

Re: Why life is absurd

#35

Post by bemmu »

neuronic wrote: post #20
xlm1717 wrote: post #11

The absurdity of life is the absurdity of existence: that there is anything at all is completely absurd and it's doubtful that this will ever be explained satisfactorily.

You can even split that into steps and levels. Absurdity progresses from the entire universe right down into details like the existence of coffee or oil. Two black liquids that just happen to exist and fuel the world. Can you imagine modern society without them? But what bugs me most is that a universe without an entity to perceive and observe it is just such a waste of ... energy? It's almost like the existence of t…

In a universe without an observer there would be no-one to note how absurd that is.

Re: Why life is absurd

#36

Post by rndn »

xlm1717 wrote: post #11

The absurdity of life is the absurdity of existence: that there is anything at all is completely absurd and it's doubtful that this will ever be explained satisfactorily.

Does anyone happen to know whether philosophers have tried to come up with optimal ethics assuming P(universe exists for no reason) is close to 1 and P(god exists) is close to 0? The best we can do is probably to maximize the life span of our species to continually improve these estimates and the best way to achieve that is possibly to minimize suffering. Is it that easy?

Re: Why life is absurd

#37

Post by marincounty »

zaroth wrote: post #30
pron wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do you think productivity is any less absurd than non-productivity? And why is intelligence relevant to absurdity? Is a butterfly's life any more absurd than a human's? Humans and humanity don't have goals. The universe is indifferent to us being around or extinct. And it is certainly not our goal to be creative, productive, efficient. We make up goals for ourselves to give subjective meaning to our lives, an…

Not everyone is an explorer, creator, inventor, artist, etc. Not everyone takes life as an opportunity to push some boundary further than anyone before. Pull on some thread and see where it all leads... But I think for those of us who are , mortality seems like an awful joke, and a terrible waste. We just get started and then it's all cut short.

I will never forget a lottery winner statement. She won a huge amount of money in the lotttery. She went out to dinner with her family to celebrate. The next morning her husband woke up in complete liver failure. Both were MD's and her final statement at the end of the interview was "Life is truly random." I think about that quote too often.

Re: Why life is absurd

#38

Post by ZeroFries »

Life is meaningless if you live a finite life because no matter what you do it will be washed out in time. Life is meaningless if you live an infinite life because any finite portion of time in your life approaches 0% of your total life time and by definition has no value. And yet, meaning can only be defined by life, because there is no such thing as inherent meaning.

If I created life I would almost certainly make it finite but endow it with a sense of hope that life goes beyond a single life span.

Re: Why life is absurd

#39

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rndn wrote: post #36
xlm1717 wrote: post #11

The absurdity of life is the absurdity of existence: that there is anything at all is completely absurd and it's doubtful that this will ever be explained satisfactorily.

Does anyone happen to know whether philosophers have tried to come up with optimal ethics assuming P(universe exists for no reason) is close to 1 and P(god exists) is close to 0? The best we can do is probably to maximize the life span of our species to continually improve these estimates and the best way to achieve that is possibly to minimize suffering. Is it that easy?

The Marquis de Sade did. He said, "If there is no God, then whatever is, is right." And he went on to say that nature made man stronger than woman, therefore man had the right to do to woman whatever he wanted.

So that's probably not what you consider "optimal ethics", but given the starting assumption (that there is no God), it seems very difficult to explain why de Sade was wrong.

Re: Why life is absurd

#40

Post by nazgulnarsil »

forloop wrote: post #34
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The thing Hamming understood, but which Bostrom, et al. don't is that sometimes even if something is extremely important or significant the lack of any reasonable approach to it makes it an unattractive thing to expend effort on. At least until a solution is more tractable. Further, the idea that women dying in childbirth is some great tragedy is only true in the philosophy Bostrom and others have adopted. It is one…

> Longevity research is currently a career dead end. David Sinclair[0] is wealthy and well known for his work in longevity. He Sold his company to GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million. D Sinclair's earlier work was on resveratrol, and there's some more products coming. Well, actually one has arrived—in the US at least: http://www.elysiumhealth.com/ [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sinclair_%28biologist%29

Citing a single outlier does not change the prospects of an academic researcher going into longevity work.
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