Ask Lemmy

"then what" is also essentially our question. We can hypothesize about AGI taking over and having to deal with these existential questions. We could also theorize that we fend off aging and start living forever. What then? But why go so deep into hypotheticals when this exact scenario is what's being played off by life itself in this world. Every single organism, Going back all the way when we were all the same thing, we've all been just replicating and fighting to stay alive to replicate some more. Plants, fungi, bacteria, even viruses, mammals, reptiles, birds, water bears and hydras, fishes and crustaceans, from intelligent all the way to not even recognized as life by us. All of it is just patterned noise trying to keep staying recognizable through time immemorial. Why? What's the "what then" for life itself? What's the endgame? Is there even an endgame, or does it just not matter?

Now life is no miracle, magical thing. It follows rules, the rules of the universe. If it exists, it's because it's possible for it to exist due to the very laws of the universe. Hence, it's all just another complex process, just like every other complex thing that's happened in this universe. So, why? Why does a universe exist, and why does life exist within it? Is it that the process we call life is just the universe trying to wake up and look in a mirror? Even if we argue that it's a ridiculous and egotistical take, we are all still matter that understands what it is, we understand we are energy, we are matter, we are atoms, we are processes, we are a dance with death, we are the dancers, the living and the blueprint for more living, the experience of living, and the continuation of this in other copies of us. We're the cells in our body, and the organelles within those cells. We're the proteins, the fats, the DNA, we're each neuron firing based on electrical impulses, we're the synapses between the neurons, we're the energy that courses through those synapses, and we're the pattern that emerges from it. We're the emergence of it all, and we're the emergence of our society as well. We're the person, and we're the society, and we're also the entire ecosystem. We're the planet, as well as the solar system, and the galaxy it's in, and the galactic neighborhood it belongs to, and the group, supergroup, cluster, and the supercluster. We go all the way down to the smallest things, and yet it wouldn't be possible without the biggest things. We are built as individuals, and yet we emerge as something bigger than all of us, and something bigger than that, and that, and that too.

We're made of universe, so we are universe, and when we look into ourselves, the universe does so too. So why? What's the point? Does God wake up eventually after staring long enough in the mirror, and if so, what does he do about it? Why do we fight tooth and nail to be alive, to stay alive, when we don't really know what to do next? Will our next versions know what to do? Will God know what to do, once he awakens and the egg breaks? Why is any of this.... Even here?

So yeah, edibles are pretty good today.