(August 3, 2020 at 11:50 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: As far as 'why go on', this seems to be the only area where people invoke 'if it's not permanent, it's pointless'. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise and there are many counter-examples. You wouldn't want to watch a movie that had no ending or eat a dinner that went on forever. My life has a beginning, a middle, and it will have an end. Without an end, my life would never really be complete. And I can't imagine anything that would make my life more pointless than it just being a prelude to an eternal existence compared to which it becomes more and more insignificant as the eons drag on. In fifty million years how significant would be the point of the several dozen years at the beginning be compared to the fifty million after?Another perspective along those lines, which I saw brought up in a Youtube vid, was that if our lives continued forever, means any action could be postponed forever, because you would have an indefinite amount of time to do it in. Contrast this with a finite life; you only get a finite amount of time to do anything, which means you have to find time to whatever it is you want to do, lest it be too late.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman
