The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

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Ubuntu

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The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« on: March 18, 2007, 02:58:31 PM »
In honour of Douglas' memory, Biota.org presents the transcript of his speech at Digital Biota 2, held at Magdelene College Cambridge, in September 1998. I would like to thank Steve Grand for providing this to us. Douglas presented this ''off the cuff'' which only magnifies his true genius in our eyes. -- Bruce Damer


Is there an Artificial God?
Douglas Adams

This was originally billed as a debate only because I was a bit anxious coming here. I didn't think I was going to have time to prepare anything and also, in a room full of such luminaries, I thought 'what could I, as an amateur, possibly have to say'? So I thought I would settle for a debate. But after having been here for a couple of days, I realised you're just a bunch of guys! It's been rife with ideas and I've had so many myself through talking with and listening to people that I'd thought what I'd do was stand up and have an argument and debate with myself. I'll talk for a while and hope sufficiently to provoke and inflame opinion that there'll be an outburst of chair- throwing at the end.

Before I embark on what I want to try and tackle, may I warn you that things may get a little bit lost from time to time, because there's a lot of stuff that's just come in from what we've been hearing today, so if I occasionally sort of go… I was telling somebody earlier today that I have a four-year-old daughter and was very, very interested watching her face when she was in her first 2 or 3 weeks of life and suddenly realising what nobody would have realised in previous ages—she was rebooting!

I just want to mention one thing, which is completely meaningless, but I am terribly proud of—I was born in Cambridge in 1952 and my initials are D N A!

The topic I want to introduce to you this evening, the subject of the debate that we are about to sort of not have, is a slightly facetious one (you'll be surprised to hear, but we'll see where we go with it)— ''Is there an Artificial God?'' I'm sure most of the people in this room will share the same view, but even as an out-and-out atheist one can't help noticing that the role of a god has had an enormously profound impact on human history over many, many centuries. It's very interesting to figure out where this came from and what, in the modern scientific world we sometimes hope against hope that we live in, it actually means.

Continue reading at http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/


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Ubuntu

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The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything (part 2)
« Reply #1 on: March 18, 2007, 03:09:23 PM »
Taken from http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

This is the part I want to talk about specifically. It's reminiscent of universal Darwinism but it brings something so much more to the table. It offers an explanation to why there is something rather than nothing, why and how reality exists, and how the Universe was initiated. Douglas Adams' idea, combined with universal Darwinism and other related theories, is potentially the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Is it possible that there could have been nothing? How could have the Universe, or reality, have been different? Is it true that the Universe was spawned from reality simply by a trick of logic, a tautology carrying zero information, that goes without saying? The idea boggles my mind. I haven't properly been able to think it through yet, although I've been pondering it since yesterday afternoon, when I read it in Adams' posthumous anthology The Salmon of Doubt.

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I want to pick up on a few other things that came around today. I was fascinated by Larry (again), talking about tautology, because there's an argument that I remember being stumped by once, to which I couldn't come up with a reply, because I was so puzzled by the challenge and couldn't quite figure it out. A guy said to me, 'yes, but the whole theory of evolution is based on a tautology: that which survives, survives' This is tautological, therefore it doesn't mean anything. I thought about that for a while and it finally occurred to me that a tautology is something that if it means nothing, not only that no information has gone into it but that no consequence has come out of it. So, we may have accidentally stumbled upon the ultimate answer; it's the only thing, the only force, arguably the most powerful of which we are aware, which requires no other input, no other support from any other place, is self evident, hence tautological, but nevertheless astonishingly powerful in its effects. It's hard to find anything that corresponds to that and I therefore put it at the beginning of one of my books. I reduced it to what I thought were the bare essentials, which are very similar to the ones you came up with earlier, which were “anything that happens happens, anything that in happening causes something else to happen causes something else to happen and anything that in happening causes itself to happen again, happens again”. In fact you don't even need the second two because they flow from the first one, which is self-evident and there's nothing else you need to say; everything else flows from that. So, I think we have in our grasp here a fundamental, ultimate truth, against which there is no gain-saying. It was spotted by the guy who said this is a tautology. Yes, it is, but it's a unique tautology in that it requires no information to go in but an infinite amount of information comes out of it. So I think that it is arguably therefore the prime cause of everything in the Universe. Big claim, but I feel I'm talking to a sympathetic audience.

Continue reading at http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/


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Have we found our answer, or at least something close to it?

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Ubuntu

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Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #2 on: March 18, 2007, 03:24:55 PM »
Quote
The Answer to The Ultimate Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything is a fictional solution in Douglas Adams's science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is sought using the hypercomputer Deep Thought, however the computer was insufficiently powerful to provide the Ultimate Question when asked after it had produced the Answer (after a very long computation time — 7.5 million years). The answer given by Deep Thought prompted the protagonists to embark on a quest to discover the Question to which this is the Answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Answer_to_Life%2C_the_Universe%2C_and_Everything

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Midnight

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Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #3 on: March 21, 2007, 06:00:06 PM »
I dig this.
My problem with his ideas is that it is a ridiculous thing.

