None of that addresses my question at all. Effort from what I see isn't just a real world concept, it exists in unreality as well. It's just wasted there. Like any effort you exert in your dreams is wasted, but you believe it otherwise because you are unaware that it is a dream. You can realize this fact in the middle of the dream or after the fact. Wasted effort still applies even without having access to an eternal reality. One must merely question whether what they are experiencing is real and external to themselves, and by doing so they question whether their efforts are wasted or not.
Not to mention thy movie has nothing to do with my situation or question (it as after all a movie written a certain way with a certain outcome, it's not applicable to reality).
The concept of solipsism can exist without a sense of existent reality. It questions whether or not you can know if such a thing ever truly exists. You can go forever and never have a sense of a true existing reality, and just believe it's all unreal.
I wish people stayed on topic and not go on tangents that don't answer the question. Especially pulling something unrelated from a completely different thread.
I'll answer this broadly at first, then the specifics. I believe divination works. I've been to people who are actually good at it, and just this weekend had experiences that very much cleared up any doubt I had.
That all being said I think there are a lot of people who say they're authentic and they're not. I also believe that even when daily horoscopes are done right they're usually missing key info which makes them incredibly incomplete. It's like trying to solve a 500 piece puzzle and you have five pieces to figure out what the picture is. You're going to miss so often that it's basically pointless. Most forms of divination in general are a lot more complex such that a daily horoscope being mass produced is useless.
Divination does not work, it's more of a ruse to dupe people. I know that having been to quite a few in the past when I was younger and foolish. They all tell you the same thing and none of it comes true. It's simply bunk.
The horoscopes are fun to read though, but it's funnier how much stock people tend to put into them.
I'll just repeat what I said then about there being a lot of people who are trying to scam people. But I'm not terribly concerned with trying to convince you otherwise. Trying to do that on this site in general would be a lot of effort for little to no purpose.
I can tell you flat out that divination does not work. They all just give general predictions that you either deliberately look for evidence of or perhaps subconsciously act out to confirm them. There is ZERO proof that they work or should even be taken seriously. It's just something fun to look at/talk about.
Even the thought that I could never know if the reality I'm in is real or not isn't any comfort. If it were true that this reality is "unreal" and at the end of it I go back to "reality", I cannot know if that one is real. I would only be able to know that the previous one was not real. Of course this would be a cycle that repeats forever, with no certainty. Then the fear comes back of putting any sort of stake on this current reality or doing anything at all, lest it all just evaporate up in smoke and never having existed at all. Worrying about that isn't an anxiety disorder, but a rather rational option to one to really understands the uncertainty that they find themselves in.
I'll answer this broadly at first, then the specifics. I believe divination works. I've been to people who are actually good at it, and just this weekend had experiences that very much cleared up any doubt I had.
That all being said I think there are a lot of people who say they're authentic and they're not. I also believe that even when daily horoscopes are done right they're usually missing key info which makes them incredibly incomplete. It's like trying to solve a 500 piece puzzle and you have five pieces to figure out what the picture is. You're going to miss so often that it's basically pointless. Most forms of divination in general are a lot more complex such that a daily horoscope being mass produced is useless.
Divination does not work, it's more of a ruse to dupe people. I know that having been to quite a few in the past when I was younger and foolish. They all tell you the same thing and none of it comes true. It's simply bunk.
The horoscopes are fun to read though, but it's funnier how much stock people tend to put into them.
I would prefer answers rather than a series of questions that don't address my point.
I think if you're going to ask questions, you should be prepared to answer them as well. Try answering mine. You may find that they address your point after all. I mean, just for starters, I very explicitly suggested an answer to your original question using the words "how is this not a perfectly sufficient answer to your original question", so I'm quite unperturbed by complaints that I didn't do that, and rather more perturbed by the implication that you didn't read it.
Giving something value which has no value in itself is irrational.
If the value of something is what you assign to it, how is it rational to expect the value to be in the thing before you've assigned value to it? If I established that books are written by human authors, and then immediately afterwards claimed that an author should only write a book if it has already been written by some nonhuman means, would that make any sense to you?
It's about the same thing as believing in the existence of god.
