how to rationalize my existence

[Vulijigo]

How do you answer this:

 

If you were to suddenly to appear on earth without prior knowledge of anything and the first thing you see is a human next to a computer (and let's say that you miraculously have a high level of intelligence and reasoning skills). Which would you be more likely to say had an intelligent creator: The less complex computer or the more complex human? 

 

Is it reasonable to declare that a human being in all it's complexities exists by chance while entropy sits confused? Matter continues ever more disorganized. But what is this opposite force that has made me to become unimaginably organized? And with something we call a mind, no less.

 

If you come across a written screenplay of Hamlet, do you assume that a team of monkeys have been strumming on typewriters for billions of years? Or do you say that Shakespeare must have passed by? And then of course, how did I hit the jackpot a million times and end up here.

 

In my mind, there is no logical explanation for my existence. Yet, here I am. Paradox, no?

[Kevin Beal]

I'm not sure that I understand what exactly your question is, but if you are asking how you can be such a sophisticated biological and physical person in a universe that tends toward entropy (disorder), then I think that actually it's probably a lot more consistent with disorder and entropy than you might realize.

 

If we look at a human body for the amazing piece of "machinery" that it is, then you aren't really looking at the larger picture. The number of fatty lipids that bumped into each other in water was surely in the billions (if not trillions) before any could successfully share the the amino acids that it stored in any kind of sustainable way (a protocell). And how many billions of protocells had to be destroyed or consumed before any unicellular life could come about. And it was a billion years before any of these unicellular organisms could live symbiotically enough to form multicellular life. And how crazy long it took for this basic life could find a way to breed sexually.

 

We haven't even got a thousandth of the way to humans, and already countless extinctions took place. The vast vast majority of all of these accidental organizations of cells failed into entropy. Even further, all organisms eventually die and give way to entropy.

 

The life of successful people is full of failure after failure. The only way that civilization can survive in fact is to embrace the creative destruction and anarchy of civilized life.

 

As humans we are "programmed" to see patterns wherever we can. We even see it where no pattern exists. But the truth is that reality and life itself is overwhelmingly chaotic.

 

The fact that we are human, have consciousness, rationality, live in modern times with endless entertainment, sophisticated science and technology, should be cause for enormous relief (and maybe even gratitude).

 

It reminds me of a really great video by Stef:

 

 

Please let me know if this is helpful at all!

[Pepin]

How do you answer this:

 

If you were to suddenly to appear on earth without prior knowledge of anything and the first thing you see is a human next to a computer (and let's say that you miraculously have a high level of intelligence and reasoning skills). Which would you be more likely to say had an intelligent creator: The less complex computer or the more complex human? 

 

The question doesn't really make sense because the concept of complexity and creator require knowledge gained through empiricism. To go further, the application of the concept "creator" cannot not automatically be applied as the vast majority of complex structures in the universe occur due to the laws of physics. One would inquire before answering the question and observe that the computer is a creation that stems from the human mind, and the human is a product of evolution.

 

Science is difficult and subtle. Assuming that a question is valid before sufficiently researching the entities involved is not rational. If one were to ask "what color is the number 2?", this would make little sense. This problem is especially the case since our brains are the result of evolution and are designed to make assumptions about entities. Philosophy and science is the methodology that gets around this.

 

Is it reasonable to declare that a human being in all it's complexities exists by chance while entropy sits confused? Matter continues ever more disorganized. But what is this opposite force that has made me to become unimaginably organized? And with something we call a mind, no less.

 

The sun and other sources of energy. Systems will become more disorganized if no new energy if put into the system, yet on earth there is a giant ball of gas which has been contributing energy to the earth for 4.5 billion years.

 

There are experiments that demonstrate that many of the building blocks of life such as amino acids can be formed by introducing a decent amount of energy into some of the common materials found on earth prior to life.

 

If you come across a written screenplay of Hamlet, do you assume that a team of monkeys have been strumming on typewriters for billions of years? Or do you say that Shakespeare must have passed by? And then of course, how did I hit the jackpot a million times and end up here.

 

No, typewriters are a recent invention.

 

The ending question doesn't make sense to me. Your existence and the existence of life in general has nothing to do with probability, just as the explosion of a star or the formation of a galaxy has nothing to do with probability. It occurs because the physical requirements that would cause it to occur were met.

 

In my mind, there is no logical explanation for my existence. Yet, here I am. Paradox, no?

 

Not at all. If you have not read up on evolution and physics, I advice you do so. In regard to existence, here is a section from a book I am writing. Later sections deal with the origin on life and how sensation, perception, and consciousness come about.

 

 

Existence is the irreducible property of reality. One can not go further in addressing the existence of an existent because the fact of existence has already been established. This is to say that the question of “why does existence exist” needs no answer because existence does exist. No further dissection of why something exists can invalidate or explain anymore.