Genius. PURE, undiluted genius.

Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2007, 04:34:44 PM »
The answer is 42.
=)

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Dioptimus Drime

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Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #5 on: March 22, 2007, 08:41:26 PM »
More importantly, I believe, would be the QUESTION to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

~D-Draw


As a sidenote, Douglas Adams kicks ass.

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Miss M.

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Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #6 on: March 23, 2007, 12:41:31 PM »
in response to Diego's sidenote, he does indeed =)

My question is: what is the question to life and the universe and everything?
Quote from: TheEngineer
I happen to like GG.
Quote from: Z, the Enlightened.
I never thought in my life I'd write the sentence "I thought they were caught in a bipolar geodesic?"

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Dioptimus Drime

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Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #7 on: March 23, 2007, 12:51:04 PM »
We're going to need to build another Deep Thought in order to figure that one out. :P Or read all of Douglas Adams' books...Because they're awesome...

Restaurant at the End of the Universe is the best.

~D-Draw

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Ubuntu

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Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #8 on: March 29, 2007, 09:20:42 AM »
Err... did anyone actually read the thread posts?

I was tempted to add (not 42) to the thread title...

>_<

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Midnight

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Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #9 on: March 29, 2007, 09:34:27 AM »
I still dig this.
My problem with his ideas is that it is a ridiculous thing.

Genius. PURE, undiluted genius.

Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #10 on: March 29, 2007, 05:30:00 PM »
Err... did anyone actually read the thread posts?

I was tempted to add (not 42) to the thread title...

>_<

The answer is 42 as it is an attempt to mock the absurdity of such an inquisition.  Asking what the question is to the 'ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything' is about as relevant as saying "why is the IQ of a certain pair of pants 118?"   (this is, of course, a purely solipsist way of thinking)  ;)


Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #11 on: March 29, 2007, 09:12:51 PM »
Err... did anyone actually read the thread posts?

I was tempted to add (not 42) to the thread title...

>_<

The answer is 42 as it is an attempt to mock the absurdity of such an inquisition.  Asking what the question is to the 'ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything' is about as relevant as saying "why is the IQ of a certain pair of pants 118?"   (this is, of course, a purely solipsist way of thinking)  ;)



Mind explaining how the thought is solipsist?
ah.

Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #12 on: March 29, 2007, 09:20:12 PM »
Not at all:

If you a solipsist, then you don't believe in a 'universe', only in your own stream of conscious thought.  So, it's completely illogical to even ask a question pertaining to the universe.

Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #13 on: March 29, 2007, 09:31:30 PM »
Not at all:

If you a solipsist, then you don't believe in a 'universe', only in your own stream of conscious thought.  So, it's completely illogical to even ask a question pertaining to the universe.

Ah, I had thought so, but solipsism is probably one of the worst school's of philosophy IMO. I think therefore I am is pretty lame.
ah.

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Midnight

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Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #14 on: March 29, 2007, 11:56:20 PM »
You define the term, my child.
My problem with his ideas is that it is a ridiculous thing.

Genius. PURE, undiluted genius.

Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #15 on: March 30, 2007, 12:28:40 AM »
You define the term, my child.

Didn't they teach you what an antecedent is?
ah.

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Midnight

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  • RE/FE Apathetic.
Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #16 on: March 30, 2007, 02:14:06 AM »
Cheese.
My problem with his ideas is that it is a ridiculous thing.

Genius. PURE, undiluted genius.

Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #17 on: March 30, 2007, 10:21:27 AM »
Not at all:

If you a solipsist, then you don't believe in a 'universe', only in your own stream of conscious thought.  So, it's completely illogical to even ask a question pertaining to the universe.

Ah, I had thought so, but solipsism is probably one of the worst school's of philosophy IMO. I think therefore I am is pretty lame.

Correction:  *Ahem*   "I think therefor I am" is existentialism, not solipsism.

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Midnight

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  • RE/FE Apathetic.
Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #18 on: March 30, 2007, 04:11:03 PM »
You win.
My problem with his ideas is that it is a ridiculous thing.

Genius. PURE, undiluted genius.

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Ubuntu

  • 2392
Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #19 on: April 06, 2007, 11:10:09 AM »
Pffft... this is pathetic.

EDIT: So is solipsism. It's impossible for only a stream of consciousness to exist because in order for perception to occur there needs to be an entity (or number of entities) whose faculty is perception. Therefore, no matter what, there is an objective reality that exists independently from any agent and said agent's perception.

Also: brain-in-a-vat-ism is impossible due to combinational explosion.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2007, 11:15:16 AM by Ubuntu »

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Midnight

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Re: The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
« Reply #20 on: April 06, 2007, 01:36:10 PM »
/signed
My problem with his ideas is that it is a ridiculous thing.

Genius. PURE, undiluted genius.