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| jeeeeohn United States. January 11 2012 23:59. Posts 882 | Profile Blog # |
Note: Before I wrote all this, my original intent was to start a blog post about basketball (another post for another day). Instead, this is what I typed, because these questions are big and scary and I'd like to know I'm not the only one who thinks that.
Well, since I quit playing SC2 my health and sanity has returned to me (seriously, all this game does is induce hyper-stress).
Now that I think about it, the above has nothing to do with this blog post. I guess I was trying to use it as a transition into the actual topic, but I can't be bothered. On other unrelated notes, Planescape: Torment is the most original, fucking fantastic game I've ever played; Michael Jordon wasn't actually cut from his high school basketball team; and I've been haunted lately by the idea that the universe doesn't exist without something sentient present to perceive it.
Also, did it ever occur to anyone that it doesn't make sense we can't get "outside" the universe? Literally every single thing can be examined and studied except for the universe itself. This actually reminds me of a computer system. Whatever program we create can't "escape" the system itself and study it. Take Mass Effect for example: an entire universe was born, but if you placed an AI figure into it (just roll with the idea), it would never, ever, ever, ever be able to escape and examine that universe the way we can examine an atom, for example.
I saw a feature on the Discovery channel about dark matter, and when they highlighted it in purple and zoomed away, the dark matter formed what resembled (to me) a brain.
So what if we're all just little bits of information? What if everything IS predetermined, ingrained and programmed? The universe shrinks to a single point and explodes outward forever and ever--but here's the catch: just like loading and saving and loading something again, the file is prone to erosion and error. We get deja vu because it's happened before. We see ghosts because of a glitch. The ideas of God and heaven and every other religion is just an ancestral memory from the hereafter. What kind of cruel creature would create something like that?
It doesn't make any sense. There are only two things that are impossible to imagine: death, and looking at the universe in it's entirety. In William Gibson's novel, Count Zero, one of his characters is obsessed with seeing the "shape" of the Matrix. So I know I'm not the only fucking person who's noticed this. There has to be something immortal about us, right? Life wouldn't make sense otherwise. Because one day I'm going to die, and frankly that scares the shit out of me; not the dying itself, but just not knowing it. My entire self just gone, and I'm none the wiser? It'd be like nothing ever existed for anyone, because I can't even perceive it. It's a logical fallacy, I know (solipsism), but I don't care, because it's both a fallacy and the one thing that makes any sense.
All I have are questions, and they're tormenting me. I'm the type of person that can't let shit go until I find an answer that can satisfy me. Anyway, what do you think?
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| Selendis Australia. January 12 2012 00:07. Posts 498 | Profile Blog # |
Sounds like your suffering an existential crisis.
I think we have all been there. For me, I got over it once I started wondering where my next meal would come from. I then decided I should focus ALL my mental faculties on that goal instead of worrying about problems I am incapable of solving. |
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 GMarshal United States. January 12 2012 00:11. Posts 20904 | Profile Blog # |
Does it matter?
In the end the answer to all the big scary questions is this, even if there is no free will, no god, and life is just a meaningless hopeless grind, we have to try to be the best people we can possibly be. Not for some imaginary deity, not even for the sake of others, but for ourselves. Even if we are a simulation, there is no way to definitively know that, thus we are obligated to be the very best people we can be.
At the end of the day, that is all we can do, because we have to live with ourselves, and by extension, die with ourselves. Even if no one, not even you, will remember. |
| | "life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery" The measure of a terrible day is when you go to bed thinking "man, I wish the zombie apocalypse would start already" | |
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| DarkPlasmaBall United States. January 12 2012 00:13. Posts 20098 | Profile Blog # |
"my health and sanity has returned to me" -> This blog post?
Yes, dying scares the shit out of a lot of people. Does it give you comfort coming up with an alternate reality where we never existed in the first place, so "death" doesn't really occur in most forms of the word? Would you rather come up with a nice, cute belief in an afterlife instead? Or just nothing spiritual at all?
I don't see the point in thinking about any of it, personally, because it can't be validated and I want to focus on my time here as much as possible  |
| | "Those who can, teach. Those who can't, whine about teachers." ~Me |
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| Full.tilt United Kingdom. January 12 2012 00:14. Posts 1598 | Profile Blog # |
| Go to itunes, subscribe to Astronomy Cast and learn some facts about our universe. |
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| MotherOfRunes Germany. January 12 2012 00:20. Posts 1253 | Profile # |
On January 11 2012 23:59 jeeeeohn wrote:
All I have are questions, and they're tormenting me. I'm the type of person that can't let shit go until I find an answer that can satisfy me.
im totally the same, and this shit is freaking me out every night in my bed before i fall asleep.
and thats why i wish that there is no afterlife or such shit....just nothing....just disappearing! and the questions will finally have an end!
but there is a quote i really love.
"we are not human beeings with a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beeings with a human experience."
