I prefer the use of the word "random" rather than "futile". If life is ultimately random then the sum of what we do is neither good nor bad. It reminds me of the end of the Simpsons episode where the characters were trying to work out the moral of the episode but concluded it was just a bunch of stuff that just happened.
Formula for Happiness
- Thread starter KMT
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Surely a discussion on how people find purpose (or not) at level 5 is very relevant to GTD? We can respect each others beliefs even if we don't share them.
gtdstudente
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What else is a mature person to do?
PeterByrom
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That’s fascinating! As much as I love The Simpsons, do you really think that the sum of all the projects on our projects lists are ultimately “neither good nor bad”?
Eg, that there is no objective difference between these two projects being on a projects list somewhere?
- Save Children’s Hospital from Closure
- Exterminate Unwanted People Group
I don't want there to be unnecessary suffering in the world but I don't know why I believe that. This may be related to hidden level 5 meanings that I am not aware of, as you mentioned before.
Where could these level 5 meanings be coming from? Maybe they have evolved through time. If one part of a group witnesses suffering then it could be bad news for the group. The people that helped other people suffering in the group helped the group survive and reproduce. The offspring of these people were more likely to have genes which made their brains produce chemicals that made them happy if they helped out people that are suffering, saved the children's hospital, etc.
If this is true then I am just following my genetic programming. But why the heck should I just devote my life to following my genetic programming?
Or maybe there is a supreme being which is somehow feeding these level 5 meanings into my psyche. Why the heck should I devote my life to doing whatever this entity wants me to do?
Like I say, my problem with level 5 is that I tend to ask the "Why?" question until the answer becomes meaningless.
PeterByrom
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Those are all really good questions, and worth asking and exploring.
I think I would make two comments at this stage:
Firstly:
I think it’s okay to pursue a chain of “why” questions, because even if you feel like you’ll never get to the end of it, it’s still worth exploring the chain of “why” questions one layer at a time and seeing where it takes you. A good example comes from David Allen himself: he will often start at the next action level and ask “why are you doing that?” and keep probing the deeper reasons further up the horizons. He told a great story once about how he kept asking “why?” to an anxious mother who desperately wanted to successfully complete the project “my son passes his school exams with top grades”. Eventually, he uncovered that the real reason was not primarily because she wanted the best opportunities for him, but because she wanted to feel accomplished as a mother in the judgement of other people! That revelation would most likely have resulted in a different way of engaging with her project, son, and how she pursued happiness.
Now, neither of them got as far as uncovering the secrets of the universe in that one exploration, of course, but it shows why asking “why” is still worth it! For all we know, maybe that mother picked up the “why” exploration later, and resumed from where they left off, thereby incrementally uncovering further insight.
Secondly:
I would argue that if life all boils down to genetic programming, then the “why should I” question becomes meaningless (about anything), because then nobody has any choice about what they believe or what they do in the first place! Matters of “should” become illusory.
And that’s the point when I would ask somebody to consider the content of their horizon 5. For example, if somebody’s horizon 5 values include “I should avoid and prevent unnecessary suffering”, but they also believe that we are the products of deterministic mechanisms, then how can they live consistently with these two commitments on their horizon 5 list? The former assumes moral agency and responsibility, whereas the latter negates it (because we end up in a universe where nobody has any real choice over whether, under certain chemical conditions and temperatures, they inflict suffering rather than help prevent it... or start a GTD system rather than dismiss it)!
So I think it’s always worth asking “to what extent is my horizon 5 internally consistent?”, as well as probing with the “why” question! That gives us something to consider about the nature and integrity of the horizon 5 assumptions that we’ve currently committed ourselves to (rather than the “why” answers we’ve not yet found), and could help refine them and prompt further valuable “why” explorations.
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I agree. And I don't see any way of resolving that (other than possibly devoting a very large portion of time and effort in experimentation with probably no resolution at the end of it).
PeterByrom
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Is it possible that this inconsistency could serve as a reductio ad absurdum though, whereby one of these premises ought to be removed from horizon 5 (either rejecting the view that unnecessary suffering should be avoided, or rejecting the view that the universe is purely deterministic)?
That way, you might not need years of experimentation, but rather just a revised philosophical framework based upon weeding out a logical contradiction (which takes much less time).
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Yes but the one rejected would have to be chosen at random. Which comes back to the idea that life purpose is just based on randomness.
TesTeq
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Yes, I agree. I went too far. I'm sorry, @PeterByrom & @mcogilvie. In GTD we've got 6 horizons of focus and it's our choice to use all of them or just the three lowest which seem to be essential for Getting Basic Things Done.
PeterByrom
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Thank you but no apology necessary @TesTeq!
