What's the Meaning of Life? | Joe Rogan and Naval Ravikant

I was dealing with a question of stupid topic, but the meaning of life. Right? What's the meaning? How could that be stupid though? Well, in a sense... It's trite. It's trite. You're not supposed to think about it. It's something you ask your parents when you're young. They tell you don't worry about it or they say... Go get a job hippie. Exactly. Go get a job you freaking hippie. Or here's God. God is the meaning of life, right? And so I was just trying to resolve for myself, like, what could the answer be? Right? Not what is the answer, but what could the answer be? And so at a core level, I was forced to kind of hunt down all these weird little things and really understand for myself. And it's got to be personal, right? But I have to establish for myself what it could and could not be. And that gave me some level of peace. So now I don't have to keep asking that question. What is the meaning of life? I mean, I think the question is more interesting than the answer. Everyone should explore this on their own, but let me just explore a few parts with you. Right? So first is, if I gave you an answer, if I said the meaning of life is to please God, well, which God? Okay. Judeo-Christian God. Well, okay. Why that one? Why this thing? The problem is it's a why question. You can keep asking why forever, right? Any answer I give you, you'll just ask why again. Why again? Why again? That's right. And you end up in a place called Agrippa's Trelemma. Okay. This is a philosophical exercise, but I kind of thought it through. Then googled around and there's a thing called Agrippa's Trelemma. And Agrippa's Trelemma says that any questioning like this, the why, will always end in one of three places. Okay. First is infinite regress. Right? Why? Because of this. Why that? Why that? And just keep going forever. The second is circular reasoning. Well, A. Why A? Because of B. Well, why B? Because of A. Right? You get trapped in that. Or the third is an axiom. And the most popular axiom is God, but it could be anything because of math, because of science, because of the Big Bang, because of simulation. Right? These are all axioms. These are all just stopping points. Saying simulation, we're in a simulation or saying it's the Big Bang. It's just another way of saying God. It's just God's a dirty word. So we don't use it as much anymore, but same thing. So you end up in one of these three dead ends, essentially. Right? So there is no answer. The real answer is because. Right? What is the meaning of life? Yeah. You get to make up your own answer is the beauty. If there was a single answer, we would not be free. We would be trapped because then we would all have to live to that answer. Then we'd be bored like robots, each one competing with each other to fulfill that single meaning more than the others back to signaling. Like I'm better at it than you are. But luckily, there is no answer. So you just do whatever you want. The meaning of life. It's funny that. That that's the basis of all existential angst that you don't. You don't know why you're here. And you have this feeling that it could be meaningless. It is. I mean, if you when you start pondering the multiverse, the universe, the galaxies, the solar system, the planet, the organism, the cells inside the organism, the bacteria, the parasites, the symbiotic relationship we have to our environment. And you start going, Jesus Christ, am I just a little piece of this thing? It's like. Well, the answers to all the great questions are paradoxes. Yeah. So for example, you're asking like, do I matter? That's like really the question you asked, right? Well, how do I matter in this infinite universe? Well, you know, on the one hand, you're separate. No two points are the same. Every point is every two points are infinitely different. You're completely separated. No one will have your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, your experience. So your life is a single-player game. You're trapped inside your head and you're just aware of a bunch of things going on and that's it. On the other hand, I cannot say the word Joe Rogan without invoking the entire universe. Joe Rogan, alien comes along says, what's that Joe Rogan? What's Joe Rogan? It's a human. What's a human bipedal ape? What's an ape on the earth? What's the earth planet? What's a planet solar system? Where was the carbon made inside stars, right? Instead, I have to create the entire universe to just say the words Joe Rogan. So in that sense, you're connected to everything. It's inseparable. So the answer to that question of do I matter is I am nothing and I am everything. And you'll find this with all the great questions. The answers are all paradoxes, which is why at some level, it's sort of pointless to pursue them to find a trite answer like I'm giving. But the act of pursuing them is actually really useful because then it gives you certain intrinsic understanding in your life that brings a level of peace.