[Tiki]

Towards the end of the article was the question I had all along reading it:

"Where was mind when the universe was born? And what sustained the universe for the billions of years before we came to be? He nonetheless bravely offers us a lovely, chilling paradox: At the heart of everything is a question, not an answer. When we peer down into the deepest recesses of matter or at the farthest edge of the universe, we see, finally, our own puzzled face looking back at us."

Can someone explain how his 'answer' is chilling or lovely? It's fine if he wants to offer his own pet theory of reality, but to give a cop out answer to its most fundamental question doesn't go far to support it.

[s-shellfish]

I find it both chilling and lovely. Because on one hand, life, endless adventure, full of surprises, insights, new understandings and experiences, feelings, etc. On the other, absolute, fundamental, loneliness (sophistry?) of our own nature - having an individual sense of self but also feeling related to everything we define as not 'I'.

Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How did all of this happen?

Life is a waking dream, because we often completely forget that we really just don't know at all why we are here. But we pretend, we forget, we make up stories, we do anything we can do to run away from that question. Why. How did all of this happen? Why does everything happen the way it does? What does that mean, for what I am, all the way at the core?

It's not really nihilism, but it sort of is. It's just, that's the perpetual question that never gets answered directly.

I've thought of myself before as a monad - a being so fundamentally lonely in their own existence that they split themselves up into infinite pieces, just to forget, there's nothing more than what they are. Maybe some buddhist influences, but, we all have our struggles in life. It's not really intended to be sophistry. It just is a very beautiful, but very chilling awareness. What if I go back into what I was when I die?

You could see this as a mental metaphor my mind has arbitrarily made up for all events I've witnessed and been a part of, some sort of perpetual social ostracism I keep walking myself into. But I still think it's more than just that. I loved science growing up. But I can never answer that question - and I know absolutely, that I never will. What happened before 'I exist'?. For any of us. My father often has had a variant of this question, and in the past, it's rubbed people the wrong way because, only a fraction of it gets expressed. We all wear masks. Sometimes there's just a profoundly deep sadness that no one can see.

Chilling, and lovely. In perpetuity.

[dwaltrip]

> Why this life, why is this the one I have?

This one we are beginning to be able to answer. From what I can tell, the question is entirely backwards. One doesn't have a life. A life has a someone.

A self is a messy, changing collection of descriptions of a human, the most extensive of which are those descriptions that are contained within one's own brain and also in one's bodily presence.

The descriptions don't posses the life. The life generates and manifests the descriptions.

------

To be fair, there are many, many useful reasons to frequently ignore this perspective and pretend that we are selves that do indeed possess a life -- the strongest being that we seemingly can't help but do so most of the time, just like we can't help but take the next breath.

However, taking the time to appreciate and meditate on the above can very worthwhile. At least, it has been for me personally.

[s-shellfish]

Was watching Sherlock Holmes recently.

'Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off of it.'

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

[zshrdlu]

There are reductionist answers to these questions, albeit incomplete. We know about evolution, we know about the Big Bang. We are not sure by what exact mechanism consciousness works -- if we can even define it properly enough to begin with, but going by our current model of the universe we know it is the result of the Big Bang, and evolution.

There are intermediate answers to questions like "Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How did all of this happen?"

The chain of intermediate questions and answers leads to the ultimate frontiers of science. One has to accept the possibility that our desire for an ultimate, resounding answer to these questions may never be quenched. Perhaps the universe just defies human understanding at some point. Even our language become circular at some point: the definitions of "thing", "entity", and "object" all refer to each other - there is no definition beyond them; without circularity dictionaries would be infinite.

[s-shellfish]

The circular thing with dictionaries - that makes sense. I've always seen dictionaries as infinite. Shakespeare invented words. Computational definitions of symbols, mathematics, etc are different.

I don't really see it as circular, more like a spiral. Each layer of computation or math - in 3s. Computer, mind, paper. Or symbol relates to symbol through symbol. Deductive proof techniques, the memory of all existing knowledge filling in the gaps between each sequential step. Layers of definitions stack, those are computer programs.

https://youtu.be/Ad4T-j_bOVc

The internet makes so much of life weird. Memories, words. Everything a reminder, automatic.

[rellui]

Whenever anyone asks me: why do you live? Where do we come from? I just ask back: why do you care?

[crooked-v]

> The history of every major galactic civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Enquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.

> For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question "How can we eat?", the second by the question "Why do we eat?", and the third by the question "Where shall we have lunch?"

[sametmax]

And now we got 3 "I don't know".

[bpchaps]

Because it's interesting, dammit!

[katzgrau]

Really well articulated.

Im not sure the question of what happened before "I" is so puzzling though. If your're making up the events that you're witnessing today, why would the "time" prior to you be any different?

[s-shellfish]

Thank you.

Time is something I'm learning to both be able to see as something to keep in mind from a practical perspective, but also, something I can seem to let go of. It's very challenging, sometimes - but it seems essential to grasp 'flow'. Thank you for that.

[Bromskloss]

> loneliness (sophistry?)

Solipsism?

[s-shellfish]

That's the one I intended, thank you!

[noiv]

You may want to exclude language from reality. The dichotomy of questions and answers might not happen in the latter. Or the other way round: As long you have questions you're not there yet. I present you one piece of the puzzle: The Physics and Philosophy of Time - with Carlo Rovelli on Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6rWqJhDv7M

In a way he supposes minds as entropy inducing entities.

[opportune]

I agree, it’s not profound except at face value. Just strikes me as extremely vague and hand-wavy metaphysics

This is the reason that a lot of people don’t like philosophy - because people hide behind verbal tricks which have little meaning beyond sounding “deep”. Green ideas sleep furiously

[tylerjwilk00]

Some ideas are so subtle that words fail to describe. In the same way lay explanations of physics lack understanding that pure equations deliver.

The trick of the philosopher is an attempt at conveying meaning with a blunt instrument.

"To cross a river you need a boat. But when you reach the other side you don’t pick up the boat and carry it." ~ Alan Watts

[s-shellfish]

My former PhD advisor said something along the lines of 'the incompleteness of natural language', this being one of the hardest problems he's been aware of.

This is him:

https://www.cs.stevens.edu/~naumann/publications/publication...

[gowld]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deepity#English

[TeMPOraL]

I agree. If you immediately know the candle light is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.

[s-shellfish]

Can't there be room for both awarenesses in a single mind?

[empath75]

> Where was mind when the universe was born? And what sustained the universe for the billions of years before we came to be?

The past was created when people started probing it, in the same sense that the present is.

[optimuspaul]

That is what I was thinking as well... made me wonder, did my mind create your comment 2 hours in the past when I had the thought? Are you even real?

[drb91]

One might have emotional attachment to an explainable universe; in such a scenario you might find the concept of an ultimate unanswerable question chilling. Or alternatively if you’re a skeptic, you might find it lovely.

[sridca]

> Where was mind when the universe was born?

This is an answer in the guise of a question, and the answer (belief) being that the universe is finite. Let me offer a better question: is the universe finite or infinite?

[wu-ikkyu]

>Let me offer a better question: is the universe finite or infinite?

What is the concept of infinity but the outer limit of our mind's ability to conceptualize?

[drdeca]

"Infinite" can be understood as "not finite" or "without limit", or "equinumerous with a strict subset of itself".

(I don't know why you switched from "infinite" to "infinity". I am opting to answer for the word "infinite".)

[RobertoG]

Well, I suppose the answer is the same that for the game of the '20 questions in its “surprise” version' that the article mention.

Where was the word before the first question is asked?

[sbjs]

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