h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

yet education of some form is a must. I think.
We can't really disagree with your worldview
Kids don't learn the right stuff.
You really can't stop students picking up stuff from their teachers unless yo replace teachers with monitors.

Ha ha
Sorry, I haven't been able to get on lately. I've done a lot of writing and stuff though.

I love studying the meaning of life, I live to answer the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. I know, I've said this before but, it's not about the meaning of life, it's about its' potential.

It's so complicated,yet so simple.
It's predicatable, yet unpredictable.

A solution is just a situation that didn't exist yet. This universe makes sense, and we can see how it works.

I am frustrated by people saying things that aren't true, and are negative, and harmful to the beliefs and the moral of the human race, but then encouraged by signs of inspiring intellect.

You're right Mal, to understand everything, you must first believe nothing. It's not about defining or creating the universe with you're mind, it's about allowing the universe to define itself. It's about observing and recreating the universe in you're mind.

It is such a huge task to put the vastness and the complication of all that is and all that was into words.

But you believe that you believe nothing and know everything, don't you?
Well, I'm not so arrogant. It is near impossible to believe something. It is easy to know logically that nothing may be true - in the same way that you know that you're eating a dead skinned lamb - but you don't fully bear that in mind.

"It's not about defining or creating the universe with you're mind, it's about allowing the universe to define itself. It's about observing and recreating the universe in you're mind." Um. A bit of a contradiction, there. Besides, I rather feel that we are the universe. The microcosm reflects the macrocosm, as they say.

"The only thing I know is that I know nothing" - Socrates

Its impossible for a human to truly see and understand the universe, in its entirety.
What exactly is "belief"... is it simply knowing something that you don't have proof or basis of, yet at least? Or more than that?

And is knowledge still knowledge if it's wrong?

Not technically, no, but many humans have difficulty distinguishing wrong knowledge from right.

It occurs to me that knowledge itself is neither right or wrong...it simply is. We can know something simply by deduction or experience. What we do with our 'knowledge' is what can be considered or interpreted as right or wrong, no?

Belief on the other hand, is not necessarily something that is known. We can believe something yet have absolutely no reason, emprical or otherwise as a basis or 'proof' for that belief, other than that we desire it to be so.

In this sense, I meant good and bad as correct and incorrect, and knowledge must be either.
And belief; well, exactly. A Christian, witnessing a statue crying blood, would suppose that to be "proof" of their beliefs, that God was causing it as a miracle. An atheist, seeing the same event, would conclude rather cynically that it is "proof" that the Church needed a new gimmick because they were running out of followers. An agnostic would take both of the above as "proof" that it is unjudgeable. The universe is just one giant Rorschatz inkblot, and the macrocosm reflects the microcosm, for once.

An inkblot, I like that...

...nothing real good to say

*Feels depressed*
We're born, then we die. Then we live, then we die again. Th-th-th-th-th-that's all, folks.

die again???

We die after birth; we only think that we're living.

ah

Sorry. That was a very temporary gnosis, following reading "Faith of our Fathers" by Philip K. Dick. Don't believe it. Don't believe that, either.*


*Disclaimer: Any items or articles believed by the reader and their consequences are solely the fault of the reader only and not the author. The author withholds the right to write anything he or she so wishes on the grounds that most things are believable. The reader's belief in any items or articles produced by the author is negligable and foolish, including this disclaimer. The author denies the existence of any objective and understandable reality and thus any consequences or beliefs not disclaimed by this disclaimer are believed by the author not to be able to be blamed on anyone, especially the author, since the author believes that there is nothing believable to judge against.

The whole meaning of life is too make friends soooooo you don't get lonely in heaven, hell or dekora-hammo, whatever. And so yeah.
42 is the other meaning that people do, you don't know the meaning of life when you are 42, you just get an illusion and soooo yeah.
Like Neo said in the Matrix Reloaded, choice is just a frickin' illusion, ger used to it, and I gotta go, my brain just got pissed off and ran away..................

Lonely in what heaven?

G'day , G'day ,meaning of life? ...ok.try this one on for size ;

This is based on the expansion then collapse theories of our universe ...basically all life is an attempt by the universe / mother nature / life , to defeat entrophy.Intelligent life is only another means to prolong the life in the universe and somehow prevent the eventual collapse of this once more into a singularity from whence the whole cycle begins again.

We are basically a survival gambit, perhaps intelligence will be the limiting factor on entrophy , because basically life will find a way.

erm , certain thanks to Stephen Baxter and his Xeelee sequence novels are perhaps in order!

I bet this has been said before, but:

To me, 42 is the perfect answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?" because the question is, in my humble opinion, nonesense. Why does life have to have a meaning anyway?

Nonsense question, nonsense answer.

Roadkill - Nonsense in, nonsense out. But you say all life is nonsense. Compared to what?
Peckish - I personally am currently a great believer in humanity just being more life. And being a Discordian I know that order and entropy constantly fight. But without order you can't have anything to entropise. And without entropy, there would be no challenges to adapt to; in fact, life is based on the permutations of entropy.

- Mal (realises he hasn't said anything useful; just moving the ol' thread along)

I don't contend that life is nonsense, merely that the question is.

>>This is based on the expansion then collapse theories of our universe ...basically all life is an attempt by the universe / mother nature / life , to defeat entrophy.Intelligent life is only another means to prolong the life in the universe and somehow prevent the eventual collapse of this once more into a singularity from whence the whole cycle begins again. We are basically a survival gambit, perhaps intelligence will be the limiting factor on entrophy , because basically life will find a way.<<


xeelee novels are science fiction for more than one reason, I believe one being theoires like this.
How n the world can "mother nature" do ANYthing? Or the universe? It can't think, decide to continue a process. It isn't even a thing, its just a broad termo for things. So is mother nature. ANd evolution, as Malaclypse had said earlier.
How could anything create us in order to prevent the process?
A survival gambit? Yeah. evolution is a gambit. Evolution's purpose is to improve its odds of winning. Human evolutino is just about surviving. It isn't trying to win, it makes perfect sense that those who win can play again. And Intelligience is evolutino cheating. Its found one of the best possible ways to ensure our survival: increase are capabilities. Thats all intelligience is, and thats all evolutino is. Evolution is jsut the way things happen.
You don't call rain weird... probably. It just happens. and so does "evolution".

Life? Life is chemistry taken to an extreme. Lfie is molcules, chemicals, cells, that have the capability to reproduce, because by accident, they came upon this ability and more were created, and then more, and then more. That's evolution. An accident. It's just exponential growth, building on capabilities. Biological evolutino ends when every organism in a species reproduces to the maximum of its capabilities. ANd then intelligience, and mingling with other evolutionary chains takes over.
Life? Life is nonsense... sorta...

And Mal, I for one do *not* believe that humanity is more than life. OR that evolutino is more than random processes. Or that life is more than chemistry.


42. What could Deep Thought have *possibly* said that would answer the problem? Maybe 42 is how many broken circuits he must ahve had to say 42 was the answer.
there are too many peopel who wouldn't like hearing that...
Ok then, 42 is impossible to prove right, wrong, or comprehend in any way, so live with it