# What is the point of living if we're all going to die?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-point-of-living-if-were-all-going-to-die/829123
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [February 7, 2019, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-point-of-living-if-were-all-going-to-die/829123 "2019-02-07T15:06:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 8
### Author:  [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2019, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-point-of-living-if-were-all-going-to-die/829123/144 "2019-02-16T00:05:29Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> The journal I wrote a column for had a special issue on self aware systems, and only one paper looked at the problem in any sort of real way. The others said that voltage and temperature sensing inside the computer was an example of self awareness, which is sexy but misleading.
> Our bodies so a lot of this also, but below the conscious level.
I was thinking more about how operating systems actively monitor their various operating processes and programs and will react in various ways to problems and issues. If we were to be so improper as to analogize execution threads with “thoughts”, then computers are definitely aware that they’re thinking - though admittedly the wider operating systems of computers aren’t particularly aware of the _contents_ of their thoughts, as long as those thoughts aren’t trying to access services and hardware that the OS is monitoring.
Probably the best counterargument to the notion that computers are self-aware is that they don’t pay much attention to what’s passing through their processor - my computer may be ‘thinking’ about this post I’m typing, but it doesn’t really care about its contents as long as the browser doesn’t try to write outside its memory space. (At least I _think_ the computer isn’t assessing and forming opinions about my posts…if it was I wouldn’t know, obviously.)
Beyond that, well, you’d have to properly define “self-aware” first before you could interest me in your dismissals thereof.
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### Author:  [@SigMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SigMan)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2019, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-point-of-living-if-were-all-going-to-die/829123/145 "2019-02-16T00:13:16Z")
I can imagine that when you typed “I’m going to throw this computer into the fire” the computer started shaking. :rolleyes:
Seriously, all the computer know is ones and zeros.
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### Author:  [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2019, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-point-of-living-if-were-all-going-to-die/829123/146 "2019-02-16T00:19:54Z")
> [@SigMan](#):
>
> I can imagine that when you typed “I’m going to throw this computer into the fire” the computer started shaking. :rolleyes:
>
> Seriously, all the computer know is ones and zeros.
Sigh. Look, there’s a lot of sensible ways to criticize the notion that computers are self aware (starting with “they haven’t exterminated humanity yet”), but going after how they store data just makes you look bad. _Literally anything_ can be encoded as “ones and zeroes”.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2019, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-point-of-living-if-were-all-going-to-die/829123/147 "2019-02-16T00:47:43Z")
> [@begbert2](#):
>
> I was thinking more about how operating systems actively monitor their various operating processes and programs and will react in various ways to problems and issues. If we were to be so improper as to analogize execution threads with “thoughts”, then computers are definitely aware that they’re thinking - though admittedly the wider operating systems of computers aren’t particularly aware of the _contents_ of their thoughts, as long as those thoughts aren’t trying to access services and hardware that the OS is monitoring.
>
> Probably the best counterargument to the notion that computers are self-aware is that they don’t pay much attention to what’s passing through their processor - my computer may be ‘thinking’ about this post I’m typing, but it doesn’t really care about its contents as long as the browser doesn’t try to write outside its memory space. (At least I _think_ the computer isn’t assessing and forming opinions about my posts…if it was I wouldn’t know, obviously.)
>
> Beyond that, well, you’d have to properly define “self-aware” first before you could interest me in your dismissals thereof.
For an OS the processes being run are indistinguishable apart from priority and resources used.
A truly self aware processor would both look inside processes and have some idea as to goals that the processes were accomplishing. And it would be able to start off processes on its own. I’m not saying such a thing is impossible, just that it hasn’t happened yet. And monitoring temperature isn’t even close.
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### Author:  [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2019, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-point-of-living-if-were-all-going-to-die/829123/148 "2019-02-16T01:02:08Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> For an OS the processes being run are indistinguishable apart from priority and resources used.
> A truly self aware processor would both look inside processes and have some idea as to goals that the processes were accomplishing. And it would be able to start off processes on its own. I’m not saying such a thing is impossible, just that it hasn’t happened yet. And monitoring temperature isn’t even close.
It depends on how you define “self-aware” - including the “self” part.
In the post you quoted I was so improper as to define the threads of execution as the operating system’s thoughts, and then conceded that the OS doesn’t monitor the innards of the thoughts well enough to count it as truly being aware of them. However if you instead view the majority of the processes as being outside objects that the OS is shepherding around, then ignorance of their innards is no more a blow against the OS’s self-awareness than the a human shepherd’s ignorance of sheep innards does.
This would of course reduce the “self” of an OS to just the processes and memory space that make up the OS itself - the processes that it both uses _and_ monitors. There probably aren’t a whole lot of those so a person could probably make some kind of “OSes (and flies and terriers) don’t have enough going on to be self-aware” argument - presuming that somebody proposed a definition for self-awareness that put a lower bound on the amount of processing that has to be occurring to qualify.
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