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Why life is absurd

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Why life is absurd

#81

Post by tempestn »

tempestn wrote: post #44
zaroth wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good point! To the extent that we can build on abstractions and black boxes we stand on the shoulders of giants. BTW, perhaps s/human intelligence/science & technology. Does this really work about as well (e.g. leaky abstractions but better than nothing) in all disciplines? Learning math is a pretty much a 'climb the ladder' experience. You don't have to literally discover it all for yourself, but you do still h…

Great thoughts (in this and your other comments here). I have to think that for better or worse, even if human lifespans are drastically increased, it is inevitable that we will reasonably quickly reach the point where computers essentially know more than we do. 500 years might give us time to climb a much higher ladder of knowledge, but computers don't have to climb it at all; they will all have access to all the kn…

On the other hand, there are physical limits to computing power. Computers will always be able to solve simple problems faster, but I suppose it isn't a given that they will be able to solve complicated problems better, than humans. (This other article on the homepage got me thinking about this more: http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html)

Re: Why life is absurd

#82

Post by andrewflnr »

aikah wrote: post #78
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…

> morals cannot be anything more than arbitrarily-made-up rules. One could argue morals should be based on the survival of mankind. Because that's the only positive goal of it, to survive as long as possible,though, ultimately mankind will come to an end,that's inevitable. On the other hand, as long as there is energy,artificial intelligence could outlast us.It would be mankind's testament and ultimate legacy. I alwa…

Survival of humanity is an arbitrary, made-up goal, from a materialist perspective, anyway.

Re: Why life is absurd

#83

Post by keane »

aikah wrote: post #78
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…

> morals cannot be anything more than arbitrarily-made-up rules. One could argue morals should be based on the survival of mankind. Because that's the only positive goal of it, to survive as long as possible,though, ultimately mankind will come to an end,that's inevitable. On the other hand, as long as there is energy,artificial intelligence could outlast us.It would be mankind's testament and ultimate legacy. I alwa…

No, AnimalMuppet is correct. We are unable to value the survival of mankind as objectively good, as we have no empirical evidence to do so (more accurately: we cannot infer an Ought from an Is).

See this for more on why: http://liamk.org/is-love-real/

Our options are Nihilism/Zen/Absurdity or Theism. And if the former is true, it doesn't matter if we hold the latter. As CS Lewis put it, if the Theists are wrong after all they would have merely paid the universe a compliment it would not have deserved.

Re: Why life is absurd

#84

Post by vlucas »

aikah wrote: post #33
discreteevent wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are tons of things that are falsifiable about the Bible and Christianity in particular. The Bible - unlike most other religious texts - gives many historic accounts of events, cities, places, timelines, people, kingdoms, lineages, etc. that are all quite easily verifiable.

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2013/07/christianity-t...

Re: Why life is absurd

#85

Post by r721 »

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?

Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Landscape

Re: Why life is absurd

#86

Post by mhartl »

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…

But there is no objectively true philosophy.

There is, however, objectively inconsistent philosophy. Bostrom would probably argue that most people believe things (such as valuing individual lives) that are inconsistent with complacency in the face of death. Witness, for example, the obstinate resistance to cryonics even among those who would eagerly seek out an untested and experimental surgery to avoid death at the hands of cancer or heart disease. Unless great care is taken to reason dispassionately, the enormity and apparent intractability of death compromise a rational assessment of its horror.

Re: Why life is absurd

#87

Post by xaa »

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.

Ouch, that's my career ;)

But the current trick to do longevity research in a way that will be funded is to point out how major diseases have age as a major risk factor, and that to tackle cancer, heart disease, etc, we need to understand more about aging. And that the median age in the US is increasing, therefore age-associated diseases will cause more of a health care cost burden.

In absolute terms, our society spends a pittance on this important problem. But relative to other biomedical researchers, aging researchers don't have that hard a time. You just have to be careful not to make overly bold claims and be lumped in with de Grey et al.

To summarize my thoughts on this article, I will add that I independently came to much the same conclusions as the OP, and that's why I'm doing what I am. I don't think I could make web apps all day or do 99% of careers because of this very absurdity. In fact, I am constantly surprised at the ability most people seem to have to go to a completely meaningless job every day.

Re: Why life is absurd

#88

Post by eli_gottlieb »

pron wrote: post #28
zaroth wrote: post #6

I couldn't agree more that our humanity places truly absurd limits on our existence. You get, if you're lucky 30-40 years of solid productivity after 20-30 years of training. Maybe enough time to create one or two solid accomplishments before your capacity for thought, and soon enough your capacity for life is extinguished. Also consider the economic argument. On the one hand, the level of investment experts make in…

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…

>The universe is indifferent to us being around or extinct.

So what? I fail to understand how this supposedly renders our lives more or less meaningful.

Re: Why life is absurd

#89

Post by Galacticus »

Life is a long struggle for most people, with death our final resting place.

Clearly most of you have never struggled all your life. Of course you don't want to die with a silver spoon in your mouth.

For the rest of us, life's a bitch and then you die.

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