are u ready to step outside the box? part II

A billion years ago a life existed very similar to ours now. Not so perfect, but still with a strong sense of survival. A willingness to live and conquer their imperfections.

Almost a billion years later, and now masters of the universe they find themselves living with little purpose. Soon they will have increased the structural integrity of their universe that will ensure them another billion years of existence. Then what?
Evolution and intelligence have overcome the need for basic emotions. Without emotion vanished the will to live as we would know it.
With little purpose and little or no emotional link, they face the question....why exist?

At our level of intellect, it would be hard to live without some sense of purpose or emotional link. We question it almost every day.

As "mechanical" as they have become they are living organisms still with an instinct to survive. But something immense and even controversial may have to happen to give them a reason to go on.

any ideas?

Well, you can't know everything. They may have various purposes, such as becoming an intergalactic civilization, or trying to discover if the universe really is curved etc. Anyway, if their mechanical it doesn't mean that they havn't found out other purposes of life, like trying to make mini universes etc. The only purpose of cave men was to eat and survive. To them, there would be no purpose of life if you could grow your own food.

you may not be able to know everything, but would everything be of interest to you? Remember how old this civilization is...they are masters of their universe.
To put in slight perspective, lets take you for example...you seem well read, probably read alot on physics. Now say someone came to you with another book, one you have never read before. This book tells you how to make a paper doll named cindy.....would that be of interest to you?

If u don't have interest in knowing anything else, that wouldn't mean life was pointless.There are various people in this world who don't give a damn if two different massed objects fall at the same speed, they have no desire for answering the mysteries of the universe. I mean look at us even at this time. If you come to think of it, life for us can also be said pointless. Ofcourse, one can say that that civilization wouldn't have emotions, but they would still be human(or whatever), as you said, they would still have their basic instincts which they can't get rid of, they would still have emotions.Even if they know lots, that doesn't mean that their will to survive will be finished.

p.s How old are you anyway?

Why Exist? What is the purpose of life?
http://freewebs.com/whyexist

quote:

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At our level of intellect...

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our level of intellect is inferiour to anything else... first of all, you're probably going to bash me about my spelling and that is one reason why we are idiots.

2ndly, we still fight for other people, against other people.... be it god, be it hitler, be it osama, be it good ol' george.

The first step of evolution for the human race is to unite... but that isnt going to happen for a long time because we are still idiots the quarrel over the stupidest things....

There are two camps to be distinguished in the race for collecting as much humans to 'believe' their given explanations which hold their own truth in one or another way. Before you read on, I am not trying to set up a religious matter nor am I trying to pursuade you of anything.

The first camp is belief or religion. Core religion writings (such as the bible) tell of a (what the second camp calls) supernatural spawn. I think we all know the story about how a superbeing was responsible for us being here, creating this place in seven days and how general life came about. All sounds immensely logic to me, percepting it

Now, the second is, as you may have guessed, science or rationalism. "That which does not comply to the rules of nature cannot exist." It tries to see life (thus ourselves) as something that came about from outside our green and wet planet. Darwin's discoveries in the area of evolution led to a revolution in science. His theories were able to answer certain braintormenting questions our ancestors just couldn't solve. Evolution has now become a part of science, as much as the three basic needs for fire.

In my opinion, I think Darwin was right. Evolution indeed took and takes place in life. Through natural selection (mating with the individuals with the best genes) and the best mutations that alter our genes, do organisms gradually change and survive by adapting to the ever changing environment . Yet there are some things that must be added to this, in order to be understood in contrast with why we exist.

First of all, if the environment would stop changing, there would be no more evolution.
Second, evolution has no set goal or purpose. It take places utterly randomly and thus its goal can never, ever, ever, ever be known.
Third, evolution has no moral or ethic value, as goes for nature.

I think the question about why we exist is probably THE most human question. That one question itself represents our entire evolution of curiousity, consciousness and eagerness to learn which combined with an insane amount of random events and changes led us to that one moment when we began to develop a need to address meaning or purpose to something in order to understand it better.

I don't know the answer to this. And I will not spend time trying to solve it. There is so much we need to know about life before we can jump to any premature conclusion at all. Mankind does new discoveries about himself and the nature he is in, every day. For example, even recently, we have (mathematical) reasons to belief that life isn't exclusive to earth alone. There seems something in stardust (probably carbon) that creates life under the right conditions. This brings about a concept of possibility on galactic scale. Yet the size of the galaxy in incomprehensible to the human mind, but the rules in which it behaves are getting more and more clear to it. But still, we are far, lightyears far away from being sure.

We do know, however, that we humans are the only organisms on this planet that are able to question their own existence. The question to this point is a merely personal one. You are free to believe anything you desire, since we have no facts at hand. But suppose we had, would you believe it yourself? I saw another topic elsewhere in this domain about existence as well, so rest assured; it looks like people are working on it and thinking with you. And when (or if) we find the universal answer (if it even exists), I'm make sure you will be the first to know.

i think god is going to come soon and tell us why..

I think that I have a reason for your Alein Race to live. Even with a perfect condtion of "Master of the Universe". If this race knew everything there would still be something it did not know. For there is a differnce in knowing all things physical, and knowing all thing spirtual.
Only the idea of a God entity can have both. Because if they had both types of knowledge to the fulliest extent then they would be Omnipotent as well. And once you reach the level of God then you are all Good things at once. Which is all the reason anyone needs to continue existing.

I see no way for knowledge to advance to a point where everything is known including the fact that everything is known. That is, how can we be sure we know everything? As long as there is a doubt that ultimate understanding has been reached it has not been reached and so no matter how much is known there will always be work to know more. As long as this goal exists there is reason to conitinue life, even without emotion one can be spurred to continue life through motivation.