 

To make this a little more clear, think about constantly asking the question “why?”. “Why did she do that?”; “why do protons have mass?”; “why does consciousness exist?”; “why is there is sofa where my bed used to be?”. This method of inquiry is quite vital to the acquisition of knowledge, yet at a point the question ceases to make sense.

 

For instance, “why is gravity 9.8 ms/s2 on earth?”. The physical explanation would be that objects with mass attract each other with a force that is equivalent to the product of the two masses, a number that does not change called the gravitational constant, divided by the radius squared.

 

Further questions can be asked, such as why do objects with mass attract each other? The General Theory of Relativity provides an explanation which says that massive objects bend space-time, which causes two massive objects to accelerate towards each other. 

 

One could go on to ask, such as: “why do massive objects warp space-time?”, “why is the gravitational constant the value it is?”, or “why does the gravitational constant even exist?”.

 

All of these questions are quite important in understanding the nature of the universe, and it is tempting to continue leveling an endless amount of questions, yet there is a point in which the question of “why” is invalid. This point is reached where any answer to the question of “why?” is contained in the question and in any further explanation.

 

As an example, “why does the gravitational constant exist?” contains the answer in the question. The gravitational constant has a well-defined definition, but the fundamental property of the gravitational constant is that it is exists.

 

Since the question of existence refers solely to existence and nothing else, all other properties and characteristics can be ignored, and any question can be rephrased to “why does this existent exists?”.

 

Since an existent is defined as something that exists, the question answers itself: it exists because it exists. Any further explanation of the gravitational constant will have the answer*, that “X existent exists”.

 

As a contemporary example, people who believe that the universe was created by a conscious deity believe that this provides an explanation for why existence exists. If you ask them for an explanation of why the deity exists, most answers won't be satisfactory, but a somewhat common answer is that “God just is”. 

 

If the response is generalized to “God exists, therefore God exists”, this is actually quite valid, with the exception of the existence of the subject. Ignoring this fault, the issue with the argument is that the answer “this existent exists” is true of all things that exist. The generalized explanation already provides an explanation for why things exists, making the introduction of a deity to the equation irrelevant. A deity is not needed to explain existence as the question is already answered.

[Vulijigo]

Thanks for the detailed responses! I will definitely be looking into this in more depth.

 

It's still hard for me, however, to wrap my mind around the fact that the phenomenon of the existence of a rational being exists in a seemingly infinite universe without any example of the same anywhere else. I can see why probability should be irrational in this case. Still, it pounds on my brain every day (I know that this is not rationally relevant).

 

To me, It's like imagining that the first reasoning being was walking along the river and finds a smart phone. What conclusion does he make about such a thing? Would it be correct to assume that it was created by chance?

 

Why is there no precedent for rational beings?

[TheRobin]

I think it would help you a lot if you were more precise in your question.

 

If you ask "why does the universe and we exist?" then the why can refer to either causation or characteristic. To give to quick examples. "Why does my hand hurt?" "Because I've been playing videogames for 12 hours non-stop" (i.e. playing that long caused the hurting), on the other hand if you ask "Why does do things fall to the ground?" al you can really say is "Because matter attracts other matter" (i.e. it's a characteristic of the substance you're talking about).

 

But in either case, no answer for existence is possible. If you ask about causation, then you can always ask "But what caused THAT?" one more time, no matter how many answers you already have. on the other hand, if you ask about characteristic then you can only do that if you already accept that the thing in question exists (i.e. that existence is one of it's characteristics), but unlike other physical characteristics, there's no degree of accuracy in existence. (i.e. while you can describe how gravity works in greater or smaller scales, there's no scale to existence, it's an either/or, yes or no question), so there can't be a more indepth or accurate answer in regards to the characteristic of existence.

 

As for why human beings exist and how exactly that could happen, I think people already gave good answers for that. But in the end I think it's the same problem, human beings exist as a result of the parameters of the principles of how matter behaves and there's no reason why they should be one way or another, except to add, that if they were any other way, no one could ever know of it, as the universe would probably not exist in an inhabitable form and so no one would be there to observe the lack of observers.

[Vulijigo]

Thanks so much for providing me with your points of view. It's such a great help for me!

[cynicist]

How do you answer this:

 

If you were to suddenly to appear on earth without prior knowledge of anything and the first thing you see is a human next to a computer (and let's say that you miraculously have a high level of intelligence and reasoning skills). Which would you be more likely to say had an intelligent creator: The less complex computer or the more complex human? 

 

There's no historical context here, no passage of time at all. I would say it's just as likely in this situation that they popped into existence the same time as me. We only approach the explanations that we have (scientifically) because of our knowledge of how things changed over time. 

