Why do we exist?
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Re: Why do we exist?
- Sy Borg
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Re: Why do we exist?
In the long term, however, I would expect the fairly continuous, if potted, progression to greater complexity and sophistication to continue and eventually spread out into space. Perhaps biological life and AI are only the beginning?
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Re: Why do we exist?
- LuckyR
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Re: Why do we exist?
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Re: Why do we exist?
- LuckyR
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Re: Why do we exist?
Ho hum. The important atomic bomb radioactivity has half-lives in the tens of thousands of years or less whereas the impact of the oxygenation of the atmosphere has dominated the environment for at least 500 million years.
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Re: Why do we exist?
- jerlands
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Re: Why do we exist?
We exist to defeat the lie.Bebelle wrote: ↑November 24th, 2017, 6:52 pm Have you ever felt that everything you do and will do is meaningless? That no matter how great you are at something you will never be truly important, and that's when you are good at something, because most of the time you are just average. So why should we live if our existence has no importance, if it is not going to make any difference in the world? No big changes, you are just one more person like many others.
The Moaning of the Bedouin wrote:Those who destroy the lie promote Ma'at;
those who promote the good will erase the evil.
As fullness casts out appetite,
as clothes cover the nude and
as heaven clears up after a storm
- Sy Borg
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Re: Why do we exist?
In the real world, the trends we all complain about are overpowering to us tiny beings that live a short time (aside from you ;). However, they are mere blips in the Earth's history. Imagine that someone complained to you that they had to ensure a microsecond of pain. You might say "ho hum" too. That's the kind of time scale difference being discussed.
Jan, let's say that the entire world suddenly decided to become clean and green - no more nonsense, let's act! Firstly, imagine it happening, and then imagine that not a single country would try to cheat or leverage advantages out of the situation.
Anyway, let's pretend that everyone had become genuinely serious about the environment. Suddenly the whole world is suddenly fully of far-sighted souls, all eschewing advantages and comfort today, living the simple life for tomorrow's benefit, with much improved public transport, cleaner air, etc. However, people would still breed until even that arrangement became unsustainable with ecosystem collapse through sheer weight of numbers. Being green will improve the Earth's carrying capacity but that leads us back to the initial problem.
This hypothetical clean, green world might delay the Holocene extinction event by some hundreds of years - terrific news perhaps for a few generations, but that's perhaps about the extent of the benefit. However, it's hypothetical and, unfortunately, not realistic.
Humans are, despite our claims to empowerment, largely subject to, and coercively responsive to, the environment. We are not in control, neither individually nor collectively, of numerous things that we convince ourselves are under our command based on post hoc rationalisations. I suppose we are in control if that is defined as "white knuckling on black ice".
Any intelligent, dominant species would have surely caused comparable levels of destruction; it would only be a matter of time. The path of another intelligent species would have been different to ours (due to chaos) but overpopulation and resource depletion would still be inevitable if the species was technologically capable.
Nor would I would hold no faith in intelligent octopi to build civilisations. If everything goes kaput, even AI, then rats are the obvious next candidate to become the next intelligent planet shaper. The advancement would happen much more quickly too because 1) rats are probably far more intelligent than the shrewlike mammals at the head of the post-dino line that ultimately lead to humans, and 2) earthquakes would unearth old human technology, which would hugely accelerate advancement.
Go you ratties!
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Re: Why do we exist?
Unfortunately I am a completely obsolete human. This morning I had a long dream of wandering through the hardware stores of lower Manhattan with my father where there were wonderful displays of machine tools, drill presses, lathes. various punches and clamps and huge windows full of other devices for forming metal and wood. We tried out various tools together and enjoyed immensely the exploration. That's all gone now even here in Helsinki where in 1961 there were several fantastic tool shops just as in lower Manhattan. I am totally obsolete now as are those old tools and and there is nowhere a display of 3D printers but only swarms of cell phones and lap tops and stores selling apps where people can share family photos and play games of killing vampires. It is even illegal these days to repair some of these devices People just throw them away and get new ones.
I spend my time inventing new cake recipes and searching for people to give them to as I am too old to eat much of that stuff anymore. People are so immersed in total nonsense that the realities of making and inventing stuff is obsolete. Even as an artist with the techniques of Photoshop to play with and paper and paints cheap the field is so full of total nonsense it's like swimming in the ocean thirsty for fresh water and finding none. I diddle with poetry which almost no one seems to like - because it's probably bad but it's amusing to me and the state of the declining world run by thieves and murderers and people who cannot even fabricate a decent lie is, frankly, not to my taste.
- Rojack
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Re: Why do we exist?
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Re: Why do we exist?
- jerlands
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Re: Why do we exist?
Why is asking for the reason or purpose. It's the same question as" What is the purpose in life?"
Merriam Wbster wrote:Definition of why
: for what cause, reason, or purpose
- Sy Borg
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Re: Why do we exist?
This increasing lack of touch with nature (and thus our own fundamental natures) does not auger well for the rest of nature. It seems to me that an increasing number of people believe that ecosystems are not needed for survival, that technology will always find a way. It's probably true that it will always find a way for billionaires and their cohorts.
It appears to me that biology and humanity are transitional forms leading to whatever we are creating, which itself may be transitional.
We hominids, like any other species, tend to be most comfortable in the kinds of environments to which we were adapted. This new, alien and sterile high tech world largely only suits its architects and those currently growing up in wealthy families. However, this cannot change because the drive to progress is necessary for each nation to compete, so we are all locked into this tragedy of the commons that is driving the Holocene. Thus, we are not in control and what we do from here on mostly depends on the Earth's feedback to our changes.
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Re: Why do we exist?
So I must answer " The most important thing right now is that you get the hell off my nose. After that. when I figure what my purpose might be, I'll work it out for horseflies. Come back in five years and I'll see what I can work out for horseflies. I doubt that''s long enough for my exixtence to make sense but I'll give it a try."
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023