MIND BOGGLE!!!!!!!!!!!!! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAA
but i think what we humans need to learn is to stop beeing that arrogant. there are things in this universe/life that are bigger than us , and that means we wont understand them EVER. its liek the human mind our "ego" scientist will never be able to explain our ego because we would need to be a higher beeing than ourselves to look from "above" at it.
a french scientist once said, its like water trapped in a glass trying to understand the atlantic ocean. but it wont be able because it cant break out of the glass like we cant break out of our shell.
you need a higher beeing to actually break the glass and set you free.
and maybe thats death, a higher beeing will set us free and break our "glass" and we will be finally able to flow in whole thing and not just our glassLast edit: 2012-01-12 00:33:42 |
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| caradoc Canada. January 12 2012 00:43. Posts 2915 | Profile Blog # |
We don't know that we can't get 'out' of the universe.
An ant can't get 'off' the surface of the world, in its own perspective, for example.
Also what's the universe, is it just shorthand for 'everything that exists'? Cuz if so, no, you can't get 'out' of 'things that exist'. Does 'the universe' mean 'modern science's conception of the universe'? If so, then yes, we can get 'out' of it since any conceptualization of reality is incomplete, and can never be complete.
I think its just a case of your question being formulated in a way that makes scary assumptions that aren't necessarily the case if the question was asked a bit differently. Last edit: 2012-01-12 00:45:17 |
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| TheToast United States. January 12 2012 00:59. Posts 4804 | Profile Blog # |
On January 11 2012 23:59 jeeeeohn wrote:
The universe shrinks to a single point and explodes outward forever and ever--but here's the catch: just like loading and saving and loading something again, the file is prone to erosion and error. We get deja vu because it's happened before. We see ghosts because of a glitch.
Congrats, you've just written the plot of the Matrix. Actually most of this blog post seems to revolve around the plot of the Matrix....
This post must just be the result of the system assimilating a program that's doin' somethin' it's not supposed to be doin'.
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| | I like the way the walls go out. Gives you an open feeling. Firefly's a good design. People don't appreciate the substance of things. Objects in space. People miss out on what's solid. | |
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 vGl-CoW Belgium. January 12 2012 01:03. Posts 8270 | Profile Blog # |
First off, like GMarshal said, it really doesn't matter. We might as well be a simulation, but we would never know and it would never affect us in any way, so why even entertain the thought? It's pointless!
Second, thinking about the nature of the universe tends to fuck with people's minds. I think it's because we're used to seeing everything in a frame of reference. The universe doesn't have an outside frame of reference, though. There is nothing but the universe.
Third, we actually are all just little bits of information. Everything is. Your idea of the universe being a self-perpetuating loop that bugs out sometimes is really random though, and phenomena like deja-vu, ghosts and religion already have much better explanations. Also, and I lack the necessary education here so what I say might be wrong, but I think that the principle of probability waves on the quantum level would make it so that we would not have the exact same universe over and over again if we kept going in a Big Bang - Big Crunch loop.
Even so, even if, like you say, a creature were to be behind this idea, I don't see how it would be cruel, because you wouldn't even know what's going on.
Fourth, people tend to have this idea that life has to make sense. Why should this be the case?
I think that if you look at the evolutionary principles of life, it becomes pretty clear that there is no sense at all. Living creatures exist purely because they are successful at existing. All life on Earth today exists because through random chance way back, one stupid little cell managed to reproduce itself, managed to make more cells, some of those randomly mutated again and some of those happened to be better at surviving etc etc till we ended up with a whole planet full of species.
When you look at it this way, it's easy to see that every species exists solely because of its ability to reproduce. That's the only reason you're here: your species reproduces and, on average, lives long enough to reproduce again. If it didn't, you wouldn't be here. The only real difference between you and a rock is that you have the ability to make fresh copies of yourself.
Likewise, you only have a fear of death because it's a useful fear to have. People without this fear are more likely to put themselves in harm's way and die before being able to reproduce and raise a new generation, so they will generally be detrimental to the species.
You're going to stop existing one day because we only need to be around long enough to (you guessed it!) reproduce and raise a new generation. This idea can cause some mental anguish because our brains are programmed to want to exist. You dying doesn't mean it will all have been "for nothing", though. The point of the ride is the ride itself. It sounds like a terrible cliche, but there's really nothing you can do except take pleasure in life as long as it lasts.
I bet that in the time it took me to type this out, like three other people already said basically the same thing but much more eloquently and in only half the space. I'm a rambler! |
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| aebriol Norway. January 12 2012 01:35. Posts 2065 | Profile # |
On January 11 2012 23:59 jeeeeohn wrote:
Also, did it ever occur to anyone that it doesn't make sense we can't get "outside" the universe? Literally every single thing can be examined and studied except for the universe itself. This actually reminds me of a computer system. Whatever program we create can't "escape" the system itself and study it.
