Asking what the meaning of life is asks what its ultimate purpose is, and the answer will be difficult to accept if one denies the existence of any higher power that created a purpose for our existence. If you are of the mindset that nothing we do matters outside of our own fixed bubble of interpretation, but that some just more vigorously push the rock up the hill than others just to watch it roll back down, then, sure, life has no meaning. We're just a random energy form resulting from billions of years of random collisions that now consumes and then exudes for no particular reason. If one day these random collisions result in our complete demise, what could be said of the past billions of years other than it was a cool yet protracted array of cosmic nonsense?

Trying to explain purpose to the godless seems a wasted exercise. None of this is to say that I know the meaning of it all, but if you limit yourself to causative explanations for everything, you necessarily foreclose the possibility of purpose.

There's a great big world filled with suffering, sadness, pain, and need, and you sit idly by connected to a cold machine pushing a Sisyphus button with fervor.

I didn't pay attention to which forum you posted in, but if this is the standardless section, I get to post whatever I want too. BAM!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience! You've gone through a lot! Real knowledge doesn't require degrees or books, but just a careful understanding of your own experiences. — Agustino

The problem with this thread is your attempt to impose standards inconsistent with this forum, namely that you're to ignore all prior academic efforts to answer your questions but are instead to just share your experiences and offer your conclusions based upon those experiences. It's by definition anecdotal, and it's not a terribly rigorous way to go about answering any meaningful question.

I actually do believe that alcohol has had a significant evolutionary impact on human behavior. Considering it (all joking aside) does make people less inhibited and more openly sexual, you should expect that the genes of the more socially reserved get passed on more successfully in alcohol fueled societies.

When one looks at alcohol free social groups, they're notable for having very strict marriage and mating rituals, which I'd argue is necessary to accommodate the sizable number of men and women who are socially unable to intimately interact without being chemically altered.

In other words, plying the ladies with alcohol is not just some neat trick teenagers have stumbled upon, but it's actually an evolutionary tool in place for human survival. When a society removes it (often because of its other deleterious effects), it must offer a replacement for it.

"Eugenics" as a term has been used to describe societally enforced gene pools as well as things as simple as prenatal care. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics . I think if we work with your definition (forced breeding practices and the like), this is a simple question, with NAZI Germany offering sufficient empirical evidence of its horrors.

You pick the design, from hair color, to sexual preference, to intelligence level, to shoe size.

Your objections apply to forced eugenics, but are you allowing for the right to personally choose the characteristics of your own designer baby?

Such a tired old plot, played out countless times in novel after novel. Man survives genocide, man stabs wife's mom's boyfriend, man avoids alimony payments, man transitions into woman. Formulaic nonsense.

Umm Hanover, are you still taking that Prednisone? 8-) — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I am, but it only has immune system suppressant properties and not the hallucinogenic properties needed to motivate my post.

I most certainly have my aches and pains, but they remind me of what matters and of the sacred, as opposed to you godless ones who only gripe of the bitterness and then forsake the holy dark night by numbing yourself to it.

Don't feel any guilt though. Watching your failing is one of those divine pains I'm blessed to feel, rising me up to an even more lofted comprehension of the sacred.

Eat that bitch.

No, I don't have lupus. That's a chick disease. I suffer from cockus gigantus and I need the meds to fit into my fabulous sleak spandex unitard bitch.

Yeah, when a normal (what I call myself) hears about transstuff I think of a hacked up goober. That's not weird, that's normal. That's what transfolks do. I seen the movie.

If you smoke the weed, you are the fuckus upus. I live under the bright sober light of reality 24/7. Know why? Cuz I can deal with whatever shit the good Lord throws at me without needing to sedate. It's red blooded bad assery, something your Canadian ass don't undercomprehend.

Maybe you're a lesbian. Have you thought of that? I mean with all this fluidity, it would seem terribly discriminatory to prohibit lesbianism from anyone.

In other news, I've got to take prednisone for a couple of weeks for a condition that is none of your God damned business (so stop fucking prying). It's like making me sweat and get a little hyped up, sort of like after drinking a bunch of coffee but without the runs. Having no real vices, having this weird buzz is kind of cool, and I can now see why people get hooked on meth. Yep, just a little anti-inflammatory meds and I'm talking about meth.

The point of this is that I now get how people might want to change their reality, either through meds or through the knife. And by "through the knife," I'm talking about having one's gonads lopped off, just so there's no confusion.

I think I'm going to take this energy surge to the gym to get huuuuuuuge.

Let me add something to this conversation other than to share the platitude that everyone should do that which makes him/her happy and we should butt out of other's lives if it's only to make them less happy. I mean if a guy is happier dressing as a woman and carving up his body to look like a woman, why should I really care? So, hear hear to that sentiment.

