Ask HN: What's the Point of Life?

[sillysaurusx]

As I've grown older, this question has been consuming more and more of my thoughts. I like life, and I'm absurdly lucky. But what's the point of any of it?

HN seems uniquely good at philosophical questions, so I was hoping to get your thoughts. I thought about framing the question more, but honestly, "What's the point of life?" is the refrain that I keep coming back to. It would be nice to escape it.

[thinkingkong]

There is no point.

It's up to you to decide what it is that matters to you but if you're looking for some universal direction then that will just lead to frustration.

If you're lucky and you have the resources then you're in a position to choose which I understand can feel overwhelming. I would just encourage you to consider the possibility that you've been given a gift and you should cherish it.

[bcrosby95]

This is what I believe too, but I take it 1 step further: life would suck if life had a point. Because that would have all sorts of implications in the goals we should strive for, and the things we should do.

Without a point we are free to pursue whatever meaning we find important.

[sillysaurusx]

Thank you. The problem – or at least, my problem – is that "There isn't any point" leads to a feeling of "This is pointless." Wandering around life feeling "This is pointless" when you do anything seems... suboptimal.

But it's true, right? If there's no point, then the conclusion is "This is pointless" for every experience. And it ends up feeling so hollow sometimes.

Relaxing and enjoying it is of course the antidote. But I'm starting to wonder if everyone is relaxing and enjoying life without purpose, and therefore our collective purpose is de facto "Netflix and chill."

There's nothing wrong with that, but it ends up feeling like "Well, I may as well sit around and play Dota; it's just as good as doing anything else, since it's all pointless." And that can't possibly be the proper mindset for life... Can it?

[WORMS_EAT_WORMS]

Excellent answer…

In a meaningless universe where you are essentially a powerless water balloon with some decision tree making abilities, the gift of “choice” and deciding what matters to you is really the only power you have.

[arpa]

"We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you're dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played."

Allan Watts

[avgcorrection]

That might be true in the abstract, as a theory. But when it comes to point-of-life I think it’s better to judge a philosophy based on how a person has lived it. And it doesn’t seem like Watts lived as good of a life as he could.

[colinprince]

I enjoyed this animation narrated by same:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VALLiF18tvM

[aristofun]

It’s good that you have enough free time to raise such questions))

But seriously, to understand why you’d never get true objective answer you need to realize something.

The question itself contains 2 critical assumptions:

1. There’s objective cause-effect relationship embedded in the nature of reality (and therefore life).

Imagine there’s no causality and all you see is just a correlation of events of different levels of certainty.

Would this question make sense at all?

And causality is nothing more than a model of the world in our human minds. A very good and practical one, but just a model.

How do you expect to get good answer to a question outside of the model scope, but which make sense only within the model.

2. We as humans somehow can know or impose some ultimate goal for the life itself as though we were the ones who invented it in the lab.

While in reality we’re just observers and a tiny piece of life we know of.

We have no real control of the process itself, and we’ll never know how it really started unless someone external will show us.

But then still we will have no reference point to know for sure if this someone is not just another form of the same life trying to fool us. Etc.

So anyway, this question (in its ultimate form) is deeply meaningful, because it implies the answer which lies outside of the system making the question possible in the first place.

Answer “there’s no point” is also wrong. For the same reasons. May be there is. May be someone created it on purpose, but again we will never know this for sure, at least with existing methods of “knowing”

[jedberg]

Biologically? To reproduce. That is the purpose of every living being.

But luckily as humans, we have developed brains so big that we realized that isn't the only purpose of life. For humans, the purpose of life is:

Pleasure.

Doing whatever it takes to make yourself happy, hopefully not at the expense of others. Some people never achieve happiness, some achieve it early with few resources. Some people achieve it over and over as they age and different things make them happy.

In my 20s, building great software and doing well at work made me happy. In my 30s, that continued to make me happy, but since I had some money, adding great meals and fun travel made me happy. In my 40s it's spending time with my kids that is what primarily makes me happy. Who knows what it will be in my 50s and beyond.

You have to find what makes you happy within the resources you have.

[avgcorrection]

You’re confusing purpose with inevitability. Why do organisms reproduce? Because if they didn’t they wouldn’t be around—duh!

This is like saying that the purpose of water is to find the path of least resistance.

[godDLL]

Happiness is overrated. Every time in my life that I've been happy I've known I am, I realized at that moment that it is going to pass. Just as I realized every time I was miserable that too is not going to last.

Pleasure is above the speed limit. It's in the definition of it.

And the point actually is to learn to drive and take care of your vehicle, understand the local roads and traffic, and play in that playground, or some other. Not to ecstatically crash it all at an early age, having forgot about the breaking functionality.

It gets easier to do if you realize you're one of many, and can learn from what they did before you got here, as well as now, when you're tackling it. You are never, and have never been alone.

[threatofrain]

Propensity is not the same as purpose, or else we'd say that everything in the universe is already tending to what it is tending to. But if everything is serving its purpose, then we mind as well do away with the word.

[serjester]

“What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children, life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until … a distance appears between what they are and what the world is, does the question arise: what makes life worth living?” — Karl Ove Knausgård

Said better than I could ever try.

[godDLL]

From my own experience this might have only been true before the age of 4 when I woke up to the world. After that only when I am so strongly identified with and attached to what is going on that it's unhealthy. Or when I have gotten it all so Zen that I don't have to decide anything, everything flows.

[mbrudd]

Some kids would disagree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28861912

[Adamantisa]

Do you want to be a child?

[_game_of_life]

When I was younger I was a big fan of existentialism. "Life has no prescribed inherent meaning, it is whatever you want it to be!" seemed very freeing.

Then I suffered a disability and came upon the realization similar to Helen Macdonalds, in H is for Hawk:

"There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all.

You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, [...]"

In an effort to adapt to this, I clung to stoicist philosophy. Life is to be weathered, through the development of virtues, and above all else--realizing what you have control over, and what you do not.

Upon becoming homeless, I realized this wise and practical branch of philosophy had not exactly delivered on it's promises. You cannot be destitute, sick, and isolated, and still manage to be happy, despite Stoicist claims to the contrary. This branch of philosophy oddly seems entitled to me now--little wonder it grew popular with intelligentsia, emperors, and now tech CEOs. I grew to far prefer its philosophical progenitor, Cynicism.

For this phase of my life, Albert Camus resonates and brings comfort. Life is absurd. The challenge is not to unravel or create meaning for life, but to image personal happiness in a stochastic world that defies explanation (though some such explanation may indeed exist, it is certainly absurd to human minds. I envy the dismissive confidence of those that proclaim "no point!")

This philosophy has served me far better than the others, though who knows what will come in the twilight of my life. Life is strange, fellow travelers.

[at_a_remove]

As I have grown older and some of my vim and vigor have waned, the momentum that has hustled me past obstacles and over life's hurdles has similarly decreased, and I find myself wondering the same. The objects I have collected have lost their pallor, experiences for which I have paid through the nose left me hollow, the connections I once thought complex are shallow.

Through more than one circumstance of birth I have been forced on the proverbial path less trodden and I can't say it has been amazingly fulfilling. Of course, one can look at another and suspect how wonderful or terrible their life is, but that is all you have, suspicion. Friends who are married, friends who have children, some ... seem satisfied?

And then things go on and you become closer to the end of life than the start of it, more doors are closed than are open, and you wonder what -- if anything -- lies between here and the final trainstop, and if it is indeed worthwhile. You get a distant Peggy Lee "Is That All There Is?" detachment. The philosophers will tell you to assign some kind of arbitrary value and meaning and it is a bit like being thrown off of an infinite cliff and being told that you should assign the bottom of your soles as "h = 0" in that it lacks satisfaction as an answer.

I haven't anything to offer but a nod of recognition.

[godDLL]

Whenever that happened to myself, I'd start over in a different space. New rules, new acquaintances, new things, and new experiences.

Get out the house. No.

Sell it and move. Move somewhere you would expect to be surprised. Do something you would not expect yourself to do for a living. Experience a new life, a new meaning.

Give it 7-15 years and you may want to do it again. It's good for you.

[_game_of_life]

I really appreciated this, thanks. Here's a nod back.

[AnotherGoodName]

In the spirit of recursion my own personal view is that the purpose of existence is to figure out the purpose of existence.

There are many questions we aren't really close to answering and our knowledge of this universe is very incomplete. Ultimately if we are able to develop a complete understanding of this universe down to the very origins of existence with no loose ends we can answer the question why we exist. So that's the goal. Help humanity answer this question. It might not be answered in your lifetime but the purpose of existence is not about your life. It's a longer term story that runs over countless generations eventually leading to the answer you ask.

[nonameiguess]

I'm not sure Hacker News is uniquely good at philosophy. Maybe better read than the median web community.

Life doesn't have a point. All life is different and the only common purpose is to make more of itself and keep going. That isn't a "point" so much as the only behavior that can possibly be self-propagating, in the sense that any form of life that didn't prioritize it would be out-competed and driven extinct by a different form of life that did.

There is no reason that should define you, though. We're a grand cosmic accident. Make of it what you will. I try to find meaning where I can, but if you're looking for grand revelatory purpose, you probably need to find religion, which unfortunately requires a mindset you might not have. I know I don't. I'll be gone soon and it won't make any difference at that point whether I ever existed at all from my no longer continuing first-person perspective. I hope it will matter that I existed to others who outlive me, but they'll soon be gone, too. This universe will end and all information ever created will be lost forever.

Nonetheless, right now, I'm getting a chance to exist, and I'm glad for it. I will be there forever, a tiny indistinguishable speck in the four-dimensional firmament, but there, and right now, from my perspective, I'm here and it's better than not being here.

[kaycebasques]

Some people might shy away from answering this question for fear of coming off as pretentious but the way that I see it is that we all implicitly act out our belief about the meaning of life through our words and actions (or silence and inaction). So you might as well get clear on your own belief. The trippy thing is that some people probably live an entire life without getting clear on this question. For me it's joie de vivre [1]. Joy is my north star in a very primal sense of that phrase (imagine you're navigating a terrain you've never been through and you're relying on the star to keep you in the general correct direction... you never know what's ahead but you can always know whether you're heading towards the star or away or you've lost it entirely). I don't have a clear singular purpose in my life. But it's easy for me to tell when I'm doing something that brings me closer to or further from joy. Right now I'm sitting in Golden Gate Park, sipping a coffee, reading a book about the history/ecology/etc. of Joshua Tree. I'm at peace right now because that star is directly ahead of me. I'll leave it at that and also mention that I wax philosophical a bit in my "sabbatical prologue" post [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joie_de_vivre

[2] https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue

[lcall]

God said: "...men are, that they might have joy." (https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-... verse 25, "men/man" meaning people, of course, as below.)

And He also said: "For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." (https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/mos... verse 39.)

Consider that: God's purpose is for our eternal benefit, and the purpose of life is joy.

I have learned for myself that the above is true, that mercy and justice are real, and our choices matter, and life, while legitimately full of hard things, does have purpose and can lead to peace, and eternal life. This mortality is not the beginning or the end, for sure.

There is so much more, and I have found (amid divorce/remarriage, long-term health issues, mistakes, sweet grandchildren now, and a variety of learning experiences) that it really, really helps, and life is good.

Edit: minor wording clarifications.

[PlunkettBoy]

Meh. Invisible man in the sky not doing it for me. Too much pain and suffering on this planet. I used to believe in God. Until I learned about the Holocaust. One death camp survivor wrote: "If there's a God he owes me an apology.

[WJW]

I don't think it has a capital-P Point, but I don't really experience this as a problem. When you zoom out all the way, humans are vanishingly small. In a billion years, nobody will remember who we were (except perhaps some scholars specializing in 2nd/3rd millennium history, if we become really famous in our time) and a billion years isn't even all that long in cosmological terms.

Some people find this idea really bleak, but there is also a form of liberation in it. You have some time given to you, and at the end of it your atoms will disperse and perhaps become someone else, or a cloud, or whatever. In the meantime, you can do things that make sense to you. Some people dedicate themselves to work, a musical instrument or family. These are all choices you can make, or any combination thereof. Pick one that makes you happy or satisfied in some way.

So no, I don't think there is any "point" to life, certainly not some point that is the same for everyone. But life not having a point does not mean it can't be enjoyable.

[alignItems]

The rational answer is, of course, that ultimately there is no point.

However, there’s also no rational reason why this question should bother you - that is an emotion.

In a normal hormonally balanced brain, endorphins encourage you not to dwell on such questions emotionally.

If you find yourself consumed by it, then you might want to look into why you are feeling that way. It’s possible that you are suffering from mild depression.

[avgcorrection]

“A trivial problem”, the wise alignItems retorted: “that which is out of the ordinary or a symptom of something not-normal can be safely disregarded as a pathology. It is only rational.” And everything was good with the world.

[omnicognate]

If I were to subject you to enormous pain you would cry out for it to stop. If I said "Why? Why does it matter if you're hurting? The universe is vast, you're a speck and you'll die soon enough anyway, as will we all" it would be entirely irrelevant. You'd still cry out for the pain to stop. It would still matter very much to you.

Just as "there's no point" is of no consolation in this situation, it should be of no detriment to your experience of happiness, beauty, love, fulfilment, etc.

People who decide that "there's no point" (for some usually ill-defined, abstract interpretation of that phrase), and conclude that this has some actual bearing on their lives, are deluded in a way that leads to nothing good. (I say this having been such a person.)

[circlefavshape]

What does "the point" even mean?

The more I think about people's search for "meaning", the more it seems to mean simply a coherent satisfying story.

[pengo]

A quote that's stuck with me for decades: "The purpose of life is to give life purpose." It may sound trite, but I've found it to be true. I've lived a life of serialised purpose, increasingly more altruistic than commercial as I've got older.

[jaclaz]

One of my preferred quotes (by Ray Bradbury):

"Life is trying things to see if they work."

[gorgoiler]

If you're lucky you might have a shot at changing the world, or at least having your name attached to something world changing that you – plus a whole bunch of others upon whose shoulders you stood – managed to ship. Some may argue that lucky is not the correct word here.

Away from that, on one dimension you then have the classic supporting-actor role. You baked the bread or brewed the beer that sustained the next Einstein or Estefan. Good job! On the same axis but a bit further removed: maybe you paid the taxes that paid Einstein2's research grant, or put Estefan2 through music school. Again, good job! Taxes are a good if slightly basic way of supporting your local society.

A different and orthogonal dimension is kids. You might directly raise Einstein3, or you might raise the guy who runs Einstein4's pub. At the very least your kids will be paying taxes to support the single mother of Estefan5. You can also support the people who raise kids. You're the solid gal who grows the potatoes eaten by the teachers who taught Estefan6 how to write.

You've got to play a part in society though. Some people withdraw from society and it's the most abysmal thing you could do as a member of a social, cultural, and technological species. I'm looking at you, preppers. Get back over here – back on the the grid as they would never say – and do something useful for the rest of us. Bake some bread! Think of the children!

[alexk307]

There isn't one. The point of life is whatever you make it to be. Nothing has inherent meaning or value, until you yourself give it any. Only you can answer that question for yourself.

[nine_zeros]

To ensure the titles in your document are all indented left and are colored in company colors.

/micromanager rant

[bdowling]

> … company colors.

So, enforcing group identity and tribalism, basically. A lot of people do think of that as the point of life. Being a part of a group and living for the benefit of the group over oneself.

The religious fervor over enforcing style guides makes more sense if it is tied to people’s world view and philosophy of life.

[thaw211014]

Use templates.