Le 30-déc.-06, à 22:32, Tom Caylor a écrit :
> <snip> ... On the other hand, I see many people die because they
> judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically
> getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for
> living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason
> for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most
> urgent of questions."
There is an analogy between "meaning of life for entity X", and
"consistency of machine/theory X".
There is a sense in which "the consistency of X" is both the most
important fact and the most futile question for machine X. It is
important because of the importance of being consistant. It is futile
because the consistency question of X is beyond X's abilities. Now with
self-modifying machine, some nuance should be added. Want just to say
that "meaning of life" question can be related to self-consistency
interrogation.
Recall also that somehow "meaning of life" question are addressed by
"machine/human" who have the luck to be able to drink water when
thirsty. If you lack water or food, meaning of life resume in searching
water and food, which for many can seems as more urgent ...
>
> Besides the question of how meaning relates to this List, the question
> of meaning itself can be asked at several different levels, so I'll
> list a few:
>
> 1) Why does the universe exist? Why is there something rather than
> nothing?
> 2) Why do human beings in general exist?
> 3) Why do I exist?
And comp can "reduce" such question to just one mystery: numbers. I
like to paraphrase Kronecker on this:
God created the integers, all the rest are constructions by integers.
For example, the question "why do I exist" is similar in that context
to the question "why am I the reconstituted in washington and not the
one in Moscow". We can explain why we cannot answer that question.
>
> The purpose of listing these three questions is not to deal with all of
> them on this thread necessarily, but to show that the question of the
> meaning of life really is connected to the universal questions that
> this list tries to address. One's answer to any one of these questions
> can affect his/her answer to the other questions.
I agree with you. This is illustrated by the recurrence of such basic
theme on the list. It is related to the problem of the place of
"theological question" in the search of a theory of everything.
Even if Jesus was not the son of God, or if the universe does not
primitively exist, we have to explain such "illusions" in the discourse
of the numbers/machine.
>
> It seems that we all have to eventually come to the question of the end
> of our lives. (Even if immortality, quantum or other kinds, is a
> reality, the question of the end of our lives is a topic addressed even
> on this List.)
Sure. It is also related to the cul-de-sac hypothesis, itself related
to the "Kripke multiverse" related to the model of the modal logic
attached to the person points of view.
> So as one man on United Flight 93 said before giving
> his life to save others, "Let's roll!"
>
> Tom
>
> "You ask me about the meaning of life? Good Lord, I don't even know my
> way around Chinatown!" - Woody Allen
The meaning of life could be the life of meaning,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Mon Jan 01 2007 - 11:32:09 PST