What about believing in the existence of belief? Since the act of valuing is what generates value, and the act of believing is what generates belief, but the act of believing in God doesn't generate God, doesn't belief seem like a better analogy here than God?
Based on their view you have much to gain from dying since you aren't burdened by hope or suffering or the empty promises that it will "get better".
How is it even logically possible for you to gain anything from dying when dying is by definition the event after which there is no "you" to gain or lose or indeed possess any properties whatsoever? Can you improve a car's performance by destroying the car?
What's the point of living if everything you do is a struggle?
What's the point of avoiding struggle? How can the end of hardship have any value if there is no such thing as value?
Whether the end of hardship has value or not, it is still something that all of life seems to strive for. Most organisms have some function or another that is used to avoid hardship.
Yes it is logically possible for you to gain something by dying, by losing what was causing you pain and suffering in life. By losing everything, even "you", you gain an end to your suffering and pain. But your response fails to address the promises of those who say things will get better if they live. Not to mention your car analogy falls flat since a car does not feel pain, and a car has no ability to terminate it's existence.
The rest of your questions are not relevant to my original point.
That implies there is an objectively "best" way to live, which there isn't. It also doesn't explain how despite how much worse off our ancestors were they still decided to stick around.
In sentence one, you deny the reality of objective metrics for life. In sentence two, you claim that our ancestors' lives were worse than ours according to some metric. There seems to be a contradiction here. How, exactly, were our ancestors worse off? If our ancestors were worse off, doesn't that imply that we're better off? If we're better off, might our descendants someday achieve a best, or at least continue to make progress towards it? And conversely, if there are no objective metrics, how can our ancestors have been worse off? If they weren't any worse off, what is there to explain about their lives and decisions?
It's assuming life has an inherent value by living it when it really does not. It simply is. Living it does not give it value, it's merely acting according to biology.
Whence "merely"? What is insufficient about biology (or anything else on the table) as an external source of value? What possible external source of value would be sufficient? When you look for external sources of value, what are you expecting to find and not finding? And why are your expectations where they are? Could it be those expectations that are the trouble? And if there are no external sources of value, if value really does come from the self, so what? Is internally-sourced value less real or less valuable than externally-sourced value? If so, how so? If not, how is it not a perfectly sufficient answer to your original question?
I would prefer answers rather than a series of questions that don't address my point. As for saying one is doing something "wrong" if they get to the point of choosing life over death, that ignores all the factors that come into play that aren't even of their own doing.
Giving something value which has no value in itself is irrational. It's about the same thing as believing in the existence of god. One could say it is a fabrication of the mind to fool oneself into believing life to be worth living.
Also I'm pretty certain you can decide not to care, plenty of people already do and some even have died as a result. Based on their view you have much to gain from dying since you aren't burdened by hope or suffering or the empty promises that it will "get better". You have death and life, and to some death is more appealing. They don't want to struggling fruitlessly because of the recycled sayings of "working to make life worth it". That struggle is part of the reason why they wish to die. What's the point of living if everything you do is a struggle?
I could philosophize a more nuanced and defensible argument, but here's a simple point:
If life is so miserable that death seems superior, you're doing it wrong.
That could not be a more incorrect statement. That implies there is an objectively "best" way to live, which there isn't. It also doesn't explain how despite how much worse off our ancestors were they still decided to stick around. I think it's the fear of death that keeps us from choosing the alternative to living, not to mention how many religions punish suicide.
As for the cake, it can be argued that there is no point to eating it just like there is no point to making it. It's assuming life has an inherent value by living it when it really does not. It simply is. Living it does not give it value, it's merely acting according to biology. Eating the cake doesn't give it value either, the very act of consumption does not give value. Whether it goes bad or remains stale, it still has no value.
Any value you believe to be given is given by you alone. Nothing else GIVES it value. Not the experiences, not the taste, but you. Those other factors simply are. They are little more than sensory data taken in by you, and you determine whether they have value to you.
So NO. The value of life is what you assign to it and nothing else.
I mean, I feel like there is something more you're asking here. Others have given their answers and you reject them. Perhaps things would be better served if you tried talking about what is making you feel that way in particular right now. Otherwise I don't really see the talk going anywhere if you just feel like rejecting every answer people give. Though at the end of the day it's purely a personal decision, framed on how you view the world and your place in it.
