[PenultimateManStanding]

Hey MadPaddy, what's Irish and gets left out in the rain?



(Paddy O'Furniture)

[gg3]

Madpaddy, I love your sense of humor & the way you think! BTW, I ran across FLARP some years ago. Bought one for my brother as a joke. We did in fact have endless fun with the stuff. I guess Saint Peter is going to bring that up with me when I die or something.

The purpose of existentialism is to sell Prozac by making people depressed.

Re. "purpose" in the "cosmic" sense: Technically the term for that is "teleology," the study of ultimate goals or purposes. However, y'all who dismiss the concept as anti-scientific, are using out-of-date science.

The implicit rationale for the arguement that teleology is anti-scientific, is that teleology presupposes that a future state (goal) can affect a present state (behavior), and "as we all know," "the future doesn't cause the past" because "time only runs one-way."

However, if you study quantum theory, you find that there is a solid theoretical basis for the idea that certain phenomena do propagate "backward" through time: tachyons, entangled states (instantaneous action at a distance is equivalent to a nonlocal signal arriving "before" its local counterpart, i.e. as if from outside the local universe of the destination point) etc.. Time is a dimension, which is nothing mysterious at all: a dimension is simply an axis of measurement; and as it happens, the math for any axis of measurement works equally well in any direction (e.g. "backward" and "forward" and even "sideways" and "up" and "down").

And as a matter of mundane psychology, humans as individuals and societies, are motivated by goals: land a human on the moon, wipe out Al Qaeda, invent a new power source, invent a new birth-control pill, etc. As above, so below, and the reverse is also true:-).

Now here's a bit of wild speculation that for me operates in the same realm as religion, i.e. a matter of faith if one is so oriented:

Consider that this particular universe is uniquely favorable to life (six key numbers, each of which has to be within 1/2 of 1% of its observed value, else *poof!* or perhaps *FLARP!* our universe wouldn't even exist). As far as we know, living organisms evolve along an axis of increasing degrees of complexity and order. The societies created by conscious organisms at or above a threshold level of intelligence, also evolve along an axis of increasing degrees of complexity and order. So it is not unreasonable to speak of the evolutionary tendency as a causal principle. And it is not unreasonable to consider that our life-infested planet is not unique, and that there are many more throughout this and other galaxies.

Consider that if the evolutionary tendency continues unabated, and if a species has sufficient intelligence (develops science & technology, doesn't crash its ecosystem along the way), the result will be that the species will eventually spread to other planets.

Given enough planets full of intelligent life, and a continued accumulation of knowledge among them, they eventually gain the capability to influence matter and energy on a cosmic scale. You've heard of Dyson spheres but those are only the beginning.

Okay, you've heard that before. But what you haven't heard before is:

Intelligent life forms at that stage would have long-since known about the expansion of the universe toward ultimate entropic heat-death, and they would have recognized that two end-states are possible: One, heat death as a permanent end, or two, contraction and collapse back to a single point from which a new Big Bang would occur, thereby setting the whole thing in motion again.

They would recognize the potential to do something about it, and they would seek to develop the technology to reverse the expansion, cause the re-collapse, and thereby "reboot" the universe. If they succeeded, the whole cycle from big bang forward, would occur again. And, it would only take *one* of the universe's many intelligent species, to pull it off.

For all we know, our present universe is only the most recent in a long series of "reboots," each of which has been successful.

And that, folks, is what I think our ultimate purpose is. Prevent heat-death, reboot the universe, so that somewhere in the uncountable future, another intelligent species can do it again; and another after that; forever. I think we're hardwired for it, evolved/created for it, and the role of each of us in the 21st century is simply to keep passing the evolutionary torch forward, so that our descendants in the unimaginably far future have a chance of pressing the Reboot button.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Consider that this particular universe is uniquely favorable to life (six key numbers, each of which has to be within 1/2 of 1% of its observed value, else *poof!* or perhaps *FLARP!* our universe wouldn't even exist). As far as we know, living organisms evolve along an axis of increasing degrees of complexity and order. The societies created by conscious organisms at or above a threshold level of intelligence, also evolve along an axis of increasing degrees of complexity and order. So it is not unreasonable to speak of the evolutionary tendency as a causal principle. And it is not unreasonable to consider that our life-infested planet is not unique, and that there are many more throughout this and other galaxies.

Consider that if the evolutionary tendency continues unabated, and if a species has sufficient intelligence (develops science & technology, doesn't crash its ecosystem along the way), the result will be that the species will eventually spread to other planets.

Given enough planets full of intelligent life, and a continued accumulation of knowledge among them, they eventually gain the capability to influence matter and energy on a cosmic scale. You've heard of Dyson spheres but those are only the beginning.

Okay, you've heard that before. But what you haven't heard before is:

Intelligent life forms at that stage would have long-since known about the expansion of the universe toward ultimate entropic heat-death, and they would have recognized that two end-states are possible: One, heat death as a permanent end, or two, contraction and collapse back to a single point from which a new Big Bang would occur, thereby setting the whole thing in motion again.

They would recognize the potential to do something about it, and they would seek to develop the technology to reverse the expansion, cause the re-collapse, and thereby "reboot" the universe. If they succeeded, the whole cycle from big bang forward, would occur again. And, it would only take *one* of the universe's many intelligent species, to pull it off.

For all we know, our present universe is only the most recent in a long series of "reboots," each of which has been successful.

And that, folks, is what I think our ultimate purpose is. Prevent heat-death, reboot the universe, so that somewhere in the uncountable future, another intelligent species can do it again; and another after that; forever. I think we're hardwired for it, evolved/created for it, and the role of each of us in the 21st century is simply to keep passing the evolutionary torch forward, so that our descendants in the unimaginably far future have a chance of pressing the Reboot button.

[Madpaddy]

Penultimatemanstanding,

Sorry, I haven't recovered from the paddy o'furniture joke yet. Ihave quarantined it and sent it to the UN weapons inspectors where they can analyse it as a possible joke of mass destruction.

The writings of Naq Hammadi have intriqued me since I read them some years back. I think the Gnostics almost had the right idea. But the person who really had it all figured out was Douglas Adams.

I wonder what he would have made of PO.

gg3 - can you tell me exactly what you did with the FLARP. I am close to the almighty and can submit mitigating circumstance for you.

[Madpaddy]

Murphy won the Irish Sweepstakes $100,000.00 and was on a long holiday in America. He went on a bus tour and travelled for hours and hours through desert country and oil fields. Murphy said, "Where are we now?" The guide said, "We're in the great state of Texas." "It's a big place," said Murphy. The guide said, "It's so big, that your County Kerry would fit into the smallest corner of it." And Murphy said, "Yes, and wouldn't it do wonders for Texas!"

[Madpaddy]

An Irish man is sittin in a pub one night when 3 Englishmen walked in. The men sit down, and start to talk about how they can anger the Irishman... The first man says, "Watch this..." He gets up, walks over to the Irishman, and says, "Hey man, I hear your St. Patrick was a faggot." The Irishman just replies, "Oh, is that so now?" The Englishman, goes back to his seat perplexed, when his friend jumps up and says, "Here, lemme try that." So he goes over to the Irishman and says, "Hey man, I hear your St. Patrick was a transvestite faggot!" The Irishman only replies, "Oh, is that so now?" So the Englishman, frustrated goes and sits down with his friends. When the 3rd Englishman jumps up and says, "Well, now, I gotta try that!" So he walks over to the Irishman and says, "Hey, I hear your St. Patrick was an ENGLISHMAN!"
And the Irishman replies, "Aye, that's what your friends were sayin."

[PenultimatManStandin]

A passenger plane is crossing the Atlantic with a Frenchman, an Englishman, a Mexican, an American, women, kids and luggage. The plane is losing power and will go down. They throw out all the luggage - still losing altitude. They throw out all the seats, anything they can - no use. So the Frenchman sez 'Viva La France!' and jumps. The Englishman sez 'God Save The Queen!' and jumps. The American sez 'Remember The Alamo!' and throws the Mexican out.

[DomusAlbion]

All very funny, guys.

Is this what many of us will be doing at the end?

Sitting around telling jokes and sipping on single malt whiskey?

[Madpaddy]

God willing Domus, God willing