by MarkBour » Sat Dec 24, 2016 7:22 pm
rstevenson wrote:heehaw wrote:This vast three-dimensional Christmas-tree of a Universe .... and if we humans were not here to appreciate it, it would all be going totally to waste. ...
Maybe we're the waste product.
Rob
Heehaw, I'm more inclined along the line of thought rstevenson is suggesting, rather than with you today.
Because we're human, we tend to think that what we do is a big deal. And mind you, it
is what we do, it
is what we are about, and I'm not about to change it -- I embrace it.
But really, as best I can understand the process, when we say we "appreciate" something, we are saying that for one flicker of an instant in a tiny, tiny, brain, we had a few thoughts that represented the experience of the light, some pattern-recognition, which mostly means we match them up with some other memories and concepts, and we then had a few neuronal firings indicating a sense of wholeness of the concept of the image, and timed with a feeling of happy contentedness, that we had managed to assemble a few of these parts. Maybe we even remember a few numeric and quantitative concepts, and even an equation or two that might be matching an aspect of this.
We then act like this is a grand thing, intellect appreciating the Universe. The most outlandish glorification of this process I ever read was "We are a way for the Universe to comprehend itself." Yet it does not seem to me like this needs to matter very much to the Universe. Out there I suppose there are bright suns that grew up and burned brilliantly for 10 billion years, and perhaps no creature ever looked upon their light. If one creature did, and saw it, and enjoyed the warmth of its glow, and was even thankful for it, but then died 10 years later, taking all of its memory of the event to the grave, first to rot and decay, and then to completely vaporize. I do suppose the creature added something nice to the whole, and I'll grant that it is a particularly nice addition. (If I am allowed to define "nice".) But I think it is really biased to think that it was the greatest part of it.
I hope that jars your thinking about it a bit. But I'd also be delighted if you disagreed and posted a rebuttal or other response.
[quote="rstevenson"][quote="heehaw"]This vast three-dimensional Christmas-tree of a Universe .... and if we humans were not here to appreciate it, it would all be going totally to waste. ...[/quote]
Maybe we're the waste product.
Rob[/quote]
Heehaw, I'm more inclined along the line of thought rstevenson is suggesting, rather than with you today.
Because we're human, we tend to think that what we do is a big deal. And mind you, it [i]is[/i] what we do, it [i]is[/i] what we are about, and I'm not about to change it -- I embrace it.
But really, as best I can understand the process, when we say we "appreciate" something, we are saying that for one flicker of an instant in a tiny, tiny, brain, we had a few thoughts that represented the experience of the light, some pattern-recognition, which mostly means we match them up with some other memories and concepts, and we then had a few neuronal firings indicating a sense of wholeness of the concept of the image, and timed with a feeling of happy contentedness, that we had managed to assemble a few of these parts. Maybe we even remember a few numeric and quantitative concepts, and even an equation or two that might be matching an aspect of this.
We then act like this is a grand thing, intellect appreciating the Universe. The most outlandish glorification of this process I ever read was "We are a way for the Universe to comprehend itself." Yet it does not seem to me like this needs to matter very much to the Universe. Out there I suppose there are bright suns that grew up and burned brilliantly for 10 billion years, and perhaps no creature ever looked upon their light. If one creature did, and saw it, and enjoyed the warmth of its glow, and was even thankful for it, but then died 10 years later, taking all of its memory of the event to the grave, first to rot and decay, and then to completely vaporize. I do suppose the creature added something nice to the whole, and I'll grant that it is a particularly nice addition. (If I am allowed to define "nice".) But I think it is really biased to think that it was the greatest part of it.
I hope that jars your thinking about it a bit. But I'd also be delighted if you disagreed and posted a rebuttal or other response.