Ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust.
Here is a related view:
It seems trivially easy to think of a possible world with less evil than ours. Just off the top of my head, how about a world identical to ours in all ways except that any time someone is about to abuse a child, or sexually assault someone, a random bystander happens to pass by and punches the offender in the face, allowing the victim to escape. Or the offender is struck with crippling nausea until the desire passes. Or that desire just happens to be as rare among humans as the desire to slowly burn one’s own skin off with fire, one inch at a time. Or a million other possibilities.
Leibniz and Gibran have been Graped!
What you are talking about isn’t the kind of win condition I am. You’re talking about human extinction and a replacement with something new. Which is probably the “best” outcome in terms of what the universe rewards, but not necessarily what outcome we will get.
I’m saying, as humans, if all 7 billion of us could work together and make the best possible future for ourselves, this is what we’d do. (we’d preserve the ones who die before we figure out a cure so we can revive them once we do)
Obviously that isn’t what 99.999% of us are doing, just speaking idealistically, but as far as I know, from the “rules” of the game as observed, this is the best outcome we can shoot for.
And I’d like to think that even plain biological human minds, uploaded or not, would want more than an eternity of bliss. I’d still want to solve challenges, like performing violent sidequests to expand my virtual harem or deciding if I want to declare war on the Orcs or not.
In such a world there would be no child abuse, so how would the bystander know that (nonexistent) abuse was about to occur? For that matter, do I need to cite examples of people who achieved greatness despite (or because of) adversity?
I think I’ve read someone address this by distinguishing “best possible world” from “best world possible.” I am no Christian theist and don’t intend to defend the viewpoint, but it isn’t as stupid as some might make it out to be.
Maybe this is a world where all acts of interpersonal violence are instances of instinctively stopping people from performing glazeltnick. We don’t know–indeed, can’t conceive–what glazeltnick is because it has always been prevented.
Chaos (not ‘evil’ per se, but its look-alike) happens when we don’t make an effort to establish order. Humanity is somewhat of a paradox - born of chaos but seeking order.
The world we see, the apparent mixture of joy and pain, evil and good, is easily explicable if you assume no creator at all.
Sure, you can shoehorn one in but the moment you do that and apply either benevolent or malevolent intent you have all you work still ahead of you to explain the contradictions of this imagined superbeing.
If you’ve ever read a novel, or seen a movie, or played a narrative-style video game, you’ve experienced a world that does have a creator. Could you tell from the nature of that world whether its creator was good or evil?
We can demonstrate mathematically that the universe wasn’t ‘created’ at all. I would be happy to walk you through it, it is surprisingly uncomplicated. But I don’t want to waste time beating my head against the wall with a zealous apologist.
Let me know if you want to hear it.
Those worlds are created with deliberate intent. There seems to be a dearth of evidence that this reality was created with intent. (I tend to be skeptical of the idea that this universe was in fact created at all, that the question of the beginning and end is formed in our minds which are unable to conceive of things that do not begin or end at some point.)
So very true.
Gather up all thy worldly goods (of value) and send them to me at the address I will PM you. They are just weighing down your spiritual progression, and you’ll be better off without them.
You’re absolutely right about this.
So when are you going to dispose all your worldly assets and move to a cave?
I’m sure that whatever creator being is responsible for this universe, it has made us with benevolent intent and for a higher purpose.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to put in some more time on my gooble box.
No need to refer to an origin story, or all powerful authority.
In human cultures, it’s all human beings acting in their own perceived short term best interest, with incomplete knowledge, inapt beliefs and limited compassion. Yeah, that includes the crazy – just different kinds of self interest and deficits than you or I may have.
As for the natural world, there may be aspects that aren’t to our liking, but ascribing a moral value is just an anthropocentric fallacy.
If thats what you want to do, go ahead. But given a choice between doing this and living inside a brain that doesn’t care about harems, or living inside a brain that is 1,000 better at declaring war on the orcs to the point where playing against the best human who ever lived is like playing against a 2 year old, most people will choose the latter.
Our imagination is extremely limited. We have 3 lbs of matter in our brains that was designed by natural selection using limited resources, and there is virtually infinite matter in the universe that can be organized and engineered intelligently. It can be organized into an endless number of ways to act as a substrate for conscious experience (or whatever else is possible).
Its like cavement from 10,000 years ago talking about what life will be like in 10,000 years and all they can talk about is how the sticks they carry would be extra sharp, and the fire in the cave would never go out, and there’d always be mammoth meat to eat. They wouldn’t imagine quantum computers, or gene therapy, or large hadron colliders.
OP is assuming the universe is created for a purpose knowable within this universe. It could just as easily be an extradimensional teaching aide for all or some of those spending a lesson/lifetime within it. You get born into it, you experience the joys and horrors available, you emerge from it with new insight. Neither good nor evil.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here…
I am curious but skeptical. For one thing, how could you possibly tell the difference between a universe that wasn’t created and one that was created to look as though it wasn’t created?