Because when I hear things like the cake issue that's just a dodge. I'm talking about the entirety of simply existing as a living creature faced with the fact that you will eventually die at some point no matter what attempts you make to stall that (or even why one should stall it to begin with). Questions like the cake issue don't answer it or address the complicated issues that surround it. Like how it's "self evident" that life is a gift and worth living, that things will get better if you hang in there (even though we don't hear about those whom that failed to happen to).
I have heard these answers before but they don't address the issue. Death seems logical since it is the end of suffering and one doesn't have to worry about trying to live a meaningful life (which is it's own sort of suffering we impose on ourselves). Why try to gamble that your life might be worth living in the future when the certainty of death is close? You can end up waiting for something that never comes. It just does not make sense. But I also get that the majority who say life is worth living are probably in a state where they haven't really endured much at all or haven't thought about why they continue to live when all that they are will eventually be forgotten.
The "answers" as you have said aren't really answers at all. They don't make a case for life. Death seems to have a stronger case in the end. Chasing fleeting pleasures is probably another reason for choosing death as seeking them out just to make life worthwhile is suffering as well.
Why stall the inevitable? I mean, if life is about preventing suffering as much as possible then wouldn't death be the best way of doing that? It seems to me a puzzling aspect of life, that it continues to propagate despite the fact that it will end soon is rather confounding.
That's like asking, "Why eat a cake when it's fresh when it's just going to go stale eventually?"
No it isn't. I have heard that argument time and again but it doesn't apply to this question.
Also the negative impact you have isn't really an impact at all I would say, sure people might mourn for a bit but then they get over it. Each individual isn't as important as they believe, others will move on. The same way that a single death doesn't stop life from going on. The world won't notice your absence, your life makes no difference. I mean, people die every day and that doesn't stop anything from going on. Makes you wonder why people consider suicide even though the rest believe life is worth it. There seems to be some disconnect.
And on a side note I would argue that immortality is a curse and not something to strive for.
But it does not seem like that is possible for the majority. Enlightenment is something that (if it exists) is something a very small number of people have achieved.
Umm, I'm not sure if you read that link properly because it gives a fairly definitive answer to your question. Throwing out the random propaganda and justified hate of religion it can be boiled down to two stances. Simply if life is currently a net positive continue living, if life is currently a net negative consider giving up. Along with all kinds of reasons why we should let people choose but that is irrelevant to your question.
So for your exact question. Why continue to live if you will eventually die? Because I personally am currently enjoying life. If you aren't then 'my' answer won't help you. Though I would suggest to try to enjoy life.
It seems that those who find life worth living are in the minority compared to others who struggle day to day. Yet they continue to site those rare instances of people who muddled through to find life worth it.
There's an old Jewish joke about that: "better to have not been born at all; but who has that kind of luck?"
Less cynically, meditation and other philosophies seek to elevate and escape sufferings to reach a synthesis of living with peace.
But it does not seem like that is possible for the majority. Enlightenment is something that (if it exists) is something a very small number of people have achieved.
The purpose of life is to live it. Seems simple enough to me.
Life "lives" but that's not it's purpose, that is just what it does.
The lives we live, from what everyone is saying, seems to be just chasing a new experience and then we die. That seems rather tragic in a sense. It doesn't seem that different from being stuck on a hamster wheel. We try to seek new things to experience, but we are unaware how cyclical our creations we experience are. Everything repeats itself, we just trick ourselves to believing it is new to avoid seeing that.
It almost seems like a curse, or some tragic comedy. That our lives have no meaning and that we are existing in this reality with high powers of reasoning and thought, a brain that seeks meaning or fulfillment in a universe where none of it exists. It only exists in the world that we have created for ourselves, to make it feel like out lives matter or are "worth it". Assigning importance to various things and events in our lives to get some kind of sense that we are a part of something bigger. It's like we need to prove to ourselves that we should exist, even though life itself doesn't have any reason for existing. It simply does. I see this and it's almost sad in a sense, that humans need this sort of framework to live. Yet at the end of the day these are all human things we place importance on, based on human perspectives. Compare that to the vastness of eternity and the universe and it just seems small.
