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Comment by mattigames | Hacker News Reader

The "why me" for others is the first time they realize they have a chronic illness, that sudden realization that the universe is an uncaring dance of atoms, the realization that every attempt at ordering it's just a house of cards, including our DNA and everything else we rely on. I was expecting myself to land that line of reasoning into some comforting words but I have failed miserably ha, hold on tight.

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“There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky.

But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!”

― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

I don't like this quote because it suggests a sort of separation between ourselves and the universe, or it suggests that the universe is some all-powerful omnipotence that might deign to heal us if only we could supplicate ourselves to it, but that's mistaken.

We're made of all the same stuff as those stars. We are the universe, and if we care, that means the universe cares as well. When we have the power to do something, that means the universe has the power to do something.

Mattigames, there is a logic flaw in your little aphorism that seems quite telling. Since you and I are part of the Universe, then we would also be indifferent and uncaring. Perhaps you forgot, mattigames, that we are not superior to the Universe but merely a fraction of it.

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