{"id":9463,"date":"2012-10-22T06:19:49","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T13:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=8939"},"modified":"2012-10-22T06:19:49","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T13:19:49","slug":"from-particles-to-people-the-laws-of-nature-and-the-meaning-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/22\/from-particles-to-people-the-laws-of-nature-and-the-meaning-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"From Particles to People: The Laws of Nature and the Meaning of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s the charmingly grandiose title of a talk I gave at The Amazing Meeting this past July, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=X5Fel1VKEN8\">now available online<\/a>. I hope that the basic message comes through, although the YouTube comments indicate that the nitpicking has already begun in earnest. There&#8217;s a rather lot of material to squeeze into half an hour, so some parts are going to be sketchy.<\/p>\n<div class=\"lyte-wrapper\" title=\"Sean Carroll - &amp;quot;From Particles to People&amp;quot; - TAM 2012\" style=\"width:640px;max-width:100%;margin:5px;\"><div class=\"lyMe\" id=\"WYL_X5Fel1VKEN8\" itemprop=\"video\" itemscope itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/VideoObject\"><div><meta itemprop=\"thumbnailUrl\" content=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/X5Fel1VKEN8\/hqdefault.jpg\" \/><meta itemprop=\"embedURL\" content=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/X5Fel1VKEN8\" \/><meta itemprop=\"duration\" content=\"PT28M35S\" \/><meta itemprop=\"uploadDate\" content=\"2012-10-19T18:49:34Z\" \/><\/div><div id=\"lyte_X5Fel1VKEN8\" data-src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/X5Fel1VKEN8\/hqdefault.jpg\" class=\"pL\"><div class=\"tC\"><div class=\"tT\" itemprop=\"name\">Sean Carroll - &quot;From Particles to People&quot; - TAM 2012<\/div><\/div><div class=\"play\"><\/div><div class=\"ctrl\"><div class=\"Lctrl\"><\/div><div class=\"Rctrl\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/X5Fel1VKEN8\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/X5Fel1VKEN8\/0.jpg\" alt=\"Sean Carroll - &amp;quot;From Particles to People&amp;quot; - TAM 2012\" width=\"640\" height=\"340\" \/><br \/>Watch this video on YouTube<\/a><\/noscript><meta itemprop=\"description\" content=\"Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll uses science to explore the nature of humanity. Live on stage at TAM 2012.\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"lL\" style=\"max-width:100%;width:640px;margin:5px;\"><\/div><\/p>\n<p>There are actually three points I try to hit here. The first is that <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2010\/09\/29\/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood\/\">the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood<\/a>. There is an enormous amount that we don&#8217;t know about how the world works, but we actually do know the basic rules underlying atoms and their interactions &#8212; enough to rule out <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/02\/18\/telekinesis-and-quantum-field-theory\/\">telekinesis<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2011\/05\/23\/physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-soul\/\">life after death<\/a>, and so on. The second point is that those laws are <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2011\/01\/17\/dysteleological-physicalism\/\">dysteleological<\/a> &#8212; they describe a universe without intrinsic meaning or purpose, just one that moves from moment to moment.<\/p>\n<p>The third point &#8212; the important one, and the most subtle &#8212; is that the absence of meaning &#8220;out there in the universe&#8221; does <em>not<\/em> mean that people can&#8217;t live meaningful lives. Far from it. It simply means that whatever meaning our lives might have must be created by us, not given to us by the natural or supernatural world. There is one world that exists, but many ways to talk about; many stories we can imagine telling about that world and our place within it, without succumbing to the temptation to ignore the laws of nature. That&#8217;s the hard part of living life in a natural world, and we need to summon the courage to face up to the challenge.<\/p>\n<p>Or at least, so you will hear me opine if you click on the link. Curious as to what people think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s the charmingly grandiose title of a talk I gave at The Amazing Meeting this past July, now available online. I hope that the basic message comes through, although the YouTube comments indicate that the nitpicking has already begun in earnest. There&#8217;s a rather lot of material to squeeze into half an hour, so some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,25,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-philosophy","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}