It doesn't make any sense. There are only two things that are impossible to imagine: death, and looking at the universe in it's entirety.
1) I can certainly imagine death, nothingness, the universe in it's entirety, God (which I don't believe in, being an atheist). I don't know why you can't? It's certainly not a true statement that it's those two things that aren't possible to imagine ... a lot of writers have written about what it's like being dead, so that's imaginable for a fact. The universe in it's entirety? Why imagine when you can look at a photo?
http://theweek.com/article/index/204681/an-amazing-photo-of-the-entire-universe
2) A program can certainly escape the system itself and study it. It just cannot do it on it's own - we have to port it to another platform, but then it can certainly be used that way ... also you could write it in such a way that it would study itself (say, by running statistics on what tasks it's most often called upon to do).
Last edit: 2012-01-12 01:36:06 |
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| josemb40 Peru. January 12 2012 01:59. Posts 568 | Profile Blog # |
| it doesn't matter how old you are, you are too young to be questioning yourself with stuff like this. Just live and you'll feel like you already have the answers. |
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| Erik.TheRed United States. January 12 2012 02:19. Posts 1217 | Profile Blog # |
I think you should go watch The Big Lebowski.
It put things in perspective for me. |
| | || Twitter @ErikTheRed19 || "See you Space Cowboy" |
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| LuckyFool United States. January 12 2012 02:24. Posts 8329 | Profile Blog # |
| I prefer to just live life instead of questioning my existence. |
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| Squeegy Finland. January 12 2012 02:55. Posts 1151 | Profile # |
![[image loading]](http://memegenerator.net/cache/instances/400x/12/12806/13113535.jpg)
User was warned for this post |
| | Stan: Dude, dolphins are intelligent and friendly. Cartman: Intelligent and friendly on rye bread with some mayonnaise. |
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 Barrin United States. January 12 2012 03:12. Posts 4206 | Profile Blog # |
Your life is the inevitable product of factors set in motion at the beginning of existence (sorry nobody really knows who started it) - which btw, does quite literally exist.
Blah blah blah etc etc etc
A GIANT STAR EXPLODED CREATING THE ELEMENTS NEEDED TO MAKE YOUR BODY (LIKE CARBON) SPREADING IT THOUSANDS OF LIGHT YEARS IN ALL DIRECTIONS
blah blah blah, somehow they came together in a formation that can reproduce itself, blah blah blah, YOU!
You are, in fact, a star child. Your life is the manifestation of one of the most beautiful things in the universe! You are LUCKY to be here. Be proud of who you are! Manifest yourself! |
| | "It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong." -Voltaire |
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| See.Blue United States. January 12 2012 03:19. Posts 2295 | Profile Blog # |
| Sometimes all you can do is look for happiness. It's your consciousness so seek out what brings you happiness. |
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| ComebackKid Canada. January 12 2012 03:29. Posts 92 | Profile Blog # |
I think the answer to these questions lies in relationship.
The only reason you are here in the 1st place is because of a relationship between 2 other people.
"Heaven" for most major religions is an existence of bliss and perfect relationships. And you get to heaven by keeping good relationships with people on this side of eternity. I find the greatest joy in the people I know and the experiences we share together.
Even for the most extreme introvert, being alone for an entire life would completely suck.
So I'd encourage you to find meaning in the people around you, and let that meaning reflect back on to your own life.
In the end, you might just end up in a really sweet place with all your buddies after you all die. Who knows... |
| | Thats it, back to Winnipeg! |
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| Inzek Chile. January 12 2012 03:54. Posts 787 | Profile Blog # |
What if everything IS predetermined, ingrained and programmed?
i do belive so, i think there are laws (physical or not) that govern the interactions between every particle that there is. But is very probably that we never actually get to know this laws, so in reality for us the universe is random-ish; and we used to this illusion of will (or free will).
also like some one said already, life doesnt need to have sense, and it probably doesnt. |
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| Jakatak_ United States. January 12 2012 04:05. Posts 117 | Profile # |
| You're certainly not the only one who thinks about stuff like this. I think we all have to find ways to deal with what you are experiencing, some people just accept it and make themost of their lives. Some try to ignore it or find comfort in religion, I perosnally think religion is weak. Maybe Death is a transition, maybe its the end of you, but we still don't understand everything so maybe you shouldn't worry about death. Worrying is actually pointless, what will happen will happen, so do what makes you happy. My 2cents. Thanks for reading. |
| | I am not the hotkey/reddit/help noobs jakatak. |
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 Sinensis United States. January 12 2012 04:06. Posts 2503 | Profile Blog # |
You're having an existential crisis. Think about it this way and maybe you'll feel better... your parents created your body that your mind began to inhabit at birth. It is safe to say before your body was created it was uninhabited by your mind; this fact relegates birth, or occupying the body, to a choice.
The "object" would seem to make it a good choice while you can. Last edit: 2012-01-12 04:07:48 |
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