i believe the most important thing to understand is Entropy, which i’m going to capitalize because it is the main character of this piece of writing. 

Entropy in its most practical sense is pretty easy to understand. it’s easier for things to be broken than for them to be fixed: that’s why things are always breaking. it’s much simpler to be a soup of disorganized molecules than, say, an elephant, or a cherry tree, or an ant. it’s easier to be dead than alive. that’s why life is a struggle against the gradual decay of Time.

harder to define, Time. it eludes even our greatest theories. but the gist of Time is that it is a dimension of reality that is defined by constant change. change is mandatory in this universe. each micro-second of change is a roll of the dice, and the dice are heavily weighted in favor of Entropy. 

the consequence is suffering, loss, and death. it’s Pandora’s box and the tower of Babel. the best laid plans of mice and men aft gang agley. we know defeat is inevitable and so we are tempted to become defeatists or denialists. i will argue that absurdism is the correct philosophy.

denialists say, defeat is not True defeat. someone or something will save us. God, or the Singularity, will record that we existed here. our lives will have value and our actions will count for something. we will conquer death.

defeatists say, nobody will save us. we are all doomed. i do not need to care about anyone or anything. morality is empty. no matter how hard we try, death will conquer us.

absurdists say, look at this mad, broken universe we live in. how wonderful. how hilarious. maybe we only exist because God made a mistake and hasn’t noticed yet. oh well. let’s laugh about it. let’s dance about it. let’s live our mad lives on this great stupid ball of mud we call the Earth and make the most of it, together. and let’s love one another and be kind and believe in ethics and progress and acceptance and diversity because that is how we make things better for all of us, altogether.

this is awake and active and joyous in ways the denialists and defeatists could never be. we are defeated, but what is defeat? would victory be better than defeat? would our lives be better? could we even exist in a universe where that was possible? the principia discordia says, when the game is over, the pieces go back in the box.

Entropy is just one of the faces of death. the tech billionaires and evangelicals are trying to build a machine mind that is perfect and eternal. i think they believe that, in doing so, they can still win. i predict, even if they succeed, that their artificial god will be revealed as another of death’s faces. we long for something perfect and eternal precisely because these things are impossible and antithetical to life, and our longing, too, is wonderful and hilarious. let’s dance about it.