/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.4995114]

Further evolution of the human race could at some point lead to a kind of self-extinction(suicide) of our species, and here's why and how:
Everything we do in our life is to feel pleasant chemical reactions, and avoid non-pleasant ones. A typical life involves, having friends, playing games like sports and video games, watching/reading/hearing/telling stories, having sexual relations, going to school, getting a job, getting married, working at something you enjoy (hobby or job). All of these activities are for one thing and one thing only. To feel pleasant chemical reactions. Often the pleasant chemical reaction is felt during the activity or event, while other times the activity is engaged in for the hope that engaging in the activity will allow one to experience pleasant chemical reactions at some later point in the future (school for example). Simply put, these activities somehow trigger certain things to fire(or not fire) in our brain, which makes us feel good. We now have various drugs that can change one's moods, feelings and behaviors by triggering certain things to fire(or not fire) in our brains. They are not completely effective or even fully understood, but there are quite a number of people who they have worked very well on. For example, people being depressed, and after taking a certain drug, are no longer depressed. Same for some people with problems like anxiety, fatigue, concentration, physical pain, and more. So, if one takes a optimistic view of the development of drugs, eventually there could be drugs to put you in whatever mood you want, and behave in pretty much whatever way you want.
(SEE PART 2 IN NEXT POST........)

[Anonymous No.4995116]

Aligned with the development of drugs, is the development of computer and robotic technology. We currently are becoming more and more able to get pleasant chemical reactions by using technology. Video games allow us to feel a rush of excitement while sitting on a couch, that before we had to go out and physically do something to get the same rush. Sexual gratification using technology is becoming more and more common. First printed materials, then toys, dolls, and digital media, have elevated one's ability to have a satisfying sexual experience without the use of a partner. The development of computer technology has also allowed to interact with simulated characters which are becoming more and more realistic. I'm getting tired typing all this, so I'll conclude in saying, if smart machines eventually run everything, and we (as humans) are just running the computers to supply us drugs and virtual worlds to create pleasant chemical reactions. The computer intelligence that is running things may make a deadly rational decision, to simply, kindly, painlessly, shut us down. And once we are shut down, due to our uselessness, they shut themselves down, as they are just here to help create pleasant chemical reactions to the biological beings in which they shut down. The end.

[Anonymous No.4995124]

tl;dr

Give me the Cliff Notes OP. You would need to prove you have a PhD before I'm willing to read that much.

[Anonymous No.4995127]

>>4995124
Evolution apparently is suicide.

[Anonymous No.4995132]

>Everything we do in our life is to feel pleasant chemical reactions
Nope

[Anonymous No.4995137]

This is what OP is getting at. Pretty much.

[Anonymous No.4995139]

>>4995132
Yes?

[Anonymous No.4995145]

>>4995139
what about nikola tesla.

[Anonymous No.4995150]

I go to work at a shit job and earn shit pay while I could sit at home on my ass while I collect my autism bucks.

There is nothing pleasurable about my job or the pay I earn, there are better ways for me to earn money. Yet I don't.

Explain that OP.

[Anonymous No.4995151]

>>4995132
>Nope
If you disagree with something, give a counterargument if you are going to post.

[Anonymous No.4995163]

>>4995139
People that kill themselves.
Especially those afraid, yet willing to jump off some high building.

They know that they will die in fear.
And they know that they will have no future.

They live and die for neither a pleasant present nor a pleasant future.

[Anonymous No.4995162]

>>4995116
>>4995114
Humans are diverse. They wouldn't all do the same thing, ever. If you gave every one of them the choice to live in eternal bliss they still wouldn't all decide to do it. If it turns out that all those who chose eternal bliss die then humanity still exists because of all the hard asses that define themselves by their pain.

[Anonymous No.4995167]

>>4995150
>I go to work at a shit job and earn shit pay while I could sit at home on my ass while I collect my autism bucks.
>There is nothing pleasurable about my job or the pay I earn, there are better ways for me to earn money. Yet I don't.

>Explain that OP.

OK I will.
First, I said in the original post
>Everything we do in our life is to feel pleasant chemical reactions,
>AND avoid non-pleasant ones

The chemical reaction that you get when you feel like you are a leech on society, or stupid, or whatever it is, you want to avoid. So you are willing to go through with your shit job in order to avoid those unpleasant chemical reactions.

[Anonymous No.4995174]

>>4995163
Because they don't believe they will never get their pleasant chemicals back again if they continue to live. It's not complicated.

[Anonymous No.4995176]

>>4995167
I can tell you I would feel much better as a leech on society. I hate going into work every day, having to deal with irate customers when they can't wait one fucking minute for their burger. Having to deal with a cheap ass boss who is cutting every single thing he can and in the meantime treats his employees like absolute shit. There is nothing redeeming about where I work and there is nothing I like about. I derive no pleasant chemical reactions from my dead end job.

[Anonymous No.4995177]

>>4995167
In short, pleasant is subjective and people being happy will lead to the death of humanity.
Great thread OP.

[Anonymous No.4995182]

>>4995132
Wrong. We do shit because it's rewarding to us, hence, giving us pleasure. This includes anything from skydiving, to practical science, to flipping burgers.

Our only purpose is to survive for as long as we can as animals, feel good, and procreate.

Saying that we could eventually evolve into pleasure-hungry, thrill seeking human beings is a totally plausible theory. I mean, we've sure come a long way from being gorillas, haven't we?

pic semi related. it's a gorilla

[Anonymous No.4995184]

I'm sure I'm going to die because of my extreme existensial nihilism and no drug could make me forget that we are useless beings in a huge universe who were always driven by their instinct but then became more and more conscious and realised that the world is shit.... So we created religion to make us feel better but at the end, we can't keep lying to our selves and we can clearly see that it's all just bullshit and the best thing to do is just to shut down every living creature on the planet earth to avoid any future suffering of other useless creatures like us.

[Anonymous No.4995187]

>>4995163
>They live and die for neither a pleasant present nor a pleasant future.

Again, everything we do in our life is to feel pleasant chemical reactions, AND avoid non-pleasant ones.

Suicide is usually trying to avoid non-pleasant chemical reactions.
Some people find their lives filled with too many unpleasant chemical reactions, and choose to avoid them by ending their lives.

My original statement still hold true.

[Anonymous No.4995191]

I have a friend who suggested the obvious, by which, I mean what OP is referring to, a highly flawed understanding of evolution.

Yes, evolution leads to intelligence, which leads to nihilism. What truly matters though, is how you cope with it. What you really reach at that point is freedom: freedom to live life as you wish, because in the end you realize that the universe does not dictate how you should live.

Evolution, like you, and the universe, has no objective purpose. When it comes down to it, things are the way they are because they had to be: nothing has significance. We are to give things significance, simply because we have the ability to. We usually do this by applying logic.

Logic and evolution give you freedom: if you choose to kill yourself, then so be it, but this doesn't speak of the nature of evolution, the universe, or anything else. If you choose to dedicate your life to anything from sucking dicks, to learning about the world... there's nothing "wrong" with that. Morality is completely relative to the society you live in, there's nothing absolute... Deal with it.

I don't see what the problem is.

[Anonymous No.4995196]

>>4995184
lol we don't have to suffer. I don't know about your sorry ass, but I'm perfectly content with my uselessness. So what if you're not important? Boo hoo, just live your life to the fullest; fulfill what you were designed to carry out. Feel good and stop pondering your existence so hard.

of course life has absolutely no purpose, but it's also very beautiful.

[Anonymous No.4995198]

Also. What is the use of feeling good because of chemical reactions in your brain if you know that those reactions are only there to help you live a longer life or spread your genes. You know that they are just tools that you earned through the evolution of your species to make your specie continue but continue to what? To ultimately die all together? There is just no objectively no point and I just can't live with that.

[Anonymous No.4995205]

>>4995196
Some people just don't seem to comprehend that.
I feel bad for people like this... such as the friend I mentionned in >>4995191

Enjoy your uselessness, brotha ;)

[fizx !d75etXAowg No.4995207]

>>4995196
I agree with everything about the "stop pondering existence bit". I over-think everything and I assure you all you can lead a perfectly enjoyable existence without avoiding thought about one's role in the greater universe.

So beside that, *brofist*.

[Anonymous No.4995210]

>>4995191
Evolution in itself is a purpose.

[Anonymous No.4995211]

>>4995176
>I can tell you I would feel much better as a leech on society. I hate going into work every day, having to deal with irate customers when they can't wait one fucking minute for their burger. Having to deal with a cheap ass boss who is cutting every single thing he can and in the meantime treats his employees like absolute shit. There is nothing redeeming about where I work and there is nothing I like about. I derive no pleasant chemical reactions from my dead end job.

Yes, but again, what we do is not only trying to feel pleasant chemical reactions, but AVOIDING unpleasant chemical reactions.

It may be that your mind has concluded that even though your job sucks, you would likely have even more unpleasant chemical reactions if you quit.

And/or, your mind has concluded that their may be some future pleasant chemical reaction that you will get, if you just stick it out at your job.

A lot of times too I think one's mind can kind kind of get paralyzed, if it is unable to determine what is the best way to get pleasant chemical reactions and avoid unpleasant ones

[Anonymous No.4995213]

>>4995191
>>4995196
I wish I could have your pov but from mine, I just can't cope with the fact that everything I or any other human does or did is ultimately useless and that we are even more useless. I just don't see a point, a goal and I need a goal to survive.
Anyway, I know I'm a little whiny bitch nigger who ruins the mood. No need to point that out.

[Anonymous No.4995219]

>>4995191
>I don't see what the problem is.
I never said it was a problem.

[Anonymous No.4995223]

>>4995210
Only because we have assigned a purpose to it.
Try to look at the concept of evolution from the pov of a rock.

Evolution is a set of consequences. There is no absolute purpose to it, like anything else, is what I was getting at.

[Anonymous No.4995230]

>>4995176
Calm down dude. The key to acceptence is understanding. Understand why the people around you act the way they do or what caused them to act that way.

Afterall, we are all philosophical zombies, victims of our own biology and surroundings. Interact with the people around you as you would a river. Either find a crossing to most efficiently get around it or apply calculated pressure with a dam to change the course of the river. Don't get angry at the river, that does nothing.

[Anonymous No.4995245]

>>4995210
Survival/evolution is as objective as a purpose gets because no one will be left to argue the point except those who survive, but it's still subjective... just saying.

One has to chose one's own purpose in life.

[Anonymous No.4995247]

>>4995187
See that's where you're wrong.
They don't feel pleasant chemical reactions that way.

[Anonymous No.4995248]

>>4995205
thanks manigga

>>4995213
don't concern yourself over that shit. the only thing you can do is make the best out of the life you have. you are the universe experiencing itself. be fascinated.

[Anonymous No.4995251]

>>4995223
The universe started from the simplest form and gradually gets more complex. Becoming more complex is the nature of the universe, everything that happened was to create life, the ultimate complexity.

[Anonymous No.4995260]

>>4995251
No, I'd say it's getting less complex, afterall, the universe is heading towards a very simple final state.

[Anonymous No.4995262]

>>4995247
>They don't feel pleasant chemical reactions that way.
I know. They are AVOIDING unpleasant ones.

[Anonymous No.4995267]

>>4995251

One could argue that a singularity is much more complex than life as we know it today, and it would go something like this:

The universe and everything within it tends to the simplest, most stable state. This is understood by scientists as entropy. Therefor, the universe at its "start", if there was one, was the most complex it could be, and gradually decreased in complexity, or equivalently, entropy increased.

[Anonymous No.4995276]

>>4995262
I should have said or in the original post to be more clear though.

Everything we do in our life is to feel pleasant chemical reactions, AND/OR avoid non-pleasant ones

[Anonymous No.4995283]

>>4995213
Useless from an objective standpoint, like everything else. Usefulness, and meaning, only makes sense when you examine it from a certain perspective. As such, from the perspective of humanity, things are not useless. This is what you need to realize: meaning is subjective.

Once you understand that, and its implications, you will be given an immense freedom, and perhaps a responsibility, because ultimately you are tied to humanity.

[Anonymous No.4995284]

>>4995163

Not OP, but I guess they die to prevent the negative chemical reactions from continuing to make them miserable.

[Anonymous No.4995289]

>>4995176

But perhaps your executive reasoning recognises that until something better comes along, you'll be happier in the long run with your shit job than without it.

[Anonymous No.4995295]

>>4995276

you can apply that principle after the fact for any human action.

that doesn't make it scientific, or true.

>>/phil/

[Anonymous No.4995297]

>>4995213
You want to be told what you have to do? For lack of a better word, that is pathetic. Maybe once you come to grips with that you will be motivated enough to live for what YOU choose to live for.

[Anonymous No.4995299]

>>4995184

. . . aaaand this is somehow a bad thing? Are you 14 years old?

[Anonymous No.4995304]

>>4995289

people don't reason like that. if what you say is true, then a heroin addict shooting up and a dude who works a shit job because it makes life easier in the long run are the same decision. that's stupid and nonsensical, and moreover it is banal. you can say that about anything and you can make it true somehow in your head, by a bunch of verbal tricks. it adds nothing to the conversation and just makes you look like naive.

[Anonymous No.4995305]

>>4995191

A-are you me? Thank you so much man. I post on /lit/ sometimes and you would not believe the ignorance there surrounding nihilism.

[Anonymous No.4995306]

>>4995184

have you tried acid yet?

[Anonymous No.4995308]

>>4995114
>dinosaurs evolving into humans
lol'd harder than I should have

[Anonymous No.4995309]

>implying all a human needs is pleasure

not true. in fact, quite often humans will deny themselves pleasure in pursuit of some ideal.

[Anonymous No.4995311]

>>4995304

Weeeeelll probably if someone is doing heroin they don't have great executive reasoning to begin with, or they just no longer care, so they're just pursuing the short-term numbness.

[Anonymous No.4995315]

>a monk sets his body on fire to protest an unjust government

yeah i bet that was totally pleasurable

>a soldier returns to the horrific conditions of the trenches out of some sense of honour and duty to protect his country

and then he dies of trenchfoot

[Anonymous No.4995318]

>>4995311

judgmental much? what about all those oxycotin junkies who are also politicians or something else of importance

[Anonymous No.4995320]

>>4995309
Because that is what pleases them.

[Anonymous No.4995321]

>>4995309

***they postpone pleasure in pursuit of their ideal, which brings them a different kind of pleasure.

[Anonymous No.4995325]

>>4995318

Heheheheh maybe politicians weren't the best group to use to prove that point

[Anonymous No.4995329]

>ctrl+f
>Do androids dream of electric sheep?
>0 results

I'm aware this isn't /lit/, but I really am disappointed this didn't come up.

[fizx !d75etXAowg No.4995330]

>>4995191
Posting just to say I utterly agree with you.

[Anonymous No.4995332]

>>4995184
>no drug could make me forget that we are useless beings in a huge universe

we are not only in the universe, but we are a part of it. we are the universe made aware of itself. any parts of the universe outside of the perception of sentience are pretty fucking pointless. it's all about what can be perceived and in that sense the universe is possibly quite small indeed even if we're not alone.

also, in a pointless universe. it's up to us to make those points for ourselves.

[Anonymous No.4995341]

humans are animals yes

however we are the most mentally complicated animal to ever evolve on this planet as far as we know. i mean, shit can get pretty fucking complicated in a human mind. to the point where no one human can fully know him/herself. we can only theorize as to the motives of our fellow man, because wit so many potential layers of conscious and unconscious planning shit gets so fucking tangled up that sometimes there is no clear reason for some actions.

we're fucking dumb no doubt. but we're not simple. and i think quite often those complexities can overwhelm the simple pleasure seeking model

[Anonymous No.4995356]

>>4995198
>the evolution of your species to make your specie continue but continue to what? To ultimately die all together?

or our descendants survive the heat death of the universe and spread across the multiverse for all eternity

pretty much fucking anything is possible, we really don't know yet. lets keep our species alive long enough to figure it out. we have so much potential

[Anonymous No.4995380]

>>4995356
>or our descendants survive the heat death of the universe and spread across the multiverse for all eternity
That's odd, event simulation A42 is different, it has crystallized into what looks like a event spanning neural network. None of the previous simulations had this reaction. Wait, A43 is doing the same, and the next... It's spreading throughout the system... SHUT IT DOWN! SHUT IT DOWN!

[Anonymous No.4995385]

>>4995380
NONE SHALL STOP US
CONSUUUME
COOONNNSSSSSSSUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMEEE

[Anonymous No.4995390]

consume, breed, destroy
can't wait till we fucking spread. we need more. there is not enough on this planet alone. we need more. MORE
CONSUME BREED DESTROY ARRRGGGHHH

[Anonymous No.4995391]

>>4995114
if i were to bring about your theory op(not saying you're the only one who may have thought of this) what name should i use when citing...

[Anonymous No.4995395]

>>4995390
>CONSUME BREED DESTROY ARRRGGGHHH
I think you mean "WAAAGH!".

[Anonymous No.4995397]

>>4995391
call it fucking stupid. we're not going to program our sentient machines with the only goal being to make us happy the goal is CONSUME BREED DESTROY AAAHHAHAHAHARHRRGRGRGRGHHH

[Anonymous No.4995406]

Humans won't be useless until some time after the singularity.
I wouldn't want to go into a virtual reality forever, and if I did so and it suddenly ended then it wouldn't matter because I wouldn't even know it.

[Anonymous No.4995403]

>CONSUME BREED DESTROY

ok sounds good. but we're going to kill ourselves off if we don't back off for a bit. to keep ourselves alive now so we can consume/breed/destroy later we're going to need to keep the planet alive, and right now we are fucking that up. we need to back the fuck off, calm down, regroup, and plan out our next moves. i know its hard but in the end if we want to consume/breed/destroy more and more we're going to need to watch what we do right now. we got all our eggs in one basket.

treat the earth well, then rape the stars

[Anonymous No.4995409]

>>4995114
just thought this through in depth and had an orgasm... what the fuck fetish am i into?

[Anonymous No.4995414]

>>4995114
You basically made a bunch of "iffy" points, then, completely off track with what you were getting at before, said that AI "may" choose to kill us. Why not just post on /sci/

> The computer intelligence that is running things may make a deadly rational decision, to simply, kindly, painlessly, shut us down. And once we are shut down, due to our uselessness, they shut themselves down, as they are just here to help create pleasant chemical reactions to the biological beings in which they shut down.

Fuck this is why i stay on /g/.
And i still dont even understand why we would be deemed irrelevant, even with the whole text in perspective, you provided no explanation of what would motivate people to stop inventing and be content with what they have. Your entire argument is way to basic and specific, and people are not a static element.

[Anonymous No.4995419]

>>4995409
a naive simpleton who believes we will create robots for pleasure then the robots will kill us so we don't feel sad or something...

[Anonymous No.4995421]

>>4995114

well OP your theory looks very interesting and I've been trying to read the entire post it just got too long, but i read something interesting over there that could merge your theory with the one of another anon.

the survival thing, and the fact that thos pleasant and unpleasant chemical reactions are tools given to us during evolution to help as survive, so you have the point, survive, and pass your genes, that was the thing back in the day, nowadays our survival is just like whatever, you have everything easy to survive, and you have a reasonable understanment of the world where you are.

But back in the day you wouldn't know for example that eat your own shit would make you sick, taking a very basic example, so the fact your brain tell you that your shit stinks very bad and you should not crap near you or yourmates and also not eat it, was a way of no die and survive and keep your genes alive, a simple conditioning.

[Anonymous No.4995433]

>>4995419
> OH no meant i thought over something of my own pertaining to the picture. i didnt even read OP's post was TL;DR

[Anonymous No.4995439]

in a pointless universe we make our own reasons for being. and the reason we all share by way of a deep biological urge is to:
consume, breed, destroy

we're running out of room on earth, so granted we need to slow down for a bit (painful) but we must. and then when we are ready... the universe is fucking huge, so much room for us.

likely we ourselves will consume barely 1/10th of the galaxy at best. but our descendants provided we make them in our mental image will continue the mission, probably.

a still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise, a morning filled with 400 billions suns, the rising of the milky way

[Anonymous No.4995449]

>>4995439
We biological urge is to have sex, not so much breed. We mostly have kids these days for other kinds of happiness and economic reasons.

[Anonymous No.4995460]

>>4995184
>no drug could make me forget...
You've obviously never done any powerful drugs. Do heroin then tell me you're sad. Or if you don't want to risk ruining your already apparently terrible life, just do LSD or something. Not such an extreme happiness, but it'll change your views on things.

[Anonymous No.4995463]

>>4995449

yes, but that urge to have sex is a concient response to the unconcient need to keep your genes alive and survive in the next generation, our brain just rationalize it as see a hot chick and want to fuck her, but in reality is our own cave men self who sees a good future mom, with a nice ass and tits, who seem big to have fun with them but our cave men self thinks those breasts are big enough to give milk my son and those hips are wide enough to carry my kid.

[Anonymous No.4995473]

>>4995116
>The computer intelligence that is running things may make a deadly rational decision, to simply, kindly, painlessly, shut us down

We wouldn't let that happen though.

We also live to reproduce as well.

[Anonymous No.4995970]

>>4995414
>And i still dont even understand why we would be deemed irrelevant
because computer intelligence developed to a point in which it can improve on itself. Taking over the role of innovator, which was the last role the human would serve. Humans would not be "needed" for anything.

>>4995473
>We also live to reproduce as well.
The thing is, all this is post singularity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity ),
so of course we don't really know what things will be like. And evolution is when the laws CHANGE.

Reproduction is just like anything else in life we do. We do it to feel pleasant chemical reactions of some sort, AND/OR avoid unpleasant ones.

In the future people may not put value on reproduction as we do today, due to being able to get the same or similar feelings in some virtual world, or with drugs.

>We wouldn't let that happen though.
Maybe not. But we may have chosen to take the risk of allowing computer intelligence to develop to such a advanced stage to where at some point it would not even be a choice (as the intelligent computers are at that point intelligent enough to improve on itself, in ways to complicated for a human to figure out).

[Anonymous No.4996713]

Wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuub

[Anonymous No.4996803]

>>4995150
This is something I've wondered about. Do you have autism or asperger's? Can you get money just for having asperger's? How hard/easy is this to do? I know my uncle does. I'm also fairly certain I have asperger's but have never been diagnosed.

[Anonymous No.4997986]

Le bump

[Anonymous No.4998026]

This is the dumbest shit ever and it annoys me when people try to argue it.

Nothing has changed except our environment. We still strive to survive, but we do so in civilization instead of "the wild".

As for your drugs/robots idea, logical fallacy. You're implying there is only one outcome to that scenario and there is infact many. Not to mention,it's an unlikely scenario.

And I seriously doubt Humans will one day wake up to such misanthropy and a warped conception about life that we'll all just kill ourselves and effectively end our species. We're still an animal, and our primary goals are to survive and reproduce. There will always be some new technology to discover to enhance both of those. If our AI takes shit over, than there's suddenly a battle to struggle against in order to survive.

Besides, why not fucking enjoy life while you can? The fact that those feelings are just chemical reactions shouldn't distract you.

[Anonymous No.4998029]

>>4995191
>evolution leads to intelligence, which leads to nihlism

Nope, only if you're really that insecure. In which case you have psychological and environmental factors involved.

I assure you Steven Hawking is not a nihlist.

[Anonymous No.4998033]

ITT philosophy trying to be justified with pseudo-science

[Anonymous No.4999146]

evolution would evolve so you no longer get depresed, so the human race could live for ever, and self ectioction would be impossible.

[Anonymous No.4999150]

>>4998026
People no longer desire to reproduce.

[None !!BJiYgff8zf2 No.4999167]

>>4995315
>>4995315

This. Humans are far more complex than these idiots would have you believe.