The Meanings of Life
Part II - Philosophy
The Meanings of Life
The real truths are heresies. They cannot be spoken. Only discovered, whispered, and perhaps read
A really unbounded, big question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?
That’s a big question. Because it’s a big question, I’ll give you three answers.
Answer 1: It’s personal. You have to find your own meaning. Any piece of wisdom anybody else gives you, whether it’s Buddha or me, is going to sound like nonsense. Fundamentally, you have to find it for yourself, so the important part is not the answer, it’s the question. You just have to sit there and dig with the question. It might take you years or decades. When you find an answer you’re happy with, it will be fundamental to your life.
Answer 2: There is no meaning to life. There is no purpose to life. Osho said, “It’s like writing on water or building houses of sand.” The reality is you’ve been dead for the history of the Universe, 10 billion years or more. You will be dead for the next 70 billion years or so, until the heat death of the Universe.
Anything you do will fade. It will disappear, just like the human race will disappear and the planet will disappear. Even the group who colonizes Mars will disappear. No one is going to remember you past a certain number of generations, whether you’re an artist, a poet, a conqueror, a pauper, or anyone else. There’s no meaning.
You have to create your own meaning, which is what it boils down to. You have to decide:
“Is this a play I’m just watching?”
“Is there a self-actualization dance I’m doing?”
“Is there a specific thing I desire just for the heck of it?”
These are all meanings you make up.
There is no fundamental, intrinsic purposeful meaning to the Universe. If there was, then you would just ask the next question. You’d say, “Why is that the meaning?” It would be, as physicist Richard Feynman said, it would be “turtles all the way down.” The “why’s” would keep accumulating. There is no answer you could give that wouldn’t have another “why.”
I don’t buy the everlasting afterlife answers because it’s insane to me, with absolutely no evidence, to believe because of how you live seventy years here on this planet, you’re going to spend eternity, which is a very long time, in some afterlife. What kind of silly God judges you for eternity based on some small period of time here? I think after this life, it’s very much like before you were born. Remember that? It’s going to be just like that.
Before you were born, you didn’t care about anything or anyone, including your loved ones, including yourself, including humans, including whether we go to Mars or whether we stay on planet Earth, whether there’s an AI or not. After death, you just don’t care either.
Answer 3: The last answer I’ll give you is a little more complicated. From what I’ve read in science (friends of mine have written books on this), I’ve stitched together some theories. Maybe there is a meaning to life, but it’s not a very satisfying purpose.
Basically, in physics, the arrow of time comes from entropy. The second law of thermodynamics states entropy only goes up, which means disorder in the Universe only goes up, which means concentrated free energy only goes down. If you look at living things (humans, plants, civilizations, what have you) these systems are locally reversing entropy. Humans locally reverse entropy because we have action.
In the process, we globally accelerate entropy until the heat death of the Universe. You could come up with some fanciful theory, which I like, that we’re headed towards the heat death of the Universe. In that death, there’s no concentrated energy, and everything is at the same energy level. Therefore, we’re all one thing. We’re essentially indistinguishable.
What we do as living systems accelerates getting to that state. The more complex system you create, whether it’s through computers, civilization, art, mathematics, or creating a family—you actually accelerate the heat death of the Universe. You’re pushing us towards this point where we end up as one thing. [4]
第二部分 - 哲学
生命的意义
真正的真理都是异端邪说。它们不能被说出，只能被发现、低声细语，或许被阅读
一个真正无限大、深奥的问题：生命的意义和目的是什么？
这是一个很大的问题。因为它很大，我会给你三个答案。
答案 1： 这是个人的。你必须自己找到意义。无论是佛陀还是我，任何其他人给你的智慧片段听起来都会像胡言乱语。从根本上来说，你必须自己找到它，因此重要的不是答案，而是问题。你必须静下心来，与这个问题深入挖掘。这可能需要你花费数年甚至数十年。当你找到一个令你满意的答案时，它将成为你生命的基石。
答案 2： 生命没有意义。生命也没有目的。奥修曾说过：“这就像是在水上写字，或在沙地上建房子。” 现实是，在宇宙的历史中，你已经死去超过 100 亿年。在未来的 700 亿年左右，你也将会是死去的，直到宇宙的热寂。
你所做的一切都会消失，就像人类终将消失，地球也会消失一样。即使是那些移民火星的人类也会消失。无论你是艺术家、诗人、征服者、乞丐或任何其他身份，过了几代人后，没有人会记得你。生命没有意义。
你必须自己创造意义，这就是关键。你必须决定：
“这是我正在观看的一出戏吗？”
“这是我在自我实现中跳的一支舞吗？”
“是因为某种特定的欲望让我去追寻，仅仅因为好玩？”
这些都是你自己构建的意义。
宇宙中没有根本的、本质的目的性意义。如果有，那么你就会问下一个问题：“为什么这是意义？” 这就像物理学家理查德·费曼所说的那样，这将是“无尽的龟背”（turtles all the way down）。“为什么”会不断地积累，没有一个答案是不会带来另一个“为什么”的。
我不相信永恒来世的答案，因为在我看来这是荒谬的，凭借没有任何证据的理由，仅因为你在这个星球上活了七十年，你就会在某种来世里度过永恒，而永恒是一段非常漫长的时间。什么样的神会基于你在这短短的一段时间内的表现，判断你永恒的命运？我认为死后就像你出生之前一样。还记得那时吗？死后就会像那样。
在你出生之前，你不关心任何人或任何事，包括你的爱人、你自己、人类、我们是否要去火星，还是留在地球上，是否有人工智能等。死后，你同样也不会关心。
答案 3： 最后一个答案稍微复杂一些。根据我在科学中的一些阅读（我的朋友们写过关于这方面的书），我拼凑出了一些理论。也许生命是有意义的，但这个意义并不是很令人满足的。
基本上，在物理学中，时间之箭来自熵。热力学第二定律指出熵只会增加，这意味着宇宙中的混乱程度只会增加，集中自由能只会减少。如果你看活的事物（人类、植物、文明，等等），这些系统在局部上逆转了熵。人类局部逆转熵，因为我们有行动。
在这个过程中，我们加速了宇宙的整体熵增加，直到宇宙的热寂。你可以提出一种我喜欢的奇特理论，我们正在走向宇宙的热寂。在那种寂灭中，没有集中的能量，一切能量水平相同。因此，我们就变成了同一个东西，我们本质上是不可区分的。
我们作为生命系统所做的一切，加速了这种状态的到来。无论是通过计算机、文明、艺术、数学，还是建立家庭，创造越复杂的系统，实际上就越加速宇宙的热寂。我们正推动自己走向那个最终成为一体的点。