This much is true
I'm actually quite ok with it, but then I find the idea of fate and pre-determinism ridiculous. I much prefer the thought that life on a whole is chaotic and random, with no proof to support a life-after-death theory.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:07, 1 reply, 16 years ago)

If you think life is not pre-determined, caothic and random
then you can't believe at the same time that we are all insignificant, because every little thing we do, will have an effect in the future.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:13, Reply)

Individually our lives will have thousands of 'knock on' effects, yes
But in the grand scope of the universe throughout time, these will have excruciatingly little significance (although I concede that they will have some, so not strictly insignificant).
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:15, Reply)

That you don't know
It could be that in the grand scope of the universe we'll be the greatest race ever, and we'll bring peace and technology to the whole of the space and time.

Unlikely, but you don't know. So your life is very important, because making the most of it, living it to the full and giving as much as you can, you make our race better.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:18, Reply)

This could be true
I'm not going to piss my life away because I believe I have very little significance to the universe, I'm going to piss it away because it's fun and I'm not that clever.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:20, Reply)

Ours lives are very important to us obviously
they are all we have, so should enjoy them as much as possible (which I am attempting to do) but given the size of the universe and the probability, I can't believe that we are the only planet with intelligent life. I'm not saying I think we'll ever be contacted by it, because that is almost as unlikely as there not being any others, but I strongly doubt we'll be the greatest race ever.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:21, Reply)

Well
I wonder what would have happened if the great people of the past had decided they didn't give a fuck and didn't fight for a better life, didn't keep on doing research... Our lifes would know be probably like those of the humans thousands of years ago.

Don't you wonder what we'll be able to do, given enough time, to the rest of the Universe? Don't you really believe we can be a great race?
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:30, Reply)

What Vipros and I are saying about insignificance
Does not mean we advocate people do nothing. We just have this life, it'd be stupid not to make it the best it can be, for everyone.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:32, Reply)

nice and succinct

( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:35, Reply)

So if you make it better for someone else
your life is not insignificant anymore. And on top of that, you don't know what repercusions your acts have on the future.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:35, Reply)

There are different levels of significance.
There's what's significant to you, to people you know, to strangers, to the world, to the universe etc.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:36, Reply)

No, it's still insignificant
everyone you ever meet or know will die, every bit of information we ever record will burn and the universe won't even notice.
(PsychoChomp, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:36, Reply)

yes

( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:37, Reply)

You might be forgotten
That's not the same as being insignificant. Your action might have triggered something that will make the future better. Maybe that person you helped recovered faith in humanity and started to work towards something that will be great. Your name will never be there, but if you hadn't helped that person, she/he wouldn't have done that great thing that improved our race.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:40, Reply)

Until a black hole swallows you up
or our galaxy crashes into another or any of our local stars go supernova. Then everyone dies, everything gets fried and there is literally no trace of what once was.
(PsychoChomp, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:42, Reply)

We might have moved into another galaxy by then
We might have found out how to control supernovas.

We might be all dead, but we might not. Whatever we do today will decide our future.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:44, Reply)

Intergalactic travel is never going to happen I'm afraid.

(PsychoChomp, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:46, Reply)

unfortuantely true
they are just too fucking far away
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:48, Reply)

That's why people laughed at Columbus
We only need the knowledge and time.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:50, Reply)

we'd need to be able to fundamentally bugger about with the laws of physics and space-time

( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:53, Reply)

Well, sort of
Space-time travel is not explicitly forbidden by current physics. It's just that the energies required and the length scales involved are phenomenally large and incredibly small respectively.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:00, Reply)

was trying not to get too sciency :-P

( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:01, Reply)

I'm very sciency by nature!

( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:02, Reply)

me too, but I try not to let on

( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:06, Reply)

Just think of all the people who tried to get humans to fly
and how many more laughed at them or "proved" it impossible.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:13, Reply)

~2,500,000 light years away
If we can go faster than the speed of light, which isn't even mathmatically or theoretically possible at the moment, that's still a long time before we get there.
(PsychoChomp, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:54, Reply)

Or we find a wormhole
I know, I know. But it could be.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:56, Reply)

nearest one is 25k light years
Andromeda is the nearest spiral at 2.5 million
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:01, Reply)

what we are talking about is getting further apart now
within the context of the human race one person's actions can be significant, but on the universal scale they aren't.

To bring it back to life after death, my view is that as we are such a small and insignificant part of the universe why would we be singled out for such a thing? unless it is a side-effect of consciousness, but then where do you draw the line. Would all animals be there? Just us, dolhpins and chimps and the like? How about aliens?

