God, I wish I had heard this in 2020. Went through a pretty hard cosmic existential crisis and what resolved it was coming to understand and accept essentially what Blow is saying here. This guy is brilliant.
I don't understand how meaning or importance could exist outside of a conscious mind. Human beings give things meaning. To me it kind of sounds like Blow is anthropomorphizing the universe.
I think I can see where he is coming from. It sounds like the classic Plato "I understand more about the world because I am aware that I know nothing." He means that If there were a meaning of life then none of us would understand it. What is strange to me is that he says the universe knows what life means and we lowly beings do not. But we are the universe.
i think it's fair to say there are some real pieces of meaning out there the world isn't *just* quarks being completely chaotic; there are real patterns that do real coherent things there are things like trees or suns or computers that are very complex but exhibit coherent patterns of behaivor that i think could be called fundamentally meaningful that said i'm not sure this that i'm saying matches what jon blow is saying also thanks for the uploads, blow fan
Seems like he is alluding to some kind of meaning beyond our mental capacities. I'm not sure if I agree with him using the word "meaning" like that, but I think I can kinda see what he is getting at. It's like in science you will only ever have models using math to approximate on a certain scale how things work and what things are like. It's always reductionist. It works pretty well of course in practical terms, but in terms of having a complete understanding and appreciation of the complexity of reality it can only get you so far. And to fully get there might be impossible, like he suggests. So it's not surprising that he rejects the "humans are robots" idea.
One thing to think about is that It's not exactly straight forward to define what a conscious mind is. Because we cannot easily define it, how can we tell what lies inside or outside of it.
We don’t know what consciousness is, that’s for starters. The whole idea of ‘meaning’ or ‘value’ or ‘understanding’ is also outside the realm of the prevalent ‘mechanical’ view of the universe people usually have today. We really have no idea what our reality is.
I don’t need to find any meaning in my life- I have more goals and meaning than I could ever accomplish. What I’m missing isn’t *meaning* , it’s *means* to actually do anything meaningful, and the depression and poverty that results from that inability.
You need to find meaning within your means and reality (and work to change it to a realistic degree). The "I just need to be King/rich/Elon Musk and I'm not" is not actual meaning...
Well... This is a BIG and loaded question... But, Everyone has to find their own sense of meaning on their OWN terms... And that's that! Also, Everyone needs to understand that Ultimately... The Universe doesn't give two shits if you exist or not... Sure, we are Alive and we're Self Aware and all that Jazz so... As a species... We ARE significant... However, on singular... Individualistic level... We all have to figure this shit out on our own. And asking such questions... At least to me... Signifies that the journey to ones 'Meaning' has just begun! So yeah... Start asking these types of questions.... And then begin to find your OWN answers for yourself... And yourself alone... Of course we can all compare notes but... At the end of the day, we may share this planet but we ALL have our own path to walk... But sure.... It ALL starts with The Question.... Why Are We Here? And more importantly... Why am I here?..... Good Luck to all who walk this path of Self Enlightenment! You won't find all your answers but you WILL find meaning... Eventually...
I'm surprised by how sure he is that there is inherent meaning in to the universe. As far as I am aware, there is no inherent meaning. Is meaning even possible outside of a being's perspective? I believe that there is no meaning at the level of the universe (it's just chaos from which we have accidentally emerged), but there is meaning at the level of the human. And that human meaning is pretty much what he described: one can find meaning by simply following their intuition.
@@elijahbuscho7715 By accident I'm guessing you mean lack of intention. Intention is tricky. What you're doing is positioning humans as the highest level of intention that has emerged. And there's an inherent paradox to that. If we're so special, why? The universe is meaningless and all the things about ourselves that serve as such ridiculous contrasts to a a universe we don't know or understand is just us being special? That doesn't square. It's not intuitive to us, but it's sensible to take a step back and realize that it is very likely that the aspects of ourselves that are seemingly so special are not unique to us, or unique to the scale we exist at. I don't trust anything to be unique. I can't tell you what that implies because of course I don't know, but I do think Jon is right that the universe as a whole system is more likely to be something we just can't even comprehend.
@@asunj I feel like in order for meaning to exist, there needs to either be intention, or some perceptive entity who can attribute meaning to something. I don't think humans are special in our ability to attribute meaning to things. There are various frameworks in which different things are meaningful. If there is something with intention a level above humans, then sure. But what's above that? And then what's above that? And does it ever end, or could it loop infinitely? And then what is there to be said about infinite levels of intention? I have no doubt that there is probably infinite meaning in the universe. And there is probably always some meaning that is outside the grasp of any individual. But does there HAVE to be some common meaning inherent to it all? I guess what I'm talking about is no longer just the universe though, huh? So I guess there probably is meaning to the universe. But that's about as unhelpful to acknowledge as acknowledging that we don't have free will.
@@elijahbuscho7715 I think the point is it's impossible to know. There's a saying in physics "give us one miracle and we'll explain the rest". That miracle is the fact anything exists at all. Where did it come from? I'm not positing God or anything, but the perspective that it's random or mindless is as much a leap of reason as the idea it has any form of meaning or consciousness. But the fact WE have awareness, and that awareness/consciousness is something that exists in the universe and we can't explain it, suggests there may be 'higher' or 'lower' forms of it... IMO
4:10 - the universe isn't being empty. About 23% of the universe we can actually perceive (IIRC, read Walter Lewin's book "for the love of physics"). The rest is "dark" matter and invisible to us. Maybe we are just a subset of a universe much larger, and more important/sophisticated then we can imagine.
He just extracted facts from an observation on abstraction of consciousness levels. Last week I mentioned consciousness levels as solid lines which causes awareness reset to someone crossed it. When John mentioned to “human” it refers to our consciousness section. Next section is god level for us and we are gods for previous section members (microorganisms). And I can say from this perspective, these sections never ends.
There's a great book "Star Maker" about multiple consciousnesses merging until they become the universe, and then... real spoilers. Basically great sci-fi focused on the current features and past anthropology of various aliens. But after reading that book, I began to wonder what "Human Concepts" would run through the "mind" of either my toenail or The Internet, or Businesses, or anything imaginable. I sort of assume toenails wouldn't have many concepts, maybe vital organs would have one - but trying to think about what The Internet thinks about is sort of creepy.
Jon is super duper close to theism. He's spot on in *almost* all that he says over here. The only thing he is missing is that logical conclusion that the agency that he ascribes to the universe must be bestowed upon it by a transcendent, immaterial, eternal, uncaused being - God. The universe itself has no meaning, but it is the creator of said universe that ascribes to its meaning.
"Meaning" is a human construct. That's not to say that you cannot define a meaning for yourself and your place in the universe and how you will live, but there is no meaning in the universe itself. If humans didn't exist, would there still be a "meaning" to the universe? I don't think so. It only exists in our minds.
@@SunCurse-oy6fe, now I know. The world will end like a Saturday morning cartoon. Everyone will start a small talk laugh and find himself unable to stop, then end his life in insomnia and starvation, but laughing incessantly, like a person who thinks he's very smart and cool simply because he laughs.
To me, this sounds like he had a mystical experience of some kind where he somehow "saw the true meaning of the universe" but now when he thinks about his experience, it seems like utter nonsense and this is his attempt to rationalize that discrepancy.
