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Comment by archhn | Hacker News Reader

This poem is from outside the bounds of ordinary human experience. It conveys a sense of absurdity and an immensity of scale that belittles the individual.

I find it quite harrowing. Within the ordinary bounds of human experience, there is meaning and rich individual life. We form bonds to each other, we grow, we experience and interpret the world. When we step outside our lives and immerse ourselves in the various structures and properties of the universe, it can seem so senseless, but that's only because this realm of pure intellect is alienated from our lives.

If we follow our intellect too far away from life, things become unbearably surreal. It's like when Goethe mocks philosophers in Faust because they fly off into other barren intellectual worlds when life is all around them. I feel the same way about the mindset that produced this poem as well.

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That sounds very... presumptuous maybe? You can enjoy all the nice things in human life and also marvel at and study the universe. If anything, exploring the universe is one of the nice things in life. It seems silly, a bit limiting, and a bit hurtful to say you have to choose one or the other.

Moreover, if someone does choose to push forward in only exploring the universe and disregards the other nice things in life, who are we to judge them for doing that. They have found their own way to be happy or fulfilled or interested, whichever is that they value.

The line "I... a universe of atoms... an atom in the universe" implies to me that the narrator views himself as the tiniest piece of an infinite tapestry of life. I think Feynman was many things but lost "into other barren intellectual worlds" he was not.

Which is to say that he is nothing; it's nihilistic. What is a drop water in an ocean? One drop less won't make the seas recede. Life, death, where is the boundary when one is subsumed in the all?

We are not anonymous atoms in the fabric of an unconscious universe. We have friends, family, and experience life in a unique way. We have the ability to channel our uniqueness into creative acts which introduce completely new combinations into the world. A black hole, a star, can't produce the Mona Lisa, and no one other than Divinci could. It was an outgrowth of his individuality.

This idea that we are passive beings, like atoms, completely disregards our ability to create. We tower above the unconscious elements of the universe. We are creators! Putting us on the uncreative level of atoms is slander against humanity.

Well that's certainly one way to view it, but I am not sure whether it's how Feynman himself would have viewed it. To me there's an implication there that he doesn't view atoms in this context as passive beings since Feynman was definitely not a passive kind of person. I think instead the line suggests that even the smallest possible part of the universe contains all the beauty and complexity of the entire universe as well as life itself.

But you do make a fascinating argument. It's an interesting philosophical point to be sure.

EDIT: Perhaps there is at least potential for resolution if we give up the classical definition of atoms (being the smallest indivisible parts) in favor of that of modern physics, in which not all atoms are created equal. But that opens up a whole other can of worms.

Yeah, I don't know--who does. The poem just struck me as nihilistic. If we are just star stuff in a forever bubbling and fomenting cauldron, it may be a view of reality that is hostile to life. What can console us against the slings and arrows of our outrageous existence if there is no substantial difference between us being dead or alive? If we are just a drop of goop in the cosmic cauldron, why should we not just kill ourselves when we face any discomforting challenge? Late for the bus? Kill yourself. Skipped over for promotion? Kill yourself.

As a function of survival, we need some model of reality that helps us to continue living. And that means a model to help us justify suffering--essentially. I do not find such a model reflected by the poem in question; hence, I see it as an enemy to life--nihilistic.

> We are not anonymous atoms in the fabric of an unconscious universe

You can resolve your confusion if you consider that the universe itself is conscious in some form. And those atoms have some form of consciousness.

There is no scientific, objective, measurable, external evidence for this, so don’t bother looking to prove or disprove it. You have to find it yourself.

Consciousness, as I understand it, evolves out of complexity. The simpler things are, the less capacity for consciousness they have. Fundamental building blocks of the universe must then be the least capable of consciousness. That's not to say they aren't "conscious," but that the conciousness they do possess is practically non existent when compared to the consciousness we, as complex systems, possess.

I still hold that our ability to create far outranks anything in the observable universe. We are actually so freakishly different from everything around us, that we might as well be aliens to this universe.

That's why I don't like being put on the level of atoms. And I already feel atomized enough in this increasingly antisocial environment.

> I still hold that our ability to create far outranks anything in the observable universe

Does that include the creation of stars, galaxies, and planets? Literally everything we observe has been “created” in some way.

Yeah, maybe I'm just being an egocentric human by saying that. I don't have a way of measuring "creativity." Also, what we can measure and observe is only a reduction of the universe to terms we can understand. So, we can't even accurately reflect on things in creation, let alone pass judgment on them.

I guess I'm just trying to justify my existence in this bewildering cosmos.

>>nothing ... nihilistic

Wow, that's nearly the exact opposite of the way my brain interprets it — that he's seeing an infinitely rich tapestry, the wonder of emergent properties and consciousness throughout the universe, from the smallest scales to the grandest, and we, self-referentially seeing ourselves as a part of that grandeur.

Not that we're anonymous atoms in an unconscious universe, but that we're part of a universal consciousness, possibly the most key part, as we are the particular (perhaps particularly privileged) atoms that are now "standing… atoms with consciousness… matter with curiosity".

Seems it really is in the eye of the beholder, and often more of a reflection of our own state of mind than of the artist's intent.

The idea that we can bring meaning and permanence into the world with art is a similarly hubristic one by your own metric. Surely you're not selfish enough to believe that the universe is unimportant without an overlay of human 'meaning' on top of it?

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