Indeed, why was life created? It’s such a complex and mysterious thing, one of those few out there that go against the universal law of entropy, that it must’ve been created by some higher intelligence. And intelligence acts reasonably, so there must be some reason to the existence of life, and thus to our human lives as well. What could be that reason? Who was the creator?
Originality
During the past month, one question we were asked pretty often was whether we want to move on to the creative or the management side of production. I answered management without hesitation, since I don’t feel an ounce of creativity in myself that I thought to be essential for the other path.
On the soul
I don’t think there’s any mainstream religion out there that doesn’t assume the existence of a soul, nor that there is anyone out there who would need the explanation of what is meant by it. Still, I’d say that the soul is nothing but a fancy name for consciousness. And that definitely doesn’t have to be something breathed into us by some higher spiritual existence. Even less does it have to be something unique to humans, however painful that is to certain people to hear. Remember that only a few hundred years ago (and I daresay deep within even today), “civilized people” still refused to consider others humans just because the color of their skin.
That ugly catch 22
There’s a reason that arguments about religion often turn into completely meaningless battles of empty words. Such arguments in general are based on standard logic and follow the scientific method of drawing conclusions based on a set of axioms and trying to find inconsistencies.
The big problem of a scientist trying to argue with a strictly religious Christian, for example, on an equal footing is that their sets of axioms are different. Sure, they are same for the most of it – one could maybe even say that the scientific axioms are a subset of the Christian ones. That is because the first and foremost axiom of a strict Christian is the absoluteness of God.
On religion
I don’t think that following a religion is a bad thing, that it should be reprimanded, nor do I claim that there are no higher spiritual beings. Religion is a very important pillar of culture and civilization, a fundamental part of mankind’s history. It provides an explanation for things there used to be no clear explanation for before, and while I don’t think that this function of it is as relevant in this age and day when science is capable of explaining phenomenon without involving divine beings (and please note that William of Ockham, the man who’s famous for stating that all theories should be kept as simple as possible, was a Christian monk), I also think that religion can and does provide moral guidelines and a spiritual respite, something that science can not and is not supposed to do.
ハロー・キティーの存在
日本にきて一年間は東京外語大のJLCで日本語学んだ。その一年間の最後に、日本語で卒業論文を書かなあかんかった。ちょうど今自分のをみつけたから、そのままで載せる。
On Genesis and creation
I’ll put it short: it’s a creation myth. It’s a creation myth, and as such it is in no ways more of a valid explanation of the world’s creation than any other creation myths. I really like reading creation myths: it’s fascinating to see what stories people can come up with to explain things they can’t explain from experience.
Brain in the vat
A meme pic led me to check the wiki page of The Matrix, and it pointed out lots of philosophical (etc) references in the movie (i don’t even consider the latter two of the trilogy a part of the “trilogy”, they are worse than fanfics).
One was the brain in the vat thought experiment, which is a very fascinating problem – but is it really a problem? From the perspective of the brain in the vat, it’s impossible to tell if what it senses is really reality or just an image sent by a computer. If the Matrix was perfect (no bugs, no hacks), then it no one could ever notice that something was wrong. Most of humankind didn’t notice anyway.
Working against evolution
That’s what humankind has been doing for quite a while. Humans have always been trying to help the weaker groups survive as well. Farming technology has advanced so much that a field that could maybe suffice for a family a thousand years ago could now maintain a whole village, or even more. With same or less work invested we’re getting better results. That’s all nice and fine, but the technological advance will never really be able to catch up to the growth of the weak groups. It can be seen in statistics that the birth rate in advanced societies is much lower than in developing ones. This can probably be traced back to that in developing societies the urge to multiply is still present, since children often die young. But thanks to advanced medical technologies more and more children survive to adulthood, while the productivity of the land they live on doesn’t grow so quickly. I’m not saying weak people should be abandoned and let the top only survive in a nice darwinian way, but that i’m not confident that with humankind growing fast in billions, a significant percentage of who are utterly unproductive, the productive groups will be able to maintain any kind of development at all–or in worst case, survive. It’s not so hard to imagine a scary scenario where the deadweight of useless people will pull down humanity as a whole into extinction.
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Tags
ale anime art beer blog clojure code coffee deutsch emo english fansub filozófia food gaming gastrovale geek hegymász jlc kaja kubernetes kultúra language literature live magyar movie másnap politika rant sport suli szolgálati közlemény travel társadalom ubuntu university weather work zene 日本 日本語 百名山 艦これ 軽音
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