The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul.<\/a><\/p>\n***<\/p>\n
If I say that everything is a computation, I’m saying that everything is a deterministic process. And that means that reality is a weave of logical if-then statements, with each phenomenon linked to a cause.<\/p>\n
As an extreme example of universal automatism, Wolfram suggests that if we trace the world’s computations all the way back, there may be some underlying supercomputation that generates not only the entire cosmos but also the underlying fabric of space and time.<\/p>\n
But then, of course, we’d have to ask why that particular supercomputation exists.
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This leads to what is sometimes called the superultimate why question, “Why is there anything?” The question is inherently unanswerable, for no proposed solution can be enough.<\/p>\n
Given that the superultimate why question is impossible to answer, it’s in some sense meaningless — but such a criticism doesn’t remove the question’s sting. The question can never be answered, yet it is not emotionally meaningless.<\/p>\n
Even if Wolfram were right, it doesn’t seem as if knowing the world to be the result of some supercomputation would be of much use to us. We still wouldn’t know where the supercomputation came from. And — perhaps even more importantly, we still wouldn’t know what it’s for.<\/p>\n
And that, after all, is really what we’re after when we ask about the meaning of life. It’s not so much the cause that’s puzzles us as the purpose. Does a person’s life have a purpose?<\/p>\n
Well, our studies of universal automatism do suggest one line of thought. Computationally rich class four behaviors are in an objective sense more interesting than those that die out, repeat, or have no discernible structure. So a universal automatist might say that the meaning and purpose of a human life is to produce gnarly or “class four” computation.<\/p>\n
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The notion of gnarly computation as the meaning of life fits in with the more humanistic world views.<\/p>\n
The human artifacts we admire are computationally rich. An empty canvas is class one. Hack artwork is class two copying of existing artifacts. Ugly scuzz is class three. Great art is class four.<\/p>\n
The nobler emotions are computationally rich as well. Murderous rage forces some victim’s computation into class one termination. Hatred throws the hater into a class two loop. Too needy a desire to please puts a person at the mercy of capricious class three inputs. Compassion is an ever-evolving class four process.<\/p>\n
Get the picture?<\/p>\n
The meaning of life is beauty and love.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Back to God, there's a lot of force in the old saying, “God is Love.”<\/p>\n
![''](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images\/rudycone1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Isn't this a great cone shell? I took this picture today.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
A reader (r.s.) writes in that he sat at the same table as I photographed, in L. G. Coffee Roasting today. Cool. In my Silicon Valley SF novel Spaceland<\/i><\/a> a hole in reality forms just a few feet from that table during a climactic scene!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cartoonist named Jason Yungbluth has doctored My Little Golden Book about God to make a weird and very funny alien-invasion pamphlet called The Book of Zogg. Yungbluth hits all these great classic SF power-chords. (Thanks to Richard Kadrey for the link.) I wrote something similar to Book of Zogg inside of Master of Space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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