Does the Universe Have a Purpose? | Hacker News Reader

Does the Universe Have a Purpose?

templeton.org

8 pointsfrisco13 comments

Do ultravague questions have a purpose? There's a question I can answer.

Define "purpose".

I'm going to the store to buy some eggs. There's a purpose. Is the universe trying to get some eggs? If so, mission accomplished.

That's quite a heavy burden for one person. What if the store is closed?

Luckily the universe has a meta-object-protocol and an ability to modify it's own abstract snytax, so to speak.. thus it's purpose can be dynamically redefined at run time. While creating much confusion it's also really freaking cool. I personally don't believe in an afterlife beyond garbage collection but who's to say what that freed memory will make room for??

I take 'purpose' to be a 'reason' or 'justification' for being. Therefore the question presupposes a reasoner or justifier, which one might assume to be a creator who needs a reason or justification.

So 'no'. ;-)

The uni/muiltiverse is a computer, I believe that our universe is a subset of higher dimensional universes populated with matter and energy, so it seems very possible that the computational capacity of our universe is of some use to whatever matter and/or energy is populating the higher dimensional universe. I refer to these entities as our Higher Dimensional Overlords.

In other words, our universe is a map-reduce... it explains everything!

¯\(º_o)/¯

The physical scientists lean towards maybe, maybe not, while the humanitarians, theologians, and life sciences types lean towards yes.

Personally, I think multiple universes explain everything.

Physicists, astronomers, and astrophysicists - 3 Yes or most likely yes(the link to Paul Davies' essay lists his answer as "Perhaps", but in the essay, he consistently argues in favor of the universe having purpose), 2 No or most likely no.

Chemists - 2 No, although de Duve's essay does not seem to disagree with finding a greater meaning in the universe, but merely with the terminology of the question.

Humanities and social sciences - 2 Yes.

Theologians - 2 Yes.

Computer scientist - 1 Yes.

It seems to me to be inaccurate to claim that the physical scientists tend towards uncertainty. None of them express uncertainty in their essays answering the question. They are fairly evenly split between belief in purpose for the universe and lack of such belief, however.

Your judgment about the theologians, social scientists, etc. leaning towards yes is much more supported by their answers, since they all did say something which is equivalent to yes.

I don't think a sample space of 12 people, however eminent they are, isn't enough to make a general statement like this. Sorry!

Of course not, but if one does make a generalization based on this small sample as the person I was replying to did, one's generalization should agree with the data.

You'd think it'd give them pause that people actually studying the universe are so likely to say no.

If the universe is entirely defined within its own context (which I believe it is) then it is its own purpose.

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