@DuMussDieUhrDruecken said in #16:
> Are you aware, you gave no answer to the titlequestion?
>
> ((((do people now randomly click on a forum link and regardlessly start their monologue??)))
No offense, @Noflaps, but that is true.
I'm not offended by your polite and apparently earnest #21, @ChessNerdLCR, but - with all due respect -- what you claimed to be "true" is actually incorrect.
There are many ways to respond to most questions. One might respond, for example, by asking "are we really in a position to answer?"
The purpose of a forum thread is not for each of us necessarily to tender one of several available short bumper stickers.
Like: The point is to party! No, no, the point is to help others! No, no, the point is to experience beauty! No, no, the point is to learn! All of those short answers are, of course, possible. I make fun of none of them.
But, much as @Oportunist 5 apparently does, I think God is the only one who can give a definitive answer to the title question.
But some seem to think that God is a now an unnecessary concept, since science (some will insist) explains everything or eventually will. Some might even find it difficult to suggest that others might even consider God when answering and that they should look only to science or to their own emotions for an answer. Or perhaps throw up their hands and think there IS no point.
I tried to point out that looking for science to explain our existence -- OUR existence, as self-aware beings with free will in a really remarkable, inexplicable universe -- is a stretch.
My position is clearly pertinent to any consideration of the title question, no matter who might think it's foolish or uncomfortable. Did I offer a short, final answer to the title question? No. I'm not God. How could I?
@Noflaps said in #5 (veryvery long text):
> Thank goodness for science! [...]
> [...]
> [...]
> [...]
...[a.s.o.]...
> [...] Pascal also thought it was a sensible, I believe. But not everybody agrees.
When you print that out on regular paper, it's a b o o k .
Ah, apparently, I haven't yet received sufficient scolding!
Yes, @DuMussDieUhrDruecken , my posts are often (not always) lengthy! I put some real thought and work into them, sometimes.
I understand that not all will find that welcome. They have the option, fortunately, not to read them. I won't be offended if they do not. Indeed, if you find them to be a burden, please remember that you, also, don't need to read them!
There are some other posters whose carefully written, lengthy posts are sometimes not designed for quick memorization, as well!
I won't mention their forum names, since I don't wish to bring any scolding upon them, too. Although perhaps that's unlikely, since they sometimes take different positions than i do.
When they disagree with me, I will always try, i hope, to respond with substantive argument of my own, rather than to criticize the length of their post or something else about them.
I'm curious: do YOU think the answer to the titled question is:
Noflap's posts are like books!
If not, I still won't scold.
@CSKA_Moscou said in #8:
> We exist to help philosophers to be not unemployed.
well said
on a chess site, to the serve "why we exist", i expect to hear notions returned like
• e v o l u t i o n ... ( physical of universe, chemical of elements & molecules, biologic of the phenomenon life )
• s e l f o r g a n i z e d process (@mortman #2 ! everyone ignored that. bigmouth laymen all around yahlalalah an' i got no right to take my place in the hu-man race ya ha haah hahahah ... )
• v a r i e t y
• c o m p l e x i t y
• d y n a m i c s
...and alike.
also...
• probability ( for things to happen )
((( not that creationist "listen to what i tell you god god god" )))
i n f o r m yourself, right !
Ah, I can offer a delightfully short response to #26!
Is what "you expect" the key to finding any appropriate response, @DuMussDieUhrDruecken ?
Well, the odds against our existing in any particular place are enormously high. What allows us to exist, we have to imagine, are the also-enormous number of possibilities in the universe. There are perhaps two trillion galaxies in the universe, so it became possible over billions of years that we could exist on one planet orbiting one star in one of them.
@Cassiodorus1 gives possibly the most sensible response possible to the misgivings I have. It is not foolish to observe, as he seems to do, that time is vast and space is vast, so in all that enormity of time and space somebody had to get lucky, so why not us?
Is that a satisfactory answer? If the benchmark for satisfaction is simply to present a polite, pertinent, well-written, intelligent response, it certainly IS satisfactory. So thank you and well done, @Cassiodorus1 . You illustrate how calm, rational discussion of a difficult topic can be accomplished.
But does it provide a sufficient explanation, for the true nature of our existence and how it came to be? I can't bring myself to feel that it does. The current scientific explanations, ever since Max Planck began the long process of teaching us how GENUINELY weird things are, leave me with an increasing, not a declining, amount of unease. And please don't assume that I am a stranger to mathematics or to science.
That doesn't mean I'm right, of course. But it also doesn't mean that those who share my unease are necessarily foolish or uneducated.
Keeping an open mind when faced with discussions of quantum entanglement and the remarkable, highly complex and coordinated functioning of our own biological systems seems like a sensible, if relatively unfashionable, thing to do. Pascal's wager still doesn't seem at all unwise.
Let me say it out straight: a fully functioning spaniel is a bloody miracle! If I THINK about giving him a treat, he is likely to leap up and begin wagging. To the extent the poor old boy can wag, at least.
To be honest, if you say it (exist) physically, everyone has their own point of view of it so we can't really get an agreed answer on this topic.
If you say it (exist) on Lichess, it's because everyone here decided to click the "register" button just to play chess and do other things in here. Or maybe not? I don't know... I'm not a person that has lots of answers. (Don't be mad at me, this is just my opinion.)
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