 

Is it reasonable to declare that a human being in all it's complexities exists by chance while entropy sits confused? Matter continues ever more disorganized. But what is this opposite force that has made me to become unimaginably organized? And with something we call a mind, no less.

 

Perhaps you are biased by your perception. You say entropy sits confused, but aren't we also part of that entropy? You say that matter is disorganized relative to us, but look at the planet that supports our life. We have large bodies of water, rocks, dirt, all sitting on top of a thin crust with a molten core. We have an atmosphere with air that we can breathe while surrounded by empty space. Seems to me that a lot of organization took place before life here was even possible.

 

If you come across a written screenplay of Hamlet, do you assume that a team of monkeys have been strumming on typewriters for billions of years? Or do you say that Shakespeare must have passed by? And then of course, how did I hit the jackpot a million times and end up here.

 

In my mind, there is no logical explanation for my existence. Yet, here I am. Paradox, no?

 

Occam's Razor is useful, but you can't compare something we know to be possible (a human existing and writing a screenplay) with an all powerful creator being. I also marvel at the odds of our existence, but I don't then leap forward and claim something that is even less likely!

[Pepin]

It's still hard for me, however, to wrap my mind around the fact that the phenomenon of the existence of a rational being exists in a seemingly infinite universe without any example of the same anywhere else. I can see why probability should be irrational in this case. Still, it pounds on my brain every day (I know that this is not rationally relevant).

 

There likely are other rational beings out there, but I think the question you are getting at is why we haven't seen them. There is no definite answer, but it is good to think in terms of space, time, probability, and physics.

 

What is the probability of a galaxy having a planet with life? This isn't a question that we can answer, but lets just say that if we were to scour a thousand galaxies, one out of the thousand would contain life.

 

The second question is what is how likely is it for one of these galaxies to be near us? The answer is not very likely, though it is statistically likely to find a huge cluster of galaxies filled with life, you are more likely to find a single galaxy with life surrounded by a hundred or more galaxies without life.

 

The third question is in regard to time, that is if there is intelligent life, where are they in time? The universe is 14.5 billion years old, and the earth has been around for 4.5 billion. The time frame that humans have existed has only been about 100,000 years, and the ability for humans to detect radio signals for about 100. An alien race may of sent out signals to see if there is life out there, but the signals may have already passed by us millions of years ago, and the aliens may now likely dead.

 

There is a problem finding life in that what we observe is from the past. There might be life on some planet far away that is seeing the light from the milky way 5 billion years ago, before there was an earth.

 

There is also the problem of getting there. In order for an alien species to get from here to a potential planet with life, they will have to transverse space at less than light speed, which may take millions of years. Space is huge, far too huge to comprehend, and it is expanding at an accelerated rate. If they do decide to travel to another planet, they are taking a huge risk because they need to expect to be able to survive for at least 100,000 years, and it may also be for nothing because by the time they get there the planet might not exist.

 

As a final possibility, perhaps we are the first planet to contain life. Maybe other planets will sprout life in a few millions years, but if we just so happen to be the first then it isn't at all unusual as to why there has been no signs of life. Someone has to be first, and it isn't like life has to crop up all around the same time. It might also be argued that we are the first to contain intelligent life.

[Bastii]

The universe is 14.5 trillion years old...

Acutally it's 14 billion, so the universe is only three times older than Earth itself.

 

It's still hard for me, however, to wrap my mind around the fact that the phenomenon of the existence of a rational being exists in a seemingly infinite universe without any example of the same anywhere else. I can see why probability should be irrational in this case. Still, it pounds on my brain every day (I know that this is not rationally relevant).

That's called Fermi's Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox) and I agree with you, it is very fascinating. There is a section in the wiki-article that lists about two dozen hypothetical solutions, you can take a look at that if you like (it's quite long).

[Vulijigo]

Is there a "I'm an incomprehensibly complex anomaly theory" somewhere?

Or "I'm an anomaly within an anomaly theory?"

[Vulijigo]

I like Fermi's Parodox.

[Kevin Beal]

Is there a "I'm an incomprehensibly complex anomaly theory" somewhere?Or "I'm an anomaly within an anomaly theory?"

I think that's against the forum guidelines...

 

Just kidding

[Pepin]

Acutally it's 14 billion, so the universe is only three times older than Earth itself.

 

Thank you. For whatever reason I keep getting those numbers wrong. I think said in an article I'm writing that evolution occurred over 3.5 trillion years, and that wouldn't look good to someone reading it.

[Hannibal]

I'd think that the computer, being far more simple, had the intelligent creator. A human being is an incredible feat for an intelligence to create, yet almost an inevitability given enough "stuff" and enough time to munge it all together until a human emerges.

A computer is a much more realistic achievement for a mind as we understand it.

 

Or perhaps I should that something as complex as a human is almost inevitable - an actual human would be unbelievable.