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Poke
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11 Oct 2011, 6:50 am

Our species--rather, ALL species--will one day cease to exist.

One day, the whole game will be absolutely and irrevocably over.

Every achievement of mankind, every bit of knowledge, every good deed, will eventually fade away like a summer's rose.

In the meantime, we're just playing in a sandbox.



Moog
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11 Oct 2011, 7:31 am

Poke wrote:
In the meantime, we're just playing in a sandbox.


Best enjoy it while it lasts


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ruveyn
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11 Oct 2011, 8:43 am

Poke wrote:
Our species--rather, ALL species--will one day cease to exist.

One day, the whole game will be absolutely and irrevocably over.

Every achievement of mankind, every bit of knowledge, every good deed, will eventually fade away like a summer's rose.

In the meantime, we're just playing in a sandbox.


Long before our species becomes extinct (and it will) all of us now on this conferences will die. Get used to the idea of not living forever either individually or collectively.

ruveyn



graywyvern
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11 Oct 2011, 10:55 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant# ... _red_giant

PS someone has thoughtfully animated this outcome for us on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq_qS0PGF9A


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Last edited by graywyvern on 11 Oct 2011, 12:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Gedrene
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11 Oct 2011, 11:07 am

I have no time for this paranoid fatalism or anyone who professes it.



blauSamstag
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11 Oct 2011, 11:28 am

you know, one of the central messages of positive atheism is that if this life is all there can ever be, you better do it right.



ruveyn
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11 Oct 2011, 11:37 am

Gedrene wrote:
I have no time for this paranoid fatalism or anyone who professes it.


Do you expect to live forever?

ruveyn



graywyvern
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11 Oct 2011, 11:40 am

Gedrene wrote:
I have no time for this paranoid fatalism or anyone who professes it.


okay then

http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.4052

ad astra!


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Chevand
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11 Oct 2011, 11:44 am

Poke wrote:
Our species--rather, ALL species--will one day cease to exist.

One day, the whole game will be absolutely and irrevocably over.

Every achievement of mankind, every bit of knowledge, every good deed, will eventually fade away like a summer's rose.

In the meantime, we're just playing in a sandbox.


Your point being?

See, this is why I loathe nihilism. Granted, pretty much everything you said is true-- but the attitude behind it sucks. So what if all that we build and experience will someday be dust? Isn't that all the more reason to enjoy what you call the "sandbox" while we can? If you focus on the final destination instead of your encounters along the way, you're going to miss out on a lot.

In his essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Albert Camus suggested that there are really only three options when faced with the inherent meaninglessness of life and the absurdity of humanity trying to impose its values on the world around it. You can find yourself a religion or belief system that espouses belief in some sort of deity-- but Camus argued that this was a form of "philosophical suicide" because it necessitates the abandonment of reason and empirical evidence in the pursuit of a rational answer to the meaninglessness. Another option is to sink into nihilism and eventually come to its ultimate expression, suicide. But that, too, is irrational; in death, the absurdity no longer exists, because it stems from the condradiction between our desires and the natural laws that govern life and the universe. If we remove ourselves from the equation, the contradiction no longer exists, but we are not around to enjoy the problem being solved. That leaves us with one last alternative-- to acknowledge and constantly challenge the absurd, and to live life to the fullest in defiance of the burden of the knowledge that we are all destined to die someday.


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Vigilans
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11 Oct 2011, 11:45 am

Sometimes I contemplate the ultimate fate of the solar system and universe but it doesn't bother me too much. My life is destined to be short, so my end is something often present in my mind, though I do not fear it. In this sense I strongly believe that you must make the most out of your brief flicker of existence. In the grand scheme it has no more relevance than the particles that "appear and disappear at random" on the quantum level. This does not imply that life is utterly meaningless, as you are in control of your ultimate purpose and meaning.

@graywyvern- The Sun's red giant phase is a long way away. If the Human race is still kicking at that time I doubt Earth will even be the most heavily inhabited planet in the Human sphere of colonization. Though I find the idea of mega-engineering to avoid the catastrophe fascinating


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Gedrene
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11 Oct 2011, 12:05 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Gedrene wrote:
I have no time for this paranoid fatalism or anyone who professes it.


Do you expect to live forever?

ruveyn

Do you expect to live in fear?



Fnord
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11 Oct 2011, 12:10 pm

graywyvern wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant#The_Sun_as_a_red_giant

OMG! Only another 5,000,000,000 years or so? Oh, what shall we do? What ever shall we do?


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Gedrene
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11 Oct 2011, 12:12 pm

Fnord wrote:
graywyvern wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant#The_Sun_as_a_red_giant

OMG! Only another 5,000,000,000 years or so? Oh, what shall we do? What ever shall we do?


Now, this is good sarcasm!



Ichinin
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11 Oct 2011, 12:23 pm

graywyvern wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant#The_Sun_as_a_red_giant



4+ billion years away - what an optimistic person... we may not survive that long, we have:

1. A planet killer asteroid hitting earth causing global obliteration. That means Earth - Cajun style followed by a nuclear winter.
2. A cataclysmic event: such as a super earthquake spewing out crap into the atmosphere - or - a core-plume bursting through the crust of the earth. Both pretty much obliterate 98% of the lifeforms on the planet and destroy most of the food.
3. Gamma ray bursts, the result of an exploding star that would rip the atmospheres atoms apart if we're hit dead on.
4. A close explosion of a large star (type OB-classes) or something very large like Betelgeuse or Pistol star. If they "go boom" - we go "extincty bai-bai".
5. And ofcourse: humanity - destroying ourselves with our pile of nuclear weapons.

...and for fun...

6. The matrix gets a virus, and we all BSOD :)


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anna-banana
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11 Oct 2011, 12:34 pm

didn't we just grant a Nobel to the guys who proved that the Universe was expanding at an accelerating speed? how's that for being pessimistic? :lol:


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Scythe
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11 Oct 2011, 2:11 pm

I figure the world will go up in a flame. Nuclear was is becoming closer and closer to a reality. They have a midget in Korea with compensating for something.