{"id":2539,"date":"2020-07-19T14:25:41","date_gmt":"2020-07-19T14:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/?p=2539"},"modified":"2021-01-03T17:50:30","modified_gmt":"2021-01-03T17:50:30","slug":"42","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/?p=2539","title":{"rendered":"42"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"SALWITAY - 42\" width=\"695\" height=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8Wo__d-l9P0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Carpenter Class Nebula Sub &#8211; These gargantuan, moon-sized vessels are mostly hollow structures built to explore the interiors of dense gas nebulae. The \u2018hull\u2019 is a mono-molecular fabric envelope held rigid by a shaped magnetic field generated in the frontal power, navigation, and sensor structure. It can travel in several modes within nebulae somewhat analogous to controlled \u2018gliding\u2019 and \u2018surfing\u2019 by magnetically distorting the surface of its massive hull.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>42 is a number that means a lot to a lot of people, so I thought I\u2019d say what it means to me. Most of the time when I say it, it just means I love the Hitchhiker series and I hope you are a fellow fan and we can identify by our common knowledge of the connection of 42 to classic sci-fi comedy. But I love the books and Douglas Adams work in general, partially because they gave me such an elegantly compact expression to sum up my understanding of the universe and humanity\u2019s place in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Hitchhiker series, 42 is the answer generated by the unimaginably complex computer \u2018Deep Thought\u2019 to a vaguely proposed ultimate question about \u2018life, the universe, and everything\u2019. The answer, 42, was confusing and unsatisfying. So \u2018Deep Thought\u2019 was tasked with designing an even more unimaginably complex computer to finally phrase the question itself. Spoiler Alert: The computer it designed to phrase the question turned out to be Earth, and humans were processing units in its existential calculations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So some of that\u2019s just plain fun, and it seems about right for people to spend so much effort on an absolute solution to a question they haven\u2019t bothered to understand. But I also gather it means that Doug understood that any answer can be calculated, but it takes a conscious mind to ask a question in a way that gives an answer any meaning to a conscious mind. I think it\u2019s that much more impressive that Doug was thinking that before computation had come to dominate every aspect of our lives and we\u2019d come to rely on and even have faith in answers to questions we don\u2019t even bother to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To me the significance of \u201842\u2019 is that it represents the paradox of creation creating the meaning of creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>42 was the painstakingly calculated answer to a question that had not really been asked yet. Likewise, I think the universe itself is the answer to questions that have not been asked yet. Earth, and hopefully a bunch of other planets, are the calculating machines formulating the questions to which the universe is the answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And because answers are meaningless without meaningful questions. Our questions give meaning to the answers we seek about the universe, and by extension maybe the universe itself. It\u2019s all tied to the old idea that we\u2019re the eyes and ears of the universe, or the universe trying to understand itself. For me 42 just focuses all the confusing, paradoxical meaning I\u2019ve found about being a conscious being in the universe into an elegant, and humorous symbol that I can sometimes use to relate to other interesting humans. That said, it\u2019s just a pop cultural reference now. For a while if you knew 42 had any special meaning at all it meant you\u2019d probably read the books. Now it might just mean you have a reddit account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While I\u2019m taking the liberty to pontificate on Doug\u2019s work I feel obligated to say thanks in general to Douglas Adams and credit his work as a critical inspiration. Never met him and don\u2019t know him as a human being, but his work was very important in my life. It was just fun, and appreciation of his work is still a general identifier for thoughtful humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>42 is by far the best known Douglas Adams reference and has a really deep storyline behind it. But there\u2019s a more obscure one that I use as a header on the website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe apologize for the inconvenience.\u201d In <em>So Long and Thanks for all the Fish<\/em>, Doug said this was God&#8217;s Final Message to His Creation, written in letters 30 feet high on some planet somewhere. I. Freaking. Love It.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It could have been a joke about people making up messages that purport to be divine, but I don\u2019t think so, and that interpretation doesn\u2019t inspire me much so I went the other way. I probably can\u2019t do justice to how much this phrase and its origin resonates with me, but I\u2019ll try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First off it\u2019s a humble message. Any entity or being I\u2019d call a creator \u2018God\u2019 would be way more humble than religion tends to give it credit for. Humans give God and Gods all these anthropomorphic qualities but humility doesn\u2019t seem to get included. I think a compassionate creator god would be humbled by his creation as much as he expected it to be humbled by him. So if there is anything like a God that does anything like \u2018messages to creation\u2019, it seems like this one could be genuine. So I\u2019d accept the message, and the apology, though I\u2019d still have a few questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also like that he said \u2018We\u2019 apologize. I think \u2018We\u2019 is just a better pronoun for divinity than \u2018I\u2019. To me omniscience and omnipresence imply a plurality of mind that is nothing like the singular consciousness we experience that leads us to distinguish ourselves as \u2018I\u2019. I just don\u2019t think God would choose that pronoun if it was self-translating to human language. Imagine a world where most humans had been taught that God chose to speak in the first person plural. \u201cWe Are\u201d instead of \u201cI Am\u201d. I just feel like that alone would change a lot of basic cultural perceptions in dramatic ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Regardless how the universe came to be, if a conscious \u2018creator\u2019 had anything to do with it- I think \u201cWe apologize for the inconvenience\u201d is the message they should send to other consciousnesses that bubble up in their creation. God\u2019s creation may be \u2018perfect\u2019 in some transcendental sense, but he\u2019s got to know it can sometimes suck really, really, bad to wake up as a cog in this grand machine without knowing anything about it. So seems like a responsible creator would go out of their way to clearly acknowledge that fact and 30 foot high letters seems like a decent effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also If I wake up in an afterlife where I\u2019m me and remember my life as me- \u201cWe apologize for the inconvenience\u201d better damn well be the first thing I hear, followed by a comprehensive explanation of how the universe actually works and why it appeared so different while I was living in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As far as I can tell in a lot of ways the universe really is the elemental chaos that the existentially challenged are so terrified of. It just doesn\u2019t bother me because I think <em>we are<\/em> or can make the meaning we\u2019re so worried about elemental chaos not having, and we should do that instead of following myths that take energy from our efforts to continue surviving in the universe in ways that don\u2019t suck. So I\u2019ll be pretty goddamn put off if I die and it turns out the physical universe was apparently a big set up or illusion. If my physical body dies, but my consciousness and experience continues in some other realm, it implies a lot of deception or misperception that I\u2019m not comfortable with. So if there\u2019s anybody else around when I wake up that has anything to do with what\u2019s going on, \u201cWe apologize for the inconvenience\u201d better be the first thing they say to me or I\u2019m just going to start throwing things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though all that said, I\u2019ve read that Doug suggested the message written in those 30 foot letters was personalized for whoever saw it, and \u201cWe apologize for the inconvenience\u201d was just what Marvin saw. So the fact that this resonates with me so well might just imply that in God\u2019s eyes I\u2019d be basically identical to an existentially crippled robot\u2026 that seems most right somehow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>42 is a number that means a lot to a lot of people, so I thought I\u2019d say what it means to me. Most of the time when I say it, it just means I love the Hitchhiker series and I hope you are a fellow fan and we can identify by our common knowledge <a href='http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/?p=2539' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2540,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539\/revisions\/2540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}