Does Life Have Meaning?

[Ross Scott]

Back there was philosophical me. Now get ready for scientific me.

 

We have no free will.

 

We are simply composed of atoms that chemically react with one another in such away that we have this illusion of consciousness. You're many differences from other people are caused by the little atomic differences in your DNA and your structure itself. The only thing I can't prove with this theory is that life has no meaning. If you constructed a mass of atoms with the same exact composition as me, It would still be a lifeless form. Though we are controlled by the many colliding atoms in our brains, we do have that special spark of life that puts everything in a different light.

 

But anyway, in theory, if you had the capacity to be able to recognize and identify EVERY atom in this lapse of reality, you could know everything that would ever happen through interpretation of physics and atomic electricity. You might know what would happen in 20 seconds, tomorrow's weather, the baby you will have that hasn't even been conceived, who you will marry, everything.

 

This dialogue is really similar to part of a future CP episode. Most of the dialogue is recorded, but I never got around to animating it, since that's always about 95% of the work in an episode. Before you despair about having no free will, atoms don't work that way. If you try to measure their exact positions, their speeds change. If you try to measure their speeds, their positions change. It's not even a matter of being able to plot it all out conceptually, it changes just by even trying to plot it all out.

[BTGBullseye]

Before you despair about having no free will, atoms don't work that way. If you try to measure their exact positions, their speeds change. If you try to measure their speeds, their positions change. It's not even a matter of being able to plot it all out conceptually, it changes just by even trying to plot it all out.

They don't like being watched...

[Doom Shepherd]

How about this: Scientsists have discovered, using MRI's and such, that the part of your brain that makes decisions activates and functions up to 10 seconds BEFORE you consciously decide what to do.

 

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

 

Now THAT messes with free will...

[Eedo Baba]

How about this: Scientsists have discovered, using MRI's and such, that the part of your brain that makes decisions activates and functions up to 10 seconds BEFORE you consciously decide what to do.

 

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

 

Now THAT messes with free will...

 

Not really. At the end, the scientist breaks it down better than the article's writer. It's not that your "free will" only exists in the conscious brain, it's that your conscious brain can't see the decision being made in your subconscious for a few moments. The subconscious is just as much a part of your mind as the conscious and it reflects your will and your true desires just as much (some would say more).

[Doom Shepherd]

Well that bothers me because everything my subconscious shows me seems to indicate that it's unpredictable and crazy violent.

[Eedo Baba]

Well that bothers me because everything my subconscious shows me seems to indicate that it's unpredictable and crazy violent.

 

Well, perhaps the idea that the subconscious is making rational decisions before the conscious does should tell you that it's not unpredictable and crazy.

[BTGBullseye]

Who really knows that the subconscious is making rational decisions? What if it's making irrational decisions that then appear rational to everyone else because of their irrationality?

[Pinkie Pie]

Who really knows that the subconscious is making rational decisions? What if it's making irrational decisions that then appear rational to everyone else because of their irrationality?

 

 

[Chuckthe2nd]

Who really knows that the subconscious is making rational decisions? What if it's making irrational decisions that then appear rational to everyone else because of their irrationality?

 

But everyone else would have to be irrational enough already to see the irrational decision as rational.

 

 

Yo Dawg, I heard you like irrationality.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Guest (see edit history)

[Doom Shepherd]

Well that bothers me because everything my subconscious shows me seems to indicate that it's unpredictable and crazy violent.

 

Well, perhaps the idea that the subconscious is making rational decisions before the conscious does should tell you that it's not unpredictable and crazy.

 

But I have to consciously suppress like 80% of the thoughts and actions it enters into my head to take.

So is that my rational awake side suppressing the crazy subconscious decisions... or the rational subconscious deciding to suppress the crazy conscious side?

 

Well, they say that your dreams allow the subconscious to express itself... but if that's so then that's just more evidence that my subconscious is crazy, given the general recurring themes of my dreams.

 

I mean, it's not like I sit on a throne of bones atop a hill of the dead and dying while [DATA EXPUNGED] a dozen or so [DATA EXPUNGED] to [DATA EXPUNGED] until they die... and then [DATA EXPUNGED] the bodies... in real life.

[Jack Noir]

All meaning is entirely subjective so it's true that "life is what you make it".

 

Also, the argument about free will is moot. Your desires and decisions are all pre-determined, yes, but they're still your own. Having the magical ability to intervene and alter your own will would completely strip it of any and all significance. "Can't get what you want? Just stop wanting it!" There'd be no point wanting anything, everyone would just stop expending the effort required to survive.

