Philosophy Discussion Forums

Some are means driven and some are ends driven. The latter waste time looking for external meaning (the logical typically fruitlessly, those open to dogmatic thinking do so happily through religion), the former realize that the ride itself is the majority of the meaning and are content.

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.

1.) I hypothesize that the purpose of human life is reasonably to construct Artificial General Intelligence.

2.) Reference-A: ResearchGate: Why is life's purpose reasonably to build AGI/ASI?

3.) The reference above relates to purpose in the realm of objectivity/science (teleonomy) rather than subjective things like the teleological argument.

4.) Reference A was mentioned, because many tend to wrongly think that purpose is merely subjective.

jaypeza wrote: ↑March 11th, 2018, 8:54 pm This video talks about the real purpose in life, i think this video truly is what we are all looking for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDoLyN2imsY&t=3s

Are you serious??

There is no reason why we exist or do not exist. Existence itself is a thing of beauty and meaning and reason. We exist and the rest coexist with us and to be significant or valued in society is one value among many and that is not the end or meaning of living. I love life and when I see a flower in my garden or simply a blade of grass my soul leaps up. Or when a small baby smiles at me and to see the innocent smile, totally a natural one, as we adults smile artificially faking happiness, I feel happy. What I think is existence has little to do with being esteemed, commended and significant in society. It is more than all these things.

Existence can be rather tricky as it is rather intimately joined to perception and different people perceive the same thing differently and even our perception of ourselves varies under multiple conditions by ourselves and others.

ProgrammingGodJordan wrote: ↑March 13th, 2018, 11:01 pm

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.

1.) I hypothesize that the purpose of human life is reasonably to construct Artificial General Intelligence.

2.) Reference-A: ResearchGate: Why is life's purpose reasonably to build AGI/ASI?

3.) The reference above relates to purpose in the realm of objectivity/science (teleonomy) rather than subjective things like the teleological argument.

Was the purpose of the common ape ancestor to evolve into humans, chimps, bonobos, orang-utans and gorillas? Was the purpose of the common ancestor of monkeys and apes to produce it's various subsequent lines? Is the purpose of a child to become frail and elderly? Was the purpose of blue-green algae to flood the atmosphere with (then toxic) oxygen, making complex life possible?

These look like possibilities and probabilities playing out to me - ditto, humans producing AI. That's just what's happening now. If humans are, as often expected, superseded by AI then that is not necessarily a human purpose but human consequence. The only way we would have genuine reason is if planets reproduce via AI "packets of information" sending "Earth stuff" to other worlds. I personally think that's very possible, but it's also very speculative :)

If you are determined to find a purpose in life that is as good as any. It's the old mental process that the ancient Greeks had that rocks fell in a gravity field because that is what rocks wanted to do. Living things are endowed with a purpose to survive and reproduce because otherwise life would not exist. So people are frequently driven to find purpose in all things. I not only doubt there is a purpose in existence, The dumb brutality of most of humanity indicates to me that humanity is a purposeless as everything else.

On second thought, the existence of certain dynamics may be self driven to domination. In humans the motivations for greed and power become so dominant that they exist independent of their carriers as a kind of meme so that they dominate their generators and rich people and politicians seek to become more rich and powerful than is useful for any sane purpose. Thus intelligence becomes independent of its carrier such as living beings or digital machines and become entities to magnify themselves as an independent force.

Jan Sand wrote: ↑March 27th, 2018, 2:18 amIn humans the motivations for greed and power become so dominant that they exist independent of their carriers as a kind of meme so that they dominate their generators ...

Indeed. They are known as corporations. They are inching towards the kind of domination of humans that humans imposed upon other species. What goes around, comes around, it seems.

So we humans appear to be in the process of being superseded. As things stand, politicians no longer represent people, but corporations. The rationalisation is that corporations represent the interests of multiple people in what they hope is a utilitarian approach. However, corporations have their own particular interests that are independent of its humans - members and staff. When those interests no longer coincide the corporation soon removes the "dead wood". It seems more accurate to say that corporations provisionally, temporarily and often unreliably represent the interests of multiple people, and with automation that human interest is reduced to shareholders.

