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Why life is absurd

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Why life is absurd

#61

Post by philwelch »

marincounty wrote: post #37
zaroth wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depending on how much the husband had to drink at dinner, it might not be so random after all.

Re: Why life is absurd

#62

Post by AnimalMuppet »

gphil wrote: post #54
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #47

We long for permanence, but death comes anyway. We long for a real basis for morals, but if all we are is matter obeying the laws of physics, morals cannot be anything more than arbitrarily-made-up rules. We long for meaning, but that's hard to come by too. It usually comes down to randomly picking something and assigning meaning to it, and claiming that now you have meaning. But if all you are is a machine made of a…

> We long for a real basis for morals, but if all we are is matter obeying the laws of physics, morals cannot be anything more than arbitrarily-made-up rules. That's not necessarily true: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/#2

I think that I'm arguing on a different level than that link. If all we are is matter obeying the laws of physics, then you can't say "It was wrong to do that" because I couldn't have done anything else. Each of my atoms is just obeying the laws of physics; that's driving my biochemicals according to the laws of biochemistry, and those are driving my neurons according to the laws of neurology. At no place in there do I have anything that looks like free will, or any ability to make a non-programmed choice.

As Sam Harris said, either I'm a deterministic machine, or I'm a random machine, but in neither case do I have moral responsibility for what I do.

Re: Why life is absurd

#63

Post by kristofferR »

keslag wrote: post #50

The only absurd thing about life, is that through the process, something was created that understood the absurdity of it all.

We only understand the absurdity of it because absurdity is a concept created by humanity - which if you think about it is quite absurd in itself.

Re: Why life is absurd

#64

Post by guelo »

This is a western individualistic philosophy that ignores the amazing accomplishments of the human species. In other more collective cultures bringing shame to your tribe is a moral reason to kill yourself because the individual is not the end all be all. We are ants in a giant, unimaginably successful ant colony. Focusing on the life of an individual ant is what is absurd.

Re: Why life is absurd

#65

Post by AnimalMuppet »

krapp wrote: post #57
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you miss my point. Given de Sade's premise (that there is no God), his conclusion seems to follow. (If you think you can show that it doesn't, go for it.) And many people accept de Sade's premise. They are then left with his conclusion. (Not necessarily sadism - that's just what de Sade felt like doing. The part that people are left with is "Whatever is, is right" - that is, there is no basis for a "should" o…

It seems I got it completely backwards then, I feel kind of silly.

Well... do you blame yourself, or my explanation? Message sent != message received, but the blame could be at my end.

Re: Why life is absurd

#66

Post by gphil »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #62
gphil wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We long for a real basis for morals, but if all we are is matter obeying the laws of physics, morals cannot be anything more than arbitrarily-made-up rules. That's not necessarily true: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/#2

I think that I'm arguing on a different level than that link. If all we are is matter obeying the laws of physics, then you can't say "It was wrong to do that" because I couldn't have done anything else . Each of my atoms is just obeying the laws of physics; that's driving my biochemicals according to the laws of biochemistry, and those are driving my neurons according to the laws of neurology. At no place in there d…

You're really bringing the Philosophy major in me out tonight!

First off, naturalism does not necessarily imply determinism. But even given physical determinism, the incompatibility of it and free will is not a certainty:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

The point I'm really trying to make is that there are a lot of smart people who have written on all these topics, and the answers are far from settled.

Re: Why life is absurd

#67

Post by krapp »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #65
krapp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems I got it completely backwards then, I feel kind of silly.

Well... do you blame yourself, or my explanation? Message sent != message received, but the blame could be at my end.

I'm going to blame myself. I wound up arguing against a strawman without realizing it.

Re: Why life is absurd

#68

Post by ctdonath »

Humans have had about 10,000 years of interesting & productive history. At best, a human lifespan is about 100 years. That's one hundred 100-year lives back-to-back. That's...not much at all.

Re: Why life is absurd

#69

Post by gear54rus »

Life is perfectly balanced in this regard, I would say.

Only those without a clear focus on their goal may ask a question 'why am I here?'. If you've ever achieved something in your life that others will admire or build upon - it was not in vain. That's why we are here: being its members, to advance humanity as a whole.

That's also exactly why we should never achieve immortality (so that we have motivation to do something in out limited time) and if we do so, it would be one of the worst events humanity has ever encountered.

Sadly, this day most people look at this world through prism of financial wealth, but trading things (often completely useless things, I might) back and forth can hardly be considered an achievement future generations can benefit from. All in all, in the modern world, realization of one's potential has stepped back to give way to greed and that cannot be called progress in any way.

EDIT: Well isn't that a knee-jerk reaction. People always reject this argument for some reason and always fail to come up with the solid reason for this. Is this what we've come to as a humanity?

Re: Why life is absurd

#70

Post by nazgulnarsil »

forloop wrote: post #53
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Elysium has 5 Nobel Laureates on their board[0]! Their Chief Scientist is Leonard Guarente of MIT. Novartis[1], the pharmaceutical company, who ranked number one in world-wide sales in 2013 is working on a longevity drug based on rapamycin. Elizabeth Blackburn got a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, in 2009, for her work on telomeres! Quite frankly: lulz! [0] http://www.elysiumhealth.com/team [1] http://en.wikip…

nothing you said changes the incentives in front of researchers. Grant money is there in the billions for cancer research, obesity research etc. There is essentially no grant money there for basic longevity research. I say this having spoken with people trying to get funding for basic longevity research.
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