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Why life is absurd

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Why life is absurd

#101

Post by keane »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #92
keane wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>(more accurately: we cannot infer an Ought from an Is). Oughts cannot mean anything in the first place unless they ultimately reduce to some kind of is-checkable fact.

This would give you Nihilism. Theism disagrees.

Re: Why life is absurd

#102

Post by sireat »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #88
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…

>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.

If (universe==indifferent) meaning=null;

Anecdotally speaking most people get through their day to day tasks thinking that somehow it all matters in the end.

If nothing really matters, and best you can do is be your own little streetlight(to paraphase Kubrick) you are faced with the problem on what to choose as your meaning.

Pick anything, it will do. That is scary.

Re: Why life is absurd

#103

Post by neuronic »

allemagne wrote: post #43
neuronic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>It's almost like the existence of the universe implies the existence of an observer. That the formation of intelligent life is an expected result of the universe existing. Seems like a logical stretch, but very poetic.

I was aware that it was a logical stretch, yea. That's also why I made sure to include the 'almost'. It's just the kind of thought that pops into my head when star gazing.

Re: Why life is absurd

#104

Post by neuronic »

lloeki wrote: post #99
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…

> The universe As far as we know currently, the future looks particularly grim†: on the longest time scale imaginable, the very fabric of the universe is being thinned out of existence. The absurd thing here is trying to make sense out of what definitely hasn't, as all information within this universe will ultimately be destroyed. Whatever, I choose to enjoy the ride. † http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_fa…

I wouldn't take this understanding of the physical universe for granted. I think we lack both insight and perspective to make sure-fire statements about things happening to the universe billions of years from now.

Re: Why life is absurd

#105

Post by neuronic »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #88
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…

>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.

Meaning is like a whole bunch of other things very relative, so I agree with your point.

But I understand OP as well. Some other potential entity only a dozen light years away might not care much about our human art, love, war or suffering. Maybe the interest in alien life is unique to us because we are social in nature. We don't know other civilization's cultures. Maybe they know where we are but actively choose to ignore us. We can't even deal with or comprehend cultures a few hundred miles away from us. It makes no sense to try and preemptively comprehend the intent of the rest of the universe.

But for us as humans, our lives are usually maximally meaningful often to the point where it's egocentric and selfish. I am sure you can think of a few people who deserve to die rather than you. After all the selection of ostracized or hated people is very large. However, in the grand scheme of things you can only claim to look at local optima and we walk through history like a greedy algorithm.

Only when the full scale of events are known, when humanity's history becomes static either by ending or stagnating, we are truly able to make conclusions whether events in our time are good or bad. And even then it doesn't mean that it actually matters.

Re: Why life is absurd

#106

Post by aikah »

vlucas wrote: post #84
aikah wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

You misunderstand the concept of Falsifiability. It.It isn't about whether something is verifiable or not. But what it would take for a fact to be dismissed or not. It's not about whether a fact is true or not. For instance, the "fact" that Mohammed talked to angel Gabriel,which would imply angels therefore god exists according to Mohammed isn't falsifiable. You can't test that, or experience that.

It isn't about the holy books being full of inaccuracies, historians know they totally are full of shit already,from an historical point of view.

Re: Why life is absurd

#107

Post by [deleted] »

keane wrote: post #101
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(more accurately: we cannot infer an Ought from an Is). Oughts cannot mean anything in the first place unless they ultimately reduce to some kind of is-checkable fact.

This would give you Nihilism. Theism disagrees.

[deleted]

Re: Why life is absurd

#108

Post by lozf »

bemmu wrote: post #35
neuronic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

... yet here we are managing that much quite nicely. Others, meanwhile, seem to be taking it all a little too seriously.

Re: Why life is absurd

#109

Post by lozf »

krapp wrote: post #67
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was a beautifully absurd argument though, thank you :)

Re: Why life is absurd

#110

Post by nickthemagicman »

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.

Yep but there's statistics that are pretty reliable.
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