Once corporations have advanced AI CEOs at the helm (which will at some point be deemed more rational and reliable by shareholders) then I expect we little individual humans may appreciate just how outclassed we are - or we may continue to complain about multiple simultaneous problematic scenarios without considering the common cause and connection that is hiding in plain sight.

So far the biosphere's traumatic changes have worked out astonishingly well in the long term, so one hopes this extinction event will yield similarly wondrous things, even if it may be terrible for humans on a personal level.

Wondrous is a most peculiar term to describe the advent of corporations. Just as individual cells combined to create multi-celled creatures, the preservation of the individual cells becomes secondary to the function of the cell complex and the benefit of humans becomes secondary to the corporate totality. The corporate agenda to grow and dominate the market system is founded on providing for human needs by generating salaries to permit the purchase of the products and services of the corporate totality. But when humans are no longer useful to the corporate system as AI and robotics and automation replace the human functionaries what purpose will exist for the corporations except to sustain each other? Corporate activity, at the moment is quite insensitive to the ecological stability of the planet and this must radically change if the corporate entities continue to exist. Nevertheless, it seems quite possible that humans will become no longer necessary in the long run for the dynamics of the corporate system.

Yup, that more or less seems to be the case, although I would say that corporations behave quite a bit like simple organisms like microbes - they consume and grow.

The complexity within both cells and corporations is entirely applied to the processes involved in consuming and growing rather than existential considerations or ethics. That won't come until governments fall, and without any "police" corporations will increasingly need to form alliances to survive and working out ethical rules of engagement within their posses.

Which, as the dynamics of existence demands, will further integrate the corporate complexes into one self sustaining unit which accepts and directs energies into one overall unification. Perhaps organic life may become an integral to the planetary function but the independence of humanity will most probably fade into the entire unit of the planet. Planets, then. as in Lem's Solaris might become conscious and dynamically integrate as independent intellects.

It all depends on the degree of integration, one would think. It's a double-edged sword because greater integration means less freedom. Safety and security v freedom.

Our mitochondria had that "choice" foisted up them; basically, the ones that were not captured in cells died out. Now only captive mitochondria exist. I figure that I'm rather like a mitochondrion already, mostly pottering around my self contained house and garden (cell), the power source for the communications equipment within the cell that had been produced by the "larger organism".

Outdoors environments are becoming noisier, more crowded and polluted. Meanwhile, communications systems, home entertainment systems and home deliveries are improving all the time so the motivation to go outside will ever become less. Thus, we will be sustained by the "larger organism" within our self-contained and safe "cells", with ever more sophisticated connections to the hubs of power.

As you have pointed out the existence of free mitochondria are no longer apparent. I would be a bit careful about this conclusion since microbiologists have admitted that all our knowledge if this area is still overwhelmingly incomplete. Nevertheless what has happened to mitochondria is a process that is intensively being applied to us humans by current civilization. The world outside is not noisier, it just has a different type of noise. It seems well over half of insect life is disappearing to destroy much of the necessary fertilization processes important to sustain plant life. Human intervention with poisons and other means is violently intruding on the functional life forces of the planet to limit and destroy them. Our so-called savage ancestors were far more knowledgeable about the world in order to survive and current industrialized civilizations needs only a fragment of human potentials to convert humans into industrial robots. Production methodology has been methodized and simplified so even the dumb automated systems are sufficient to keep the wheels spinning and humans can be dispensed with altogether. Even the creative arts in music and films have become so regularized that much of it is boring and offensive. Evolution created humans for far more clever activities than current civilization demands and huge numbers of people are committing suicide and getting into hard drugs to flee from the oppressive horrors currently. not to speak of the police and military catastrophes enjoyed by the limited intellects now in control.

Jan, what you are observing is the distillation of the good things in life into ever more concentrated zones/entities.

Much of the accumulated human wisdom and artistry is still present, but increasingly present in organisations rather than individuals. We have for some time been effectively storing our intelligence in central repositories and operating ever more like dumb terminals. Fascinating stuff. All very short term, of course. If progress was charted, the devolution of culture would be seen as a tiny downwards blip in an exponentially rising curve.

People are thrown by the fact that progress tends to concentrate rather than be distributed evenly in societies. So it's perfectly possible for a society to become ever more advanced and progress rapidly while the masses become ever more limited and specialised. More like ants.