user7923489

Yeah right, one can always construct a reality which discourages whatever you plan to do. I was completely wrong.

If even politicians are unable to differentiate extremism in thought experiments and science vs. actual action, then how bad must it be among the general population? Doesn't that consideration justify placing certain things under a taboo?

I'm not saying that this is the only possibility but merely that we cannot exclude it.

No, I'm only talking about the testable and the potentially testable. I mentioned hell and God just as an example of a potential reality which imposes meaning on our existence. I'm referring to a literally testable God through some scientific experiment.

If we could establish a communication channel to the creator we could perhaps negotiate a transfer of all consciousnesses on Earth to the host universe. Maybe the creator isn't even aware of us and would simply shut us down if we wouldn't establish contact.

The possibility of solipsism cannot be excluded, but it also seems to be very difficult to test. I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it, because there are two approaches of broadening our knowledge which appear to have lower hanging fruit: The theory of mind and the theory of everything.

This reasoning immediately follows from an agnostic, scientific epistemology. A hypothetical theory of 'I' is 'a collection of elementary particles brought forth by evolution due to certain dynamics that are best described by quantum field theory and general relativity'. Who goes to hell depends on the particular situation we find ourselves in. Perhaps environmentalists would be spared.

In any sense. Why should we assume that our creator is sane? Perhaps they sell toy universes at the counter in grocery stores and we are in the hands of some cruel teenager in our host universe. Perhaps they run simulations to find a particular outcome of evolution. Maybe we are in some sort of digestive organ of a god which feasts on evolutionary structures which perform complex computations.

That's not what I mean. I mean that we need to actively look for intrinsic meaning of our existence, just to have the case covered that there really is a grand purpose and that we will be disadvantaged if we don't act in accordance to it.

How can you prove, though, that meaning is neither singular, preset and nor condensable to a single goal? What if god does exist? Then it would be rational to act in a way that pleases god and thus it should be our goal to find out whether that is the case.

I mean that we are obliged to look for meaning just so that we consider the possibility that there indeed is meaning, so that we can act accordingly to avoid ending up in hell (or a similar place). And by that I don't mean the introspective, philosophical, non-falsifiable kind of meaning, but meaning somewhere encoded in the laws of physics, say, we are in a simulation and our creator will punish us if we destroy our planet.

Wait. To our best knowledge we don't know whether there is a meaning of life, right? And it would be irrational to act based on a conjectured purpose if there isn't solid evidence for it. So even if we will burn in hell if we don't destroy ourselves, there is no solid evidence for that, so it would be irrational to do so. The best way of proceeding is then to keep our options open as long as possible. Our quasi-purpose is to find out whether there is a purpose in the first place.