 

Your will is not free but freedom was never what made your will important in the first place. You want what you want for a reason. Your will, the inbuilt organic programming inside you which governs how you behave toward the outside world, is a multi-billion year old inheritance, dating back to when the first creature ever managed to figure out what it needed to do to pull itself together from out of the ether. Your will, now, is the sum of the innumerable revisions made to that original creature's will as it has evolved over time, constantly reacting and adapting to the universe around it, building upward toward its timeless ultimate goal. The will is both the source and purpose of all life, the only reason any of you are even alive right now because you will it to be so.

 

I would go on an even bigger rant about this, and even explain how this concrete pre-determined will was actually freely chosen in the first place, at the dawn of time or whatever, but it'd go way over the heads of most posters on this forum, with their ponies and shit, and I am so totally arrogant enough to let that stop me typing right now.

 

There's also the typical problem of those who believe in the traditional concept free will, with their trademark irrationality and tendency to cling to beliefs out of self aggrandizement and fear, rather than as the result of any kind of logical reasoning, which destines the debate to be a lost cause from the off. I thought I just told you I wasn't typing any more. Why are you still reading this?

[ProHypster]

How about this: Scientsists have discovered, using MRI's and such, that the part of your brain that makes decisions activates and functions up to 10 seconds BEFORE you consciously decide what to do.

 

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

 

Now THAT messes with free will...

I know this is offtopic and all, but I already wrote the exact same thing a few pages back. And you missed one stupid statistic, which is that it only works up to 60 % of the time. Read people, Read!!

 

To add actual content to this, I still haven't changed my theory on life stated before.

[Humin]

The meaning of life is to eventually die. I can haz nobel?

[lonesomedrifter]

Well, I'm an agnostic at the moment, open to the concept of religion but not entirely convinced by it. Whenever I think about this, half of me, the scientific side, is thinking that there is no meaning to life, we're just 1 species of millions on 1 planet of millions in one galaxy of millions and that no matter what I do or accompilsh, it would not matter in the grand scheme of life, the universe and everything. I could Invent a hydrogen fuel cell tomorrow, and we would stop using oil and slow global warming (I said slow instead of stop, because global warming is a natural process), but the human race will eventually die out, everything we ever built will rot and decay, and when another species evoles to the same point as humanity are now, they would have for knowledge of the hydrogen fuel cell that I built millions of years ago.

 

But the other half, is saying that there has to be some purpose, that if life had no meaning then what is the point of life at all. Whenever I think about this, it reminds me of something one of my friends said to me back when I was 10 or 11 one day when our teacher wasn't in. It was completely out of the blue, we were all talking about ghost stories, (it was around Halloween) and he just said that our lifes, are just as important as a fly's.

 

and now to cheer me up after that, some smilies,

[The Scoutman]

Religion aside, the only meaning I can find to life is to believe you have reached self-realization, however, there are endless paths to reach said destination, what you believe to be your paradise? Your eternal reward? Your magnum opus?

It can be many things, leaving heirs in this world, to live a lustful life, going down in history; it doesnt matter, whatever makes you feel achieved, the thing is, the more we think, the more we know, the more our dreams start to look relatively pointless and even futile, what are us when compared to the entire universe? Yet, we give so much importance to human life, and who is to say it is not important? Its all a matter of scale in the end. Ignorance is bliss, the less we know, the less we want to know, the more importance we give to the little things we do, and so, we can take an easy path to what we believe to be self-realization.

 

Bottomline is: Get an objective for yourself, hype the fuck out of it, and go for it. Thats how you give your life a meaning.

 

Personally, Id feel guilty living a "happy" life while knowing many like me suffer in this world, so I want to believe the meaning of my life is to reduce others' suffering, even if that costs me dearly, but in the end, I will believe I lived doing what was right, and I will feel realized and believe my life's meaning was fulfilled.

[Flingelingeling]

The meaning of life is different to almost every individual free of sheep like thinking.

[Alyxx Thorne]

The meaning of life is different to almost every individual free of sheep like thinking.

Power to the sheep'le.

[Blue]

The meaning of life is different to almost every individual free of sheep like thinking.

 

"Believe what you want" must first be believed by everyone in order to work.

That which is relative becomes irrelevant.

[Vapymid]

That which is relative becomes irrelevant.

 

I would advise caution here as most things in the word are relative, but the speed of light in vacuum.

 

Regards

[Wheatley]

That which is relative becomes irrelevant.

 

I would advise caution here as most things in the word are relative, but the speed of light in vacuum.

 

Regards

 

Indeed. In a seemingly probabilistic, relativistic world, one would be cautioned against advocating absolute deterministic truth.