

The meaning of life is to populate the universe - nazariusk
http://nazariusk.posterous.com/the-meaning-of-life

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photon_off
I'd have to take the Nihilistic stance that life is without any objective
meaning. It appears to me that any meaning, morals, or values that somebody
claims are inherent to the universe are merely their own human abstraction;
this post included. Yet, that shouldn't (and doesn't) stop anybody from
prescribing meaning to things and living "full" lives and achieving happiness.
There are two facts that I strongly believe in: We're stuck being humans, for
better or worse, and the universe will continue to be indifferent.

~~~
Locke1689
A decent summary, but I'd still suggest anyone who relates to this answer to
read Nietzsche (specifically, The Gay Science and probably Beyond Good and
Evil).

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wturner
The meaning of matter is to vibrate really really fast. That is its purpose.
There is no other.

~~~
grinich
Or to become energy...

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wturner
The meaning of energy is to be a natural demarcation between living (smart
matter) and non living (dumb matter). This is its purpose. There is no other.

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sz
I'm sorry but without concrete definitions this entire discussion is stupid.
(Retroactively defining words to make your position tautological is not
valuable either.)

The entire article consists of a remark that life is a self-replicating
chemical reaction.

A more interesting question to debate might be whether this replicating
property is an acceptable definition for life, (i.e. can there exist systems
that aren't replicating but can be considered life, and how might these arise
independently of replicating life?), or what happens when you apply various
definitions of life to other systems than the physical universe.

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Locke1689
A pithy statement, but a pretty weak argument. Given the entire purpose of the
field of philosophy, this paragraph or so doesn't resonate especially
strongly.

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vl
One thing that I don't get is what was before and what is the source of Big
Bang. So Big Bang, boom, expansion, star/planet formation, red shift,
evolution, selfish gene, humans - I get. But where did the Big Bang came from?
Fluctuation from nothingness? Why? From something else? Why? Something existed
before and produced the Big Bang? Where this thing that existed before came
from then? Doesn't make any sense.

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photon_off
I suggest directing some of your curiosity towards Google. This topic has been
discussed many times before. In short: Your notion of "cause and effect" is
not necessarily meaningful or applicable to all aspects of nature. Time could
have been created in the Big Bang.

Also, it's possible that the entire process was continuous... the closer you
rewind towards the big bang, the longer it takes to rewind just a little bit
further.

<http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html>

~~~
vl
Thanks for the link, it's interesting read. Even if time is created with Big
Bang, and there are probabilistic quantum processes that don't demonstrate
"cause and effect" in traditional sense these explanations come down to some
singularity and suggest to accept that singularities just happen.

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meric
Like this? <http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html>

I was thinking about this too the other day. Life seems to (more or less) be a
set chemical processes that accelerates entropy in a given universe.

Say if you were the designer of the universe and started the big bang. If
someone told you to calculate how long it would take until all energy is
evenly distributed -
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe>), the simple way
you would calculate this is just to calculate how many generations of stars
your universe would support.

But if some sort of life (like us humans) arises and populates, say, 10%, of
the star systems, entropy would happen a lot more than you originally
estimated! Entropy is accelerated by life!

In my conclusion, it seems that the ultimate goal of all energy/matter - not
just life, is to express itself through the second law of thermodynamics -
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics>). To use up
itself and become static again. That ultimate death is your ultimate goal.

~~~
nazariusk
Interesting parallel.

Life (us - birth to death) within "life" (the universe, big bang to heat
death), with death being a result (maximal entropy), but not the goal.

Perhaps someday the we'll discover/generate other universes.

Death might not always be the final result.

From the death of the old, comes the birth of the young.

Bah, enough deep thinking for one day :).

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Tycho
You could argue that intelligent life is something that our ecosystem has
evolved in order to resist mass extinction due to meteorite impacts. Last time
round with the dinosaurs there was no answer but maybe next time we'll be
ready. It just about makes sense if you think on then scale of whole
ecosystems and meteorite impacts and many planets.

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whatwhatwhat
Except of course that life itself cannot be sustained without the abundancy of
the stars

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fierarul
Somebody has been reading Asimov ?

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stretchwithme
Life is it own purpose.

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zeynel1
\--this is the meaning of life - there is no other--

he must be a happy person - he found the meaning of life - and he knows that
there is no other

either he is a total --fool-- or he knows something that we do not know

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zackattack
I think all "meaning" is constructed. The human brain itself is a meaning-
making machine. He's stated a preference.

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zeynel1
\--all -meaning- is constructed--

i agree with you - and if this is true then the meaning of life is what we
define it to be - only religions assert that there is only 1 true meaning and
its the meaning they defined

maybe the blog writer chose the wrong word - instead of -meaning- the word
-process- would have been better - in that case we may say that --the
fundamental process of nature is a transformation of non-replicating into
replicating--

~~~
zackattack
yeah, i don't know why you were downvoted

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amerine
Man I love it when John Maynard Keynes gets quoted.