But my question has not been answered. I ask why prevent the inevitable? Why treat the sick if they ultimately will die sooner or later? Why delay? There doesn't seem to be a valid reason for things to continue to live. Nothing has a purpose after all, so it does not have a reason to "be". Seems like it would just be easier to die. You would not have to concern yourself with seeking experiences to experience (it's own sort of suffering that never ends), and you would not suffer. Seems like that's the better deal than living. How ironic that dying would seem more logical than living.
Why stall the inevitable? I mean, if life is about preventing suffering as much as possible then wouldn't death be the best way of doing that? It seems to me a puzzling aspect of life, that it continues to propagate despite the fact that it will end soon is rather confounding.
Mod Disclaimer:
Productive philosophical discussion of suicide and the value of life is not inappropriate. That said, the moderation team would like to provide this disclaimer in the interest of safety:
If you are thinking about harming yourself or attempting suicide, tell someone who can help right away.
Call your doctor’s office.
Call 911 for emergency services.
Go to the nearest hospital emergency room.
In the US, call the toll-free, 24-hour hotline of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) to be connected to a trained counselor at a suicide crisis center nearest you.
To find a suicide helpline outside the U.S., visit IASP and Suicide.org
It is not unreasonable to ask a family member or friend to help you make these calls or take you to the hospital.
If you have a family member or friend who is suicidal, do not leave him or her alone.Try to get the person to seek help immediately from an emergency room, physician, or mental health professional. Take seriously any comments about suicide or wishing to die. Even if you do not believe your family member or friend will actually attempt suicide, the person is clearly in distress and can benefit from your help in receiving mental health treatment.
Not to mention thy movie has nothing to do with my situation or question (it as after all a movie written a certain way with a certain outcome, it's not applicable to reality).
The concept of solipsism can exist without a sense of existent reality. It questions whether or not you can know if such a thing ever truly exists. You can go forever and never have a sense of a true existing reality, and just believe it's all unreal.
I wish people stayed on topic and not go on tangents that don't answer the question. Especially pulling something unrelated from a completely different thread.
I can tell you flat out that divination does not work. They all just give general predictions that you either deliberately look for evidence of or perhaps subconsciously act out to confirm them. There is ZERO proof that they work or should even be taken seriously. It's just something fun to look at/talk about.
Divination does not work, it's more of a ruse to dupe people. I know that having been to quite a few in the past when I was younger and foolish. They all tell you the same thing and none of it comes true. It's simply bunk.
The horoscopes are fun to read though, but it's funnier how much stock people tend to put into them.
Whether the end of hardship has value or not, it is still something that all of life seems to strive for. Most organisms have some function or another that is used to avoid hardship.
Yes it is logically possible for you to gain something by dying, by losing what was causing you pain and suffering in life. By losing everything, even "you", you gain an end to your suffering and pain. But your response fails to address the promises of those who say things will get better if they live. Not to mention your car analogy falls flat since a car does not feel pain, and a car has no ability to terminate it's existence.
The rest of your questions are not relevant to my original point.
Considering that every form of life does this in some manner or another it would be reasonable to say that is that aim of life.
I would prefer answers rather than a series of questions that don't address my point. As for saying one is doing something "wrong" if they get to the point of choosing life over death, that ignores all the factors that come into play that aren't even of their own doing.
Giving something value which has no value in itself is irrational. It's about the same thing as believing in the existence of god. One could say it is a fabrication of the mind to fool oneself into believing life to be worth living.
Also I'm pretty certain you can decide not to care, plenty of people already do and some even have died as a result. Based on their view you have much to gain from dying since you aren't burdened by hope or suffering or the empty promises that it will "get better". You have death and life, and to some death is more appealing. They don't want to struggling fruitlessly because of the recycled sayings of "working to make life worth it". That struggle is part of the reason why they wish to die. What's the point of living if everything you do is a struggle?
That could not be a more incorrect statement. That implies there is an objectively "best" way to live, which there isn't. It also doesn't explain how despite how much worse off our ancestors were they still decided to stick around. I think it's the fear of death that keeps us from choosing the alternative to living, not to mention how many religions punish suicide.
