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The Egg (2009)

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Re: The Egg (2009)

#91

Post by zhaodaxiong »

rosser wrote: post #87
jonmrodriguez wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the natural disasters? You're not choosing that pain and suffering. (Well, maybe a little bit nowadays through global warming, but at least before this century you weren't)

This gets back to the popular notion of Karma, which says that when bad shit happens to someone, they somehow "deserved" it. First off, I don't think Buddhism even has a notion of "bad". It recognizes that there is suffering , but it doesn't say suffering is bad ; it merely says, matter-of-factly and without judgement, that suffering is a consequence of desire. In order not to suffer, the Buddha teaches, one must (am…

Buddhism thinks general bad things as the person suffered do not understand the deterministic natural behind their suffering. So there is no good/bad, there is only knowning/unknowning

Re: The Egg (2009)

#92

Post by nitrogen »

yc-kjh wrote: post #69
hobs wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With some specific FMRI tests, they have shown that your decisions are being made before your are consciousnessly aware of them, therefore what we would call free will is called into question as something that exists at all, and arguing our consciousness is not an artifact of many lower level processes is a hard sell. (to me anyway) Additionally: I don't see how the ontological argument ever was correct, "god is the…

> your decisions are being made > before your are consciousnessly aware of them Yes, I'm aware of these studies. But they make the mistake of presupposing materialist reductionism a priori, as if it were actually true. Those who assume materialist reductionism have an entire set of questions they are incapable of answering, such as: 1) How can teleology arise from non-teleology? 2) Whence consciousness? 3) How can so…

1) Show teleology is more than a human construction to explain the purposes we ourselves invented

2) Emergent behavior in the brain

3) Big bang

Treating these questions as unanswerable assumes a very weak form of materialism.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#93

Post by Geee »

shire wrote: post #89

First time reading this story would be nice if someone can explain the takeaway from this? It's a very deep story but trying to rationalize the meaning or concept behind the idea of this story. Thanks:)

We should love each other like we love ourselves.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#95

Post by victormx »

ngpio wrote: post #37
dhughes wrote: post #18

Another good short story similar to this is Asimov's "The Last Question." http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm

And "The Last Answer", which ironically ends with a question while "The Last Question" ends with an answer. And a bunch of others that aren't quite similar except that they're short, provocative scifi. Here's my list of favorites: * Ted Chiang - Understand - http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm * Ted Chiang - Exhalation - http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Te... * Ted Chiang - Hell I…

thank's, truly amazing

Re: The Egg (2009)

#96

Post by chroma »

rosser wrote: post #87
jonmrodriguez wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the natural disasters? You're not choosing that pain and suffering. (Well, maybe a little bit nowadays through global warming, but at least before this century you weren't)

This gets back to the popular notion of Karma, which says that when bad shit happens to someone, they somehow "deserved" it. First off, I don't think Buddhism even has a notion of "bad". It recognizes that there is suffering , but it doesn't say suffering is bad ; it merely says, matter-of-factly and without judgement, that suffering is a consequence of desire. In order not to suffer, the Buddha teaches, one must (am…

Thanks for explaining the Buddhist view. I don't know if you endorse it or not, but that sentiment really irks me. It reminds me of theodicy: Play with words enough, and you can claim the world is a beautiful place.

Except, it isn't. It's worse than you can possibly imagine.

Over 6 million children under the age of 5 died last year, mostly from disease. That's a Hiroshima bombing every week, killing only children under the age of 5. In the time it's taken you to read this paragraph, a handful of children will have died in terror and agony. Their parents will be filled with grief and guilt for years, if not the rest of their lives.

That is suffering, and it is bad. And no amount of platitudes or pretty flowers on a hillside can make up for it. If anything's in charge of this cosmos, they've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do. Of course, it would be satisfying to point a finger. Reality is more frustrating: The universe is indifferent; horrifically so. For example, nothing in physics prevents a tiny protein-encased strand of DNA from killing 400 million people in the 20th century.[1]

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox

Note: Parts of this post are paraphrasing an argument originally made by Sam Harris. Credit where credit is due and all that.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#97

Post by RBerenguel »

gkoberger wrote: post #25

Completely off topic, however I read this originally right around when Lost went off the air. I always wished this is how Lost ended: with Jack being told by Jacob that he was actually everyone on the plane (which is why they all had a weird connection), and all these lives were him waiting to be "born" into running the island.

I wasn't a Lost follower (my gf at the time was, so I heard most of the plot without paying much attention.) By the end I was expecting to be some kind of nonsense (like it did,) but I was expecting more like a room full of monkeys with typewriters. Seriously.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#98

Post by shire »

Geee wrote: post #93
shire wrote: post #89

First time reading this story would be nice if someone can explain the takeaway from this? It's a very deep story but trying to rationalize the meaning or concept behind the idea of this story. Thanks:)

We should love each other like we love ourselves.

some people can take the idea very literal lol

Re: The Egg (2009)

#99

Post by rosser »

chroma wrote: post #96
rosser wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets back to the popular notion of Karma, which says that when bad shit happens to someone, they somehow "deserved" it. First off, I don't think Buddhism even has a notion of "bad". It recognizes that there is suffering , but it doesn't say suffering is bad ; it merely says, matter-of-factly and without judgement, that suffering is a consequence of desire. In order not to suffer, the Buddha teaches, one must (am…

Thanks for explaining the Buddhist view. I don't know if you endorse it or not, but that sentiment really irks me. It reminds me of theodicy: Play with words enough, and you can claim the world is a beautiful place. Except, it isn't. It's worse than you can possibly imagine. Over 6 million children under the age of 5 died last year, mostly from disease. That's a Hiroshima bombing every week , killing only children un…

You're welcome. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm Buddhist, but I've found a lot of wisdom in and no small amount of inner peace through the Buddha's teachings.

Play with words enough, and you can claim the world is a beautiful place. Except, it isn't. It's worse than you can possibly imagine.

The beauty of the world and the morality of what happens in it are utterly orthogonal. You're conflating those things in a way that, frankly, I find rhetorically cheaper than much of the sophistry that calls itself theodicy, and which, it appears, we both disdain.

That is suffering, and it is bad.

No, it's not; it's experience. It just is, whatever you may think of it, and what you think of it doesn't change the thing you're experiencing one whit. Calling an experience "bad" — or anything else that makes a moral, aesthetic, or other kind of qualitative judgement — is something you did, intrinsic neither to the experience, nor to the thing being experienced, but only to you. There's no such thing as "bad" anywhere in the whole universe except in your mind.

Buddhism isn't about trying to make unpleasant feelings "go away", or pretending they don't exist. Of course they do; you're feeling them! It's about being present to those feelings, rather than wishing they weren't there, and recognizing them to be as transient as the pleasant feelings and everything else in life, including life itself.

Re: The Egg (2009)

#100

Post by a_e_k »

dhughes wrote: post #18

Another good short story similar to this is Asimov's "The Last Question." http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm

Borges - The Immortal:

"Homer composed the Odyssey; given infinite time, with infinite circumstances and changes, it is impossible that the Odyssey should not be composed at least once. No one is someone; a single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, hero, philosopher, demon, and world."

Honestly, just about all of Borges' fictions are really neat for the technically minded. Highly recommended!

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