[alancalverd]

definition of reason and goal.

Reason: why I'm doing something (tactics)
Goal: what I hope to achieve by doing it (strategy).

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Imagine if our ancestors didn't care if their descendants would live or die.

Like it or not, they will die eventually, as will every living thing.

There are plenty of fish in the sea, and their parents have absolutely no interest in the young. They just lay their eggs and move on.

They follow their instincts to survive, which were formed by evolutionary process. Lacking of those instincts reduces their chance to survive.
The individual organisms don't have to survive indefinitely, as long as they have backup copy which will continue their legacies.

Rational thinking is an even more powerful tool to achieve longer term goals. But it's just a part of consciousness. Assuming that everything else are equal, someone lacking in reflexes, instincts, feelings or intuitions are considered as having lower level of consciousness.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

What makes you think that nobody understand consciousness? People haven't reached a consensus on its meaning doesn't necessarily eliminate the possibility that some of them have already defined it correctly.

It's bad science to use a word if there are so many interpretations that you can't assume a common one. I may occasionally do good science badly, but I don't deliberately do bad science.

You can invent a new word to express what you mean more accurately. You just need to define it by making relationship with something else that your targeted audience are familiar with.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

definition of reason and goal.

Reason: why I'm doing something (tactics)
Goal: what I hope to achieve by doing it (strategy).

What're the reason and goal of your life?

[alancalverd]

My life has no reason - it is a consequence of my parents' actions, and nothing more.

I have a number of short term goals, and reasons for prioritising and facilitating progress towards them

[alancalverd]

I've had another thought about the "intelligent? random number generator". As long as the numbers it generates are random, they won't surprise me because that is what the machine has been constructed to do. But if it was drawing numbers in a weekly lottery and consistently gave first prize to the same  guy who had only bought one number, I might suspect an underlying intelligence.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

My life has no reason - it is a consequence of my parents' actions, and nothing more.

I have a number of short term goals, and reasons for prioritising and facilitating progress towards them

Your parents' actions are consequences of various events preceding them.

How do you prioritize them? It can help you identify your long term goal.

[alancalverd]

How do you prioritize them? It can help you identify your long term goal.

Affordability of time, money and effort, availability of other brain and muscle, probable consequences of procrastinaton - all the other negatives, and all the positives: is the sun shining, do I need some exercise, will it make the Boss happy.... This week's principal goal: tidy garden, hence a reason for repairing the lawnmower - and very satisfying too!

There is just one longterm goal: to die at the time and place, and of the cause, of my own choosing. Since my preferred cause is hypothermia, this prioritises visiting my family in Australia (where there are very limited opportunities for doing so) over taking a winter holiday in Norway (where finality can be guaranteed), and thus sets an intermediate goal for the next year or so.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There is just one longterm goal: to die at the time and place, and of the cause, of my own choosing.

Have you made the choice? Or it can still change according to situations and conditions?

Since my preferred cause is hypothermia,

What's your reason for it?

Why your conviction that you will eventually die doesn't make you think that your life is meaningless?

[alancalverd]

Since death is final, there is no achievable post-death goal. Therefore whatever conditions I set for my death must be my longterm goal. Hypothermia is quite easy to achieve in an English winter and a riverbank, a hillside or my own garden will be a pleasant final view.

I've experienced hypothermia and hypoxia. The sensations weren't unpleasant and indeed hypoxia was quite enjoyable but more difficult for an old cripple to achieve in a controlled manner that doesn't inconvenience others.

"Meaning" demands an external party that will derive understanding from an action. Though my actions when alive may help them think more clearly, nobody will understand any less when I'm dead. Therefore what I do may have value to others but my life has no meaning,

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

hypothermia

I heard a case where hypothermia can cause someone to lose finger tips.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

If you restrict yourself to your own individual goals, then of course they will become meaningless after you die.
But if you can expand your perspective to larger systems, then your goals can stay meaningful as long as those systems exist. You can think about it like ant scouts or worker bees.

Expanding our system is a way to extend the timeline of our goals, even beyond our own individual lifetime.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Moral Realism: The Arbitrariness Challenge

If there are objective moral facts, so what? Why should we care about them? This video outlines the arbitrariness challenge to moral realism, from Jason Kawall's paper "Moral Realism and Arbitrariness"

0:00 - Introduction
1:17 - The Euthyphro dilemma
4:16 - The arbitrariness challenge
14:30 - Incoherence?
19:27 - Metaphysical distinctness
21:51 - The meaning of "ought"
31:45 - Motivational internalism

The seemingly arbitrary rules for accepted morality comes from arbitrariness of situations that conscious entities have to deal with. Same action can have different consequences when it's done in different situations.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

If you restrict yourself to your own individual goals, then of course they will become meaningless after you die.
But if you can expand your perspective to larger systems, then your goals can stay meaningful as long as those systems exist. You can think about it like ant scouts or worker bees.

Expanding our system is a way to extend the timeline of our goals, even beyond our own individual lifetime.

In regards to social consciousness, ants and bees are arguably more conscious than human babies. Although they are likely caused by instinct, rather than rational thought, due to their limitations in the size of their neural networks.
Growing old is inevitable, but growing up to adult is an option. People who only have strictly selfish goals haven't grown up their social consciousness to the level of ants and bees.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Due to entropy, natural selection, and the great filters, conscious entities who will exist in the future

Whatever your definition of consciousness, entropy will ensure that it ceases to exist. ΔS > 0, always.

Except if the system size can be increased indefinitely.
With infinite system size, you can keep local entropy low indefinitely.

[alancalverd]

I heard a case where hypothermia can cause someone to lose finger tips.

The trick is to wear gloves, socks and ear protection. This protects the areas where you are most likely to feel pain and give up your suicide attempt. The object is to reduce your core temperature smoothly and slowly so you lose consciousness before you lose your limbs.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

In regards to social consciousness, ants and bees are arguably more conscious than human babies. Although they are likely caused by instinct, rather than rational thought, due to their limitations in the size of their neural networks.

The behaviors of those insects are not likely to be goal driven. They don't seem to behave based on the desired physical results outside of their own body. The size of their neural network doesn't seem to allow them to accurately build a mental image of the physical world around them, and what kind of world they want to live in. Their behaviors are likely based on the activation of neurotransmitters which simply emerged to be statistically more aligned to their survival.

Those zealous behaviors are similar to cultural and religious reasons to do good things.

Religion Gives People Bad Reasons To Be Good - Sam Harris vs Jordan Peterson

[alancalverd]

The behaviors of those insects are not likely to be goal driven. They don't seem to behave based on the desired physical results outside of their own body.

Wrong. Honey bees and soldier ants will die for the future of the Reich, and the entire colony spends most of its time storing food and rearing the next generation, secure in the knowledge that the workers themselves are unlikely to survive the winter.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The behaviors of those insects are not likely to be goal driven. They don't seem to behave based on the desired physical results outside of their own body.

Wrong. Honey bees and soldier ants will die for the future of the Reich, and the entire colony spends most of its time storing food and rearing the next generation, secure in the knowledge that the workers themselves are unlikely to survive the winter.

How do you know that?

[alancalverd]

Observation.

Any animal that stores food for later consumption obviously has a concept of future, and the fact that they return to a good forage site and/or avoid previously-encountered unpleasantness shows that they have a concept of past. Every newly-hatched tribal insect can see the pile of its dead ancestors.