Life, the Universe, and Everything

In Chapter 25 of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams makes fun of questions about the meaning of life:

There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?

Many many millions of years ago a race of hyperintelligent pandimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own pandimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life which used to interrupt their favorite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all.

And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before its data banks had been connected up it had started from I think therefore I am and got as far as deducing the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off.

In response to inquiry, the computer responds that it can answer the question, but it will take some time:

“Yes,” said Deep Thought, “I can do it.”

“There is an answer?” said Fook with breathless excitement.

“A simple answer?” added Lunkwill.

“Yes,” said Deep Thought. “Life, the Universe and Everything. There is an answer. But,” he added, “I’ll have to think about it.”

… for seven million years…

Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.

“How long?” he said.

“Seven and a half million years,” said Deep Thought.

Two chapters and seven and a half million years later, the computer answers the question:

All right,” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to the Great Question . . .”

“Yes . . . !”

“Of Life, the Universe and Everything . . .” said Deep Thought.

“Yes . . . !”

“Is . . .” said Deep Thought, and paused.

“Yes . . . !”

“Is . . .”

“Yes . . . !!! . . . ?”

“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

The author’s joke is based on the fact that “the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything” is not a well-defined question, and it is not clear what would constitute an answer. In the following chapter, the computer defends its answer with the remark, “I checked it very thoroughly, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

We have touched on this in the past. The question about meaning is a question about understanding or making sense, and about purpose, insofar as purpose is understood as a cause, while we understand things through causes. But it is a somewhat curious fact that, at least in English, we use the word “meaning,” which is not the most customary way of asking for this type of explanation. This occasionally permits people to respond to the question more or less by saying, “Of course life does not have a meaning. It is not a word or a sentence or anything like that. Asking about its meaning is a category error.”

I suspect that it is not accidental that the question is phrased in ways that suggest that people have “never actually known what the question is.” This is partly because, in fact, they do not know what the question is, at least exactly, and partly because they are unwilling to accept any specific answer, in exactly the way the story characters are not happy with the answer “forty-two.”

Robin Hanson wonders about this. Why isn’t there widespread agreement on the answer to the question about the meaning of life?

One possibility is that there is just no such thing. Human actions are induced by a complex mess of structures that is not reasonably summarized by any abstract coherent shared concept of “meaning”. When people have a feeling of having found “meaning”, that isn’t the result of their matching their lives to such a coherent pre-existing concept, but instead due to yet another complex mess of social and mental processes. We feel “meaning” when that seems to be useful to our minds, but there is no there there. We haven’t found it because it doesn’t exist.

A second possibility is that people have in fact discovered simple abstract expressible truths about the meaning of our lives. But these truths are mostly ugly, and thus not one they are eager to own and tell to others. And when they do tell others, their audiences mostly do not want to hear, and instead prefer to embrace the mistaken claims of those who do not actually know, but instead wishfully offer more aspirational accounts.

And a third possibility, is, what? My mind goes blank here. How could there be simple abstract truth on what gives us meaning, to explain our preferences, and yet either no one among the billions who have looked has ever found it, or when they all do find it they somehow can’t communicate it to others, even though to others this discovery would be quite unobjectionable and pleasing?

Robin’s second possibility is closest to the truth, although “ugly” is perhaps not the best description of what people find objectionable about them. Many people have given roughly correct descriptions of the meaning of life. People have a problem with these descriptions not because they are ugly or untrue, but precisely because they are more or less definite answers to more or less definite questions. And that being the case, they are like the answer “42”: that is, the answers cannot do for people what they hoped the answer would do for them.

What did they hope answering “the Ultimate Question” would do for them? It would solve all their problems forever, of course. That is why it is the ultimate question. Once you have asked and answered it, you should expect to have no more problems ever.

Is this a caricature? Perhaps to some extent, but I do think there is implicitly something like this idea underlying the issue. While we are more than simply minds, we are minds more than anything else. Given this reality, a principle much like “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” will apply. As a mind, all that we can do is to ask and answer questions, so every problem will appear to be a question, in such a way that answering the question would be solving the problem. But this cannot really be right. Take the woman in Eric Reitan’s story; there is no question whatsoever, such that given a factually correct answer to it (or an incorrect one, for that matter), the answer will allow the woman to feel fine with her life. The problem simply isn’t a question at all. Nonetheless, as primarily intelligent beings, we will always be tempted to identify problems with questions, which leads to an implicit identification of the ultimate question and its answer with solving the ultimate problem, or all problems.

It is not exactly coincidental that Reitan’s horror story involves the death of a woman’s children. This is precisely why it is especially horrifying, compared to other stories that could be told. We will go into this in the next post.