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sumane12 t1_j4fjweg wrote

Ouch that's nihilistic 😂

So I think this is a very deep philosophical question but I'll try my best to understand it, tho I might not answer the question.

When we look back through history, we see a lot of wasted potential in terms of people being stuck in a life of servitude, not able to explore beyond their own town, having no knowledge of what may be in store for humanity. That's not to say they were unable to appreciate the world around them but that appreciation was limited by their circumstances.

The singularity, and by extension seeks to attempt to remove those limitations, one step at a time, so for example, our biggest concern at the moment is scarcity of energy and natural resources, this is very much a problem that can be solved in the near future, which would allow people to spend more time appreciating life, enjoying the love of their family and friends, spend more time exploring the planet and the beauty it offers. The next stage to this would be mind uploading, gradual replacement of biological neurons with artificial nano bot neurons. This will allow countless possibilities, apart from being able to go anywhere traveling at the speed of light, we can upload our consciousness into robots that are accurate replicas of our human bodies, these robots could be placed on any planet in the solar system and potentially beyond. And then obviously you alluded to this, but experiencing artificial worlds.

Now let's extrapolate a trillion trillion years into the future. We have managed to break the speed of light speed limit by warping space time, and have explored the entire universe, we have become a collective hive mind and collectively know everything about everything and have experienced every possible reality we can simulate, the last black whole is about to evaporate due to hawking radiation and the end of the universe as well as all life is imminent. Does this mean it's all been pointless? Should we not be interested in the expansion of abilities and the transcendence of our current situation because we know eventually it will end?

I don't think so, in fact I'd argue that our life is more meaningful than those in the past who were destined to live their life forever in their own little village, and never experienced anything new. So too I think the lives of transhumanity will be more meaningful than our own. Another analogy is our own life, ultimately we will die, this doesn't make our life now meaningless or we should just kill ourselves. Instead we recognise how beautiful our life is and embrace it because ultimately everything is temporary.

I hope that answers the question atleast from my perspective.

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[deleted] OP t1_j4g741o wrote

> Does this mean it's all been pointless?

Heh. When you're IQ is 10 million, it might be impossible to ignore that pointlessness.

> I don't think so, in fact I'd argue that our life is more meaningful than those in the past who were destined to live their life forever in their own little village, and never experienced anything new.

Heh. Those people are all our ancestors though too, and as such, it can be quite nice to feel a real sense of gratitude to those people. To me, that is the meaning, more than what I experience here and now with my limited body and lifespan.

I love The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius for an illustration of this. He was a 4th-5th century philosopher whom Bertrand Russell remarked "He would have been remarkable in any age, in the age in which he lived, he is utterly amazing." Worth a read, to say the least. The life story of Boethius is one of tragedy but that tragedy produced his greatest work that had tremendous impact on the history of civilization, even though its so obscure today.

Also... I think the AI is either going to be hyper nihilistic or find God. I don't see any other outcome really. Everything between those two I find to actually be incredibly irrational. I.e. a lot of existentialism to me has struck me as equally delusional as any accusation of religious delusion, but where what you get at the end of the day is considerably reduced. Part of me is like "either just accept nihilism, or be religious, the in between is like being religious without the benefits of religion... perhaps dumber than just being religious!"

Lmao... Full disclosure I am a former nihilist and technically agnostic believer. Though that agnosticism just seems like a technical trifle at this point.

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sumane12 t1_j4gg8q5 wrote

>Full disclosure I am a former nihilist and technically agnostic believer. Though that agnosticism just seems like a technical trifle at this point.

Yeah I kinda got that energy lol. I mean I'm all for searching for a supernatural creator, but however far you go up those levels, you still face the point of nihilism. Also any search for god through religion, needs to recognise that atleast 99% of religions are wrong and created solely to exploit the lower ranks of the religion and to create societal behaviour modification.

I think meaning is whatever we make of it, that's the beauty of conscious subjectivity. How do we know that someone else doesn't have a completely different subjective experience than we do? And I think that question is beautiful.

I think if you can't generate meaning from your life today, how will finding god change that? Perhaps you are looking for a purpose greater than yourself? I don't know I'm not a psychologist, but I would also say that just because you don't see meaning somewhere, doesn't mean others don't, and it can be worthwhile dedicating yourself in service to those less fortunate?

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[deleted] OP t1_j4git9x wrote

> I mean I'm all for searching for a supernatural creator, but however far you go up those levels, you still face the point of nihilism.

Well, when you experience it for yourself, it ends up being very different. It's like that beauty that you intuit in the universe that you're trying to relate to me, but imagine that times a million with a sense of love that is so profound and unconditional that you truly understand that this love is what is important.

It's more like life is about spirituality, rather than spirituality is a cure for nihilism or death.

> Also any search for god through religion, needs to recognise that atleast 99% of religions are wrong and created solely to exploit the lower ranks of the religion and to create societal behaviour modification.

Heh. All religions are wrong and all religions are at least a little bit right. For illustration -discovering relativity didn't make Newtonian gravity wrong. It just showed that there was more to it, and that it wasn't as absolutely correct as we had initially imagined.

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sumane12 t1_j4gkqva wrote

All seems reasonable. I hope you find what you're searching for.

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