I certainly don't think that there can be an afterlife in the religious sense as that would imply that we are somehow special amongst the vastness of everything, and that is just massively egomaniacal.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:45, Reply)

Ok, well
You have to admit that we are somehow special. To start with, we're having this conversation. No other animal considers anything like this.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:51, Reply)

oh yeah, I find our existence amazing
I'm a stoner don't forget ;-)
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:54, Reply)

:-D
I keep hoping. I think we can do a lot.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:56, Reply)

I find things like the way our skin works fascinating
hands as well. good stuff.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:58, Reply)

The more I learnt at school about white cells
and how they protect us, the more amazed I was that we were alive :)
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:03, Reply)

How do we know that other great apes don't consider this?
Or dolphins?
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:56, Reply)

There are other reasons why we differ
even if you want to believe they have conciousness and they think about themselves as individuals, they don't modify their habitat to make their life easier, not in a big scale (I don't think they do it even in a small scale) and they act without considering what'll happen in the future.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:04, Reply)

Beavers modify their environment.
Heheh beavers.
(wellgroomedwookiee is a filthy-minded hobgoblin, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:18, Reply)

it's significant on a small scale
what we're getting at is that the human scale is totally insignificant when compared to the rest of the universe.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:37, Reply)

I believe we can be a great race within the limits that we exist.
I don't believe people should stop striving to better themselves or our civilisation, because we have to make the most of what we have and to try and perpetuate ourselves and so forth, but I also don't harbour any doubts that beyond our small sphere of influence we will have no impact.

I absolutely think that we could achieve amazing things, but only when measured at an appropriate scale.

When viewed against the sheer enormity of the rest of everything it's my opinion that trying to think we matter is absurd.

Fortunately it is also irrelevant, so there isn't really any point in thinking about it, other than as an interesting philosophical exercise.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:34, Reply)

Yep, but I like this exercise
(although you lost me with a few fancy words, up there)

Give us a couple of billions of years and we might have expanded through half of the universe.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:37, Reply)

we might
and I'm totally in support of it. I'm just not holding my breath in anticipation ;-)

thoroughly enjoying the discussion. which words lost you?
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:39, Reply)

I like being able to discuss these things without
a) being called a freak/nerd
b) getting the other person upset and shouting at me :)

I'm not holding my breath either, but I really hope so. And I really believe that our acts today will have an effect on the future, somehow. Sometimes a big effect, sometimes just something small, but they do.

Striving and harbour, but I think I got the general meaning.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:43, Reply)

I love discussions like this
It's why I studied Philosophy.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:46, Reply)

yeah, me too
it's why I studied civil engineering....

I was saying to my mrs the other day that I really miss this sort of discussion, it's the sort of thing I used to do with mates at uni and stuff all day/night, and these days I only really get it on here.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:47, Reply)

At some LARPs, when people are drinking around a campfire early in the morning
I like to kick off debates about fate vs free will, and just watch people talk, chipping in here and there with counter arguments to keep things flowing.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:51, Reply)

I miss them a lot too
We had compulsory Phylosophy at school for 2 years (17 and 18 years old). I wanted to be an engineer, so I didn't study it any longer, but kept reading some good books.

Those 2 years we'd spend the day on the beach, singing and discussing about life and humanity. Great times.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:53, Reply)

well, we are all quite freaky and nerdy
I don't tend to get upset, unless someone is being absolutely wrong and won't accept it. In this sort of discussion it's hard to be dead wrong.

striving = working towards
harbour = have
:-)
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:47, Reply)

Ta-ra
I had the meaning right!

Yep, and if someone gets upset I can just switch this thing off.

My friends were all a bit close minded, but I loved so much to make them think different, even if I wasn't really sure of what I was saying :P
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:55, Reply)

nice work :-)
that's true

I don't tend to argue anyway. Been with my mrs for 6 years and we've never argued, we've had disagreements, but not what I'd call an argument.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:57, Reply)

Oh I've had arguments
My girlfriend likes to win such discussions, even when there can't be a 'winner'.
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 11:58, Reply)

was talking about this with my mate the other day
I'd had a number of beers and jagers and spliffs and came to the conclusion that it's a result of being too laid back and too right :-D
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:00, Reply)

:D
I don't argue about these things, as nobody can win. I get upset about more material things, I'm affraid.

I used to discuss with that crazy poet boyfriend I had (the one that stopped the cars) because he was far too pesimist without a reason.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:07, Reply)

I only occasionally argue with my mum
That's it.
( Roota zweeeeeoooooowm, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:01, Reply)

no you don't

( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:02, Reply)

Yes i fucking do!
Shit.
( Roota zweeeeeoooooowm, Tue 3 Aug 2010, 12:04, Reply)