What I will add is that there is some value in looking into whether transsexuals become happier when they transition. My understanding of the data is that they don't. That is, if we look at transgenders as those having a mismatch between their biological sex and their mentally perceived sex, then it would make sense to correct that problem by (1) changing their bodies (2) changing their minds or (3) having them simply accept the imbalance. If we choose to change their bodies and we end up with someone with all sorts of hormonal imbalances, depression, urological problems, and social interaction problems, it is important to ask ourselves whether our proposed cure is worse than the disease. That is to say, altering a human body in all sorts of ways to make it look like you want in the mirror may not be the way to go if your objective was to reduce the depression and suicidal tendencies. Sure, you have a really interesting looking body, but does it house a happier mind?

I also want to point out that not all transsexuals were born that way. The narrative we all hear of the little boy who always wanted to wear little girls' clothes, to play little girls' games, and to kiss the little boys is the rare exception to the transgender personality. Most transgenders acted like and felt like little boys and then as men up through their 20s, 30s, and even 40s. There is a very significant difference between gay transsexuals and hetero transsexuals, with the latter being considered a fetish because they are sexually aroused at the thought of being a female. That group comprises by far the largest category of transsexual men. In fact, if one looks at the stats, the numbers of M to F and F to M transsexuals are about the same if one discounts heterosexual transsexuals from the mix. Once those are added in, the M to F tremendously outnumbers the F to M. The point here being that transexualism among men cannot just be viewed as a gender identity issue, but it also needs to be looked at as something that is sought by men for sexual arousal. And there is a very dark side to that equation as well, with the feminization process being part of a masochistic expression.

And that's what I wish to add to this discussion. The idea that transsexuals are just women in men's bodies that need to be freed by surgery isn't a terribly accurate statement. The truth is that most transsexuals are men who find sexual arousal by acting and thinking of themselves as women, and the surgery to free them to do this is far from freeing.

Let's take a second then to not just celebrate every difference, but instead to realize the human sexuality is extremely complex and often its expression is evidence of all sorts of deep seated issues. It is possible that there are some transsexuals who are perfectly normal in every way other than their anatomy, but I fear that is the exception.

That response actually guilted me.

I've had multiple poems deleted because academic philosophy doesn't value the written word unless it promotes the agenda of the wealthy and powerful and this is a commercial website. — wuliheron

I thought they were deleted because it was bad poetry. I suppose it's theoretically possible that a useful response could be written in poetic form, it's just that you've never done it so you have yet to have a valid complaint.

I really wish you could see yourself as most see you, as just a pretentious hack who has nothing to say other than to drone on in poor poetic form about the capitalist machinery that supposedly keeps him down.

When starting the thread, it was a coin toss whether to put it in General Philosophy or Philosophy of Religion, if that is what you are referring to. The moderators could move it to the appropriate sub-forum if necessary. — 0 thru 9

Fair enough. I just wonder if it's either, though. I find this more a theological discussion than a philosophy of religion discussion. Assuming I come into this discussion with the notion that these Eastern belief systems are B.S., it seems I'd have no place in this discussion other than me constantly screaming that I'm a non-believer.

On the other hand, if you were debating whether the Tao itself made sense and were presenting logical and empirical bases for your position, then it would be a philosophical debate and my screaming that I'm a non-believer would be misplaced.

Many people find the idea of ethics and values altogether worthless in our modern material world. — wuliheron

Interesting aside.

I wish I could have back the two minutes of my life that I lost reading that.

How is any of this philosophy?

In my view this would be like: "The best / most intimate knowledge we have of what is causing our physical behaviour at a given time". We're able to know why we raise our hand, why we take avoiding actions, why we choose low fat over regular, etc. Moral competence then comes from interacting with other agents who are also capable of such understanding and expect you to have the same understanding. — Gooseone

The problem with this solution is that all people generally know why they have raised their hand or generally performed any act. They did it because they wanted to. The question of moral responsibility would therefore not rest in your knowledge of why you did it, but it would instead rest in your knowledge of whether it was a right or wrong act. The fact that I know why I shot you (I just sort of felt like it) should not be the determining factor in whether I should be held responsible for it. The fact that I lack the capacity to know right from wrong would make it so that I am not responsible for it. Lack of moral knowledge, or more precisely, an inability to comprehend the difference between right and wrong is often used as the legal definition of insanity and it serves as a defense for criminal acts.
The McNaughton Rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M'Naghten_rules

Yes but it's vacuous. It's empty of content. It makes no difference if you are a brain in a vat, or you are actually a living human being - it makes no difference to the actual business of living. Descartes was fucked up because his skepticism undermined itself. Such skepticism undermines the meaning of truth, and thus renders its own truthfulness non-existent and incoherent - it destroys the context in which talking about truth and falsity makes sense, and then proceeds to talk about truth and falsity. The evil demon, brain in a vat, etc. hypothesis is nonsense - utter nonsense. — Agustino

Not so much. Descartes first conclusion was exactly what you're getting at, which is all that he could know was that he was a thinking thing, which is accurate whether you are a brain in a vat or actually as you appear. His reliance on an all good God to get him out of his solipsism was necessary or he'd be stuck. You've just got to accept that seeing is believing and root it in something. You root it in pragmatism (i.e. what difference does it make?), Descartes in God.

And when you say it makes no difference if you're a brain in a vat, I'm not that's true from an existential analysis. If you knew that your life and your death was just a computer program beginning and ending and that you'd be rebooted upon "death" (i.e. the evil genius would just hit restart), would that not give you a sinking feeling of meaninglessness? When you play a video game, doesn't it affect how you play it if you can reset it when you die?

I understand I wouldn't know I were a brain in a vat, but such is always the case. Even as I stood there deciding to become a brain in the vat, logic would dictate that I might already be in a vat and this is just part of my vat brain experience.

https://youtu.be/zE7PKRjrid4

You can't know that the red pill isn't just part of your matrix

If I'm a brain in a vat it matters because it requires a higher power, an evil or benevolent genius brain fucking me. It makes me religious and shit.

I'm the master of disaster for 2 reasons. 1. It rhymes and 2. take that bitch!

These questions fuck with my mind too much. How do I know you didn't just push the button and leave me thinking I'm pushing the button now that I'm just a vat brain?

Easy come easy go.

400 marijuana charges would not implicate the 3 strikes rule. Read the law or you could just keep on spouting nonsense, which seems to be your preferred tact.

Again, the data you provide is false, wrong, and nonsense. Show me 1 actual inmate who was sentenced to 7 years in prison for simple pot possession. When I was a prosecutor in the 90s, I think the typical sentence was $300, the cost of a speeding ticket.

There are absolutely no statistics you've cited supportive of your position that a sizable number of state or federal inmates are incarcerated for simple possession of pot. If you're seen smoking pot, you'll likely get a warning or maybe a citation. If they do book you in, zero chance you'll get prison time unless you're already on probation or parole. And by zero, I mean zero.

Still off point. You referenced stats that were outrageously false. Do you now concede you just made them up and wish to talk about something else?

If, as you say, the general public is intellectually incapable of properly setting its own course, why should I trust you (or anyone) to do it for me? How is it that you have transcended the level of the common man, and how can little old me know you're the one to trust? Should we perhaps just designate an elite ruling class comprised of those who are most certain they're just and true and have them care for us simpletons?

This post is non- responsive to my comments. You made an outlandish claim about marijuana related imprisonment, and now you're quoting stats for just arrests and how they compare to other drug related arrests. Are you now conceding your prior stats were BS?

The trend for many years has been toward decriminalization and outright legalization of marijuana. Most large cities have been issuing citations instead of even arresting simple possession users.

0.1% of all prisoners are there for being a pothead (recreational users). https://learnaboutsam.org/the-issues/marijuana-and-whos-in-prison/

You were off by 200x with the number you provided of 20%. It would be extremely uncommon to find a simple marijuana user in prison, considering simple possession is a misdemeanor in most jurisdictions and prison is reserved for felons. The percentage in county jails is .7%, 25x less than the number you provided.

Sometimes I feel like that: I am limited by my genes, my upbringing, and all the biology, so sometimes people expect too much from me, to be something I am.

So, do you think that humans should have the right to legally be recognised as machines or robots? — DanEssex

I think you should be able to be treated as a machine, but I am a machine like you, and I have been programmed to not treat you like a machine. Sorry.

Where I live, using the phone is involved in more fatal accidents than alcohol. The statistic for alcohol is far less than 80%. — Metaphysician Undercover

Where do you live, at the Samsung Galaxy S7 store?

What a long winded post trying to rationalize why you don't drink. Why don't you just own up to the fact that you're a light weight little girl who can't hold his liquor so you must abstain?

I agree there are certain fundamental beliefs (synthetic a priori), but I wasn't so much concerned with those as much as much more complex beliefs, like my intuition telling me not to take a job, for example. My gut often speaks loud and clear, but I go behind that and try to figure out why. For example, does logic dictate taking the job? Is it fear causing my gut to retreat? Is the fear justified or a weakness? That's usually my process, for what it's worth.

The question is whether you trust your instinct or overrule it with reason.