I love the discussions and different views / attitudes that arise when Horizon 5 comes into the picture! Again, my only reason for focusing so much on H5 is because of how it relates to the topic of this thread. It's by no means essential from the point of view of somebody wanting to harness GTD for getting the ground and H1/2 levels under control.
PeterByrom
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But would the choice be random? After all, it's only random if the "everything is genetically determined" premise is true. So it becomes question-begging to say that it doesn't matter which premise one chooses, because one of those premises entails that it doesn't matter.
I would argue that if you are not actually living your day to day life as if your choices were random and meaningless (on the next action, projects & areas levels), then why not go for it and reject that view of the universe all the way up to the purpose & values level?
(Do let me know if at any point this is going too far off the deep end, by the way! I love discussions like these and could probably keep going until my next weekly review)!
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So a bit like.... act on the things you can change, accept (by rejecting
) what you cannot change and have the wisdom to tell the difference?
PeterByrom
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So a bit like.... act on the things you can change, accept (by rejecting
Not so much. If the universe truly is meaningless and random, then indeed we cannot change that, and we’d have to accept it.
Rather, my point is, if anybody believes that the universe is random and meaningless, but yet they are still going through their daily life as if it is not random, and is meaningful, then this is precisely a rejection of what is real. One would have to bite the bullet and reject all commitments to value and meaning (eg as per Nietzsche).
So, if a person cares about being consistent, then they either need to reject the meaninglessness of the universe, or they need to reject the meaningFULness of their own actions and projects. Take your pick. Why not treat the meaningfulness of one’s life as evidence that the universe is not meaningless?
If somebody says that they truly don’t care about being consistent, well, that’s up to them..... but I’ll bet that they expect others to act consistently on matters that pertain to their own projects and actions!
You said earlier that you think either choice would be random, but I’m willing to bet you don’t live your life as if it’s all random (eg I notice that when you reply to me, you use sentences intended to convey meaning, rather than random bashings on the keyboard)!
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Not so much. If the universe truly is meaningless and random, then indeed we cannot change that, and we’d have to accept it.
Rather, my point is, if anybody believes that the universe is random and meaningless, but yet they are still going through their daily life as if it is not random, and is meaningful, then this is precisely a rejection of what is real. One would have to bite the bullet and reject all commitments to value and meaning (eg as per Nietzsche).
So, if a person cares about being consistent, then they either need to reject the meaninglessness of the universe, or they need to reject the meaningFULness of their own actions and projects. Take your pick. Why not treat the meaningfulness of one’s life as evidence that the universe is not meaningless?
If somebody says that they truly don’t care about being consistent, well, that’s up to them..... but I’ll bet that they expect others to act consistently on matters that pertain to their own projects and actions!
You said earlier that you think either choice would be random, but I’m willing to bet you don’t live your life as if it’s all random (eg I notice that when you reply to me, you use sentences intended to convey meaning, rather than random bashings on the keyboard)!
This is one of the classic arguments for the existence of God. It’s a bit of a stealth argument in the sense that you might not see it coming if you haven’t seen it before.
Speaking as a physicist, I can tell you that the world is random, in the sense that microscopic events like radioactive decay and chemical processes are random. Nor is it the case that there are some hidden variables that make the world secretly not-random in a way we can’t access. Experiments testing Bell’s inequality have ruled that out.
Of course, random has a reasonably clear definition, but meaningfulness does not, so they are not mutually exclusive. In day to day life, meaningfulness appears to be highly subjective. Personally, I find the problem of theodicy (why bad things happen to good people) is the most difficult problem to contend with in trying to find meaning in human suffering. This is why I prefer less grand and more contingent approaches to meaningfulness in my life.
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Oogiem
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But the universe IS random and any meaning is what we attribute to it by our own preconceived notions.
PeterByrom
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Could you explain that a little more? After all, I’m sure you don’t mean to say that we can just invent any meaning that we like and super-impose it onto whatever we feel like? If that were the case, then I could do that with all the words you’re writing in this thread.
PeterByrom
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You’re quite right to move on to defining more clearly what we ought to mean by the term “random” (up til now we’ve been using it quite colloquially). Indeed, the term is often used quite loosely and it’s worth clarifying. For example, I’m told that when biologists speak of “random mutations” in evolution, what they mean is actually “the mutation happens completely irrespective of whether or not it helps the host organism survive”. That’s a much more precise definition than merely thinking of random in terms of something that is completely dissociated from any purpose, rational structure or patterns of causation.
