Sunday, March 26, 2006

Why do we live???

"Who? Who is but the form following the function of what. And what I am is a man in a mask."
- Hugo Weaving in V for Vendetta
The question was asked in a community on orkut: Why do we live?
This question is troubling me ever since. I scrambled to find the answer everywhere. Ofcourse there were canned answers like "to explore the horizons of living... loving"..blah but why do we have to do those ? Why do I have to fall in love? Why should I respect elders? Why should I breathe? Why should I stay Alive??? The question reverberated through my mind... after all if you lose all the pretense of being a human and see the humans as a third entity, say in the manner humans see lab rats... these emotions are just neurological signals to the brain.

Quoting Agent Smith from the movie matrix:
"Do you believe you're fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is, do you even know? Is it freedom, or truth, perhaps peace, could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose! And all of them as artificial as the matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it Mr. Anderson, you must know it by now. You can't win, it's pointless to keep fighting! Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why do you persist?"

Those emotions of love, hatred are just special neurological pattern in our brains.. what is the bigger picture? How different are we from a single cell amoeba who even though have no emotions, live... They can only move/exixt and reproduce... i.e unlike humans' that is definitely a simple cause (though there are more reasons than the cell it has).. If it is then why does it exist. If there is a reason say A for amoeba to exist.
Now for humans, even though there are many reasons to live, everything boils down to A.
So everything is what it is because of A. I guess we also know A as God (or whoever we believe in).

But then the question redirects itself to A... why does A exist?
Just for argument sake lets say that A exist because of B, B due to C and so on... This results in an infinite series. Since this is an infinite series there is no end to it.
The following proof is involves order theory so you may stop reading:
Now we have the set $={We Humans, A, B, C, .... } which is infinite. This set has no upper bound but it is directed, we being the lower bound of $. Since $ is not an element of $ so we can make a new set $$=$U{$}, which contains {$} as its topmost element but is still infinite.

Now I am not relegious or anything but lets take a closer look at {$}. {$} is the topmost element in $$ and contains everything present in/out of the universe... hence {$} is omnipresent and we all are a part of {$}. Next {$} is the topmost element in the chain of this directed-complete poset so clearly {$} is above all of us. {$} is an infinite elements away from us. Infinty is incomprehensible to humans... something which we cant know. Hence there is no way of knowing what {$} is.

If I say that {$} is God then the whole equation actually makes sense. We are all part of him. He is omnipresent. He is above us. And there is no way of knowing him exactly hence knowing the exact purpose of our living... so live in the moment and plan for the future... you may only predict the future and the nature of {$}.

PS: Tell me if you find any flaws in this proof

4 comments:

  1. The "flaw" I would like to point out is the fact that you're trying to prove all existence using human-made mind constructs.
    Mathematics and logic are part of our world, so how can you use them to prove something that's beyond (or above) it?
    If there's anything above all that we know, then I think that by definition it cannot be proven or disproven using our knowledge or preconceptions.
    I like "I don't know" better. Some people just don't like that answer.

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  2. @villa:f there's anything above all that we know, then I think that by definition it cannot be proven or disproven using our knowledge or preconceptions.
    That is a paradox... you have prooved that it cannot be proven or disproven...but it cannot be prooved or disprooved that it is proven or disproven using human made constructs.

    Also it is really difficult for me to imagine an illogical beyond ... the logic may be exceedingly difficult for any human to understand but nevertheless it will be logical.

    Lastly "I dont know" is also one of the results of the proof.

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  3. My proof that the existence of God cannot be proven:
    "If God or something like God exists, then IT is the source of everything, including mathematics and logic. Since mathematics and logic and pretty much everything are a consequence of IT, they cannot the used to prove or disprove IT."
    That's a simple principle: "If X comes from Y, you cannot prove Y using X". You *can* prove that things cannot be proven. My proof is not formal, but it is what I believe. Just because our minds are constrained to logical or emotional thinking it does not mean that they are real boundaries of the world.

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  4. I would like to represent the amoeba community and am suing u since u say we have no emotions :P

    on a serious note, lot of thinking behind the post mate, i guess formal methods needs a new TA in u

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