After a bit of light reading and asking people who know more about philosophy than me, it seems I lean to absurdism. My take is that there is no reason for the existence of the universe or the evolution of humans. It was merely a series of random events that happened to end up the way it is. So it is what is is, I don’t let myself be bothered by it.
But that doesn’t mean life has no meaning per se. I’m already here, so I might as well make the most of it and live my life to the fullest. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but that puts me in the category of absurdism, rather than existential nihilism.
It’s been many years since I read it but the ‘explanation’ in Lee Smolin’s ‘The Life of the Cosmos’ sounds the most convincing to me.
I’m the book, as far as I understood it, he suggests that theory of evolution applies on the biggest scales too. New universes form when a black hole collapses. Our Universe is just one of the universes that all have slightly changed values of the universal constants, like the way evolution works. There are many universal or physical constants in science, some of the most widely recognized being the speed of light in vacuum c, the gravitational constant G, the Planck constant h, the electric constant ε0, and the elementary charge e.
There is a very narrow range of these constants where ‘normal stuff’ of the universe like formation of matter can happen and heat death of the universe can be avoided. We just happen to be in the right universe with the perfectly balanced constants, in the right corner of it, at optimal distance to an optimally sized star, tilted at an optimal angle, with a moon at the right distance to help evolve life capable of developing a fediverse where we can mull this over.
Evolution, nothing special about it.
a black hole
assuming a thing into existence isn’t a satisfying answer
where did your black hole come from? another black hole?
might as well just claim its turtles all the way down
Any of y’all heard of this guy named God? Look it up
So what specific properties are you attributing to this prime mover?
Why consciousness or cognition, for instance, or interest in life on our microscopic speck of dust?
People are downvoting this, despite it being a perfectly good response to the question posed.
Don’t get me wrong, religion is all bullshit and lies, but to a christian, god is the correct answer
It’s not the answer, it’s how the answer is presented. You cannot give an objective answer to a subjective question and present it as if it is the only clear and logical fact that could have existed in the first place.
‘The chances of finding out what’s actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, “Hang the sense of it,” and keep yourself busy.’ -Douglas Adams
“I don’t know.”
The trick is not to follow that with “therefore…”
I don’t really think about it much and just take what science’s best guess as probably the truth.
The totality of manifestation, and everything therein, is consciousness itself, the Unicity. All there is is consciousness, not aware of Itself in it’s noumenal subjectivity, but perceived by Itself as phenomenal manifestation in It’s objective expression. … such understanding must comport the realization that there is no individual entity as such. What we think we are is merely an appearance, an insubstantial shadow, whereas what we really and truly are, is consciousness itself, the formless Brahman.
- Ramesh Balsekar
I’m in the “we’re living in a simulation” camp. I just think it’s mostly unattended. Every once in a while the being running the simulation comes back and pokes at the console or upgrades their computer and we have some innovation. The invention of fire, agriculture, the Renaissance, space race, etc.
It explains why we keep thinking we find the building blocks of the universe, then discover something smaller (gpu upgrade). Or why there’s a universal constant speed (cpu clock).
I just hope the Bering doesn’t get bored and end the program for the last time like I eventually did to my sim city.
I couldn’t possibly. This shit don’t make no sense.