I’m interested in some things you brought up, mcogilvie, if you’re happy unpacking them further:
1. Firstly I should ask, how are you defining “random” here, as a physicist?
2. You give examples from physics of fundamental particles being random in the micro level. What do you think are the implications of these random events on the macro level? Are you saying that because something appears random on the micro level, that therefore that randomness has to apply all the way up the scale? That’s sort of the point I was making with the GTD horizons, only in reverse (namely, that if it’s all random at horizon 5, that will trickle down all the way to the ground level).
3. You’ll definitely recognise this next question as one of the ones that gets used in arguments for God / design! Namely, what are your views on the so called “fine tuning” of the universes constants and quantities? I.e. not so much the laws of nature, but the specific values of the constants and quantities which need to be precise on the most delicate level to allow any intelligent life to occur? It’s hard to square that with the randomness you’re taking about (though this depends on how you define “random” and what it’s implications are, of course).
4. I’m interested in what you say about it being hard to see how there could be a purpose for good people suffering. This seems to presuppose that there is an objective meaning to what it is to be a “good person”, and that there is an objective badness to suffering (unless you’re saying that these also are subjective and boil down to your personal reactions / preferences)? Additionally, I sense that you seem to be implying that there ought to be a correlation between suffering and moral badness (i.e. justice / fairness). Could you explain how a random universe allows you to make such an objection (again, this will depend upon how you’ve defined “random”).
5. I’m interested in what you mean by “more contingent approaches to meaning”. Could you elaborate a little more? And how do they inform your GTD Horizons? Eg, would you say that these contingent approaches populate your horizon 5, and inform everything below it, while sharing space at H5 with the view that the universe is random? Or is it more that you leave H5 blank for the moment and focus more on the lower horizons and see what arises from there?
Those are the questions that come to mind, but do what you like with them, of course!
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Warning: this is long and probably boring to many people.
1. I‘m using random in the sense of probability theory. Radioactive decay is a good example. In an ensemble of well-separated nuclei, whether any given nucleus decays in any time period is independent and uncorrelated with the other nuclei. We do not know how to predict which nuclei will decay, and quantum mechanics, which is our experimentally verified basis for understanding the natural world, tells us we cannot. The fundamental laws of our physical universe are statistical in nature.
2. Schrodinger’s cat is the traditional thought experiment: depending on whether a radioactive decay is detected, a cat in a box is killed or not. This directly links microscopic behavior to macroscopic. In general, the transition from microscopic quantum to macroscopic classical behavior is complicated. Classical deterministic models can be chaotic, which means that arbitrarily small changes produce large changes later, as in a coin flip. There is quite a bit of research along these lines going on today in an area called quantum information, largely because of applications to things like quantum computing and quantum cryptograph.
3. The idea that the physical constants of the universe are fine-tuned to allow carbon-based life is popular with traditional believers, but some physicists advocate for a multiverse in which some universes, probably the vast majority, are incapable of producing life as we know it. Others argue that multiverse theories have problems with falsifiability, which is a fundamental criterion for scientific meaning: how do you test for the presence of alternate universes? Some scientists ”explain” fine tuning with the anthropic principle, which says that the universe has to support life because if it didn’t we wouldn’t be talking about it! Personally, I think the fine-tuning argument makes for poor science and poor theology.
4. I believe, based on evidence, that people can lead meaningful and moral lives without traditional belief in god. I also believe we live in a world where people suffer, both because of the acts of others, intentional and unintentional, and because of essentially random natural events. Human suffering is difficult to reconcile with a loving, omniscient and omnipotent god. Great religious texts typically do not ignore this, e.g., the Book of Job and the Bhagavad Gita. The Buddha famously said “I am here to teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering.”
5. My level 5 horizon looks more like lifetime goals than principles and purpose, because that’s how I understood it back in the day when it was the 50,000 feet horizon. For example, I have “As healthy as possible throughout life” and “Physically and mentally active for as long as possible” on that list. Although they are related, they actually arise primarily from two different level 2 areas: “Health” and something I call “Sharpen the Saw” because I read Covey. They are both phrased to acknowledge the realities of aging. They do not depend on the western religious tradition that I am “in the image of god” (Latin imago dei; Hebrew b'tzelem elohim) or any particular religious or spiritual belief. I don’t have any direct reference to religion or spirituality anywhere in my GTD system or even to any particular traditional virtues. Perhaps I don’t feel comfortable mixing them with more prosaic things like “Financial security for life, wife and beyond.” The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all tend in prayer to conceptualize God as having all human virtues. The Holiness code in Leviticus sees human virtue as flowing from God: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” leads to “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.” Anyone interested in what was seen as a just and moral life well over 2000 years ago should read the Holiness Code, but I don’t think I need to put it into my GTD system. Of course other people might.
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