Kip at Overcoming Bias has a post entitled The Meta-Human Condition in which he lists the supposedly bleak facts of human existence (our fate is to a large degree determined, we will die, there is no afterlife, the universe is mostly empty, humans may not survive this century, etc). He draws an interesting paralell between humanity and the Titanic:
I’ll end with an analogy for the Meta-Human Condition and the Human Condition: the Titanic. If we are all in the same boat, it is sinking. The story of the Titanic squeezes the entirety of a human life into a single night. That, perhaps, is part of the story’s appeal. Everyone can relate to the poor souls trapped that boat. Those people were alone in the ocean, destined to die, just as we appear alone in our universe, destined to die.
Suppose you’re on the Titanic. Now consider the hard question. Suppose you know that, in this alternative world, everyone dies. There are no life rafts. When you tell people about the iceberg, they don’t believe you. “Hit an iceberg? You have quite an imagination, young man. Please. Have a cigar and sip some cognac. This ship has a fine captain. He is in perfect control and will keep us safe.”
Do you persist in trying to convince them of the horror of the situation? Or do you take the cigar and cognac, dance with a beautiful woman, and sing a grand old song, at least for another hour or two?
Granting that the human condition does, in some important respects, resemble that of the Titanic’s passengers, it misses an important point to label it dire or tragic. The question, of course, being compared to what? Human life, for all of its suffering and brevity, is surely in most cases preferable to nonexistence. Arguments about the big, cold, empty universe only reinforce this point. The fate of those on a grand, merry albeit sinking ship is particularly egregious only when compared to land dwellers who aren’t on a collision course with an iceberg. I would ask Kip to consider his Titanic thought experiment only this time positing an otherwise barren ocean, earth and cosmos. My guess is I’d find him on the dancefloor twirling the beautiful woman, cognac in hand.
Tags: Philosophy