As for the cake, it can be argued that there is no point to eating it just like there is no point to making it. It's assuming life has an inherent value by living it when it really does not. It simply is. Living it does not give it value, it's merely acting according to biology. Eating the cake doesn't give it value either, the very act of consumption does not give value. Whether it goes bad or remains stale, it still has no value.
Any value you believe to be given is given by you alone. Nothing else GIVES it value. Not the experiences, not the taste, but you. Those other factors simply are. They are little more than sensory data taken in by you, and you determine whether they have value to you.
So NO. The value of life is what you assign to it and nothing else.
Because when I hear things like the cake issue that's just a dodge. I'm talking about the entirety of simply existing as a living creature faced with the fact that you will eventually die at some point no matter what attempts you make to stall that (or even why one should stall it to begin with). Questions like the cake issue don't answer it or address the complicated issues that surround it. Like how it's "self evident" that life is a gift and worth living, that things will get better if you hang in there (even though we don't hear about those whom that failed to happen to).
I have heard these answers before but they don't address the issue. Death seems logical since it is the end of suffering and one doesn't have to worry about trying to live a meaningful life (which is it's own sort of suffering we impose on ourselves). Why try to gamble that your life might be worth living in the future when the certainty of death is close? You can end up waiting for something that never comes. It just does not make sense. But I also get that the majority who say life is worth living are probably in a state where they haven't really endured much at all or haven't thought about why they continue to live when all that they are will eventually be forgotten.
The "answers" as you have said aren't really answers at all. They don't make a case for life. Death seems to have a stronger case in the end. Chasing fleeting pleasures is probably another reason for choosing death as seeking them out just to make life worthwhile is suffering as well.
No it isn't. I have heard that argument time and again but it doesn't apply to this question.
Also the negative impact you have isn't really an impact at all I would say, sure people might mourn for a bit but then they get over it. Each individual isn't as important as they believe, others will move on. The same way that a single death doesn't stop life from going on. The world won't notice your absence, your life makes no difference. I mean, people die every day and that doesn't stop anything from going on. Makes you wonder why people consider suicide even though the rest believe life is worth it. There seems to be some disconnect.
And on a side note I would argue that immortality is a curse and not something to strive for.
It seems that those who find life worth living are in the minority compared to others who struggle day to day. Yet they continue to site those rare instances of people who muddled through to find life worth it.
But it does not seem like that is possible for the majority. Enlightenment is something that (if it exists) is something a very small number of people have achieved.
That being said, to add to my paragraph: https://www.reddit.com/r/SanctionedSuicide/comments/29tjph/what_if_death_is_better_than_living_a_life_filled/
Life "lives" but that's not it's purpose, that is just what it does.
The lives we live, from what everyone is saying, seems to be just chasing a new experience and then we die. That seems rather tragic in a sense. It doesn't seem that different from being stuck on a hamster wheel. We try to seek new things to experience, but we are unaware how cyclical our creations we experience are. Everything repeats itself, we just trick ourselves to believing it is new to avoid seeing that.
It almost seems like a curse, or some tragic comedy. That our lives have no meaning and that we are existing in this reality with high powers of reasoning and thought, a brain that seeks meaning or fulfillment in a universe where none of it exists. It only exists in the world that we have created for ourselves, to make it feel like out lives matter or are "worth it". Assigning importance to various things and events in our lives to get some kind of sense that we are a part of something bigger. It's like we need to prove to ourselves that we should exist, even though life itself doesn't have any reason for existing. It simply does. I see this and it's almost sad in a sense, that humans need this sort of framework to live. Yet at the end of the day these are all human things we place importance on, based on human perspectives. Compare that to the vastness of eternity and the universe and it just seems small.
But my question has not been answered. I ask why prevent the inevitable? Why treat the sick if they ultimately will die sooner or later? Why delay? There doesn't seem to be a valid reason for things to continue to live. Nothing has a purpose after all, so it does not have a reason to "be". Seems like it would just be easier to die. You would not have to concern yourself with seeking experiences to experience (it's own sort of suffering that never ends), and you would not suffer. Seems like that's the better deal than living. How ironic that dying would seem more logical than living.
That's a poor excuse to continue living (I should know since I have used that before).
Mod Disclaimer:
Productive philosophical discussion of suicide and the value of life is not inappropriate. That said, the moderation team would like to provide this disclaimer in the interest of safety: