(May 23, 2018 at 5:17 pm)SteveII Wrote: Go to any graveyard and look at any gravestone over 100 years old. The memories of that person do not exist in anyone anymore. That person has no current value or purpose because IMO, those are perceived qualities about a person. He certainly isn't perceiving that anymore. No one else alive remembers him. Any value he had to his family or society is long forgotten. In fact, it might have been the case that society would have been better if he were never born. How is that transcendent meaning?
My husband showed me round a graveyard here in Edinburgh and told me about all the famous names and what they had done.
We then went off to the economist Adam Smith's grave and showed me all the coins that American tourists chuck through the gates to land on it. Some of them come to Scotland specifically to see the grave.
Of course, none of these people would have been able to make all the contributions that they had without all the other people no one remembers. No one remembers everyone that allowed Einstein the chance to do the work that he did but without them we wouldn't have any of his research.
