is it more than being better than nonexistence, the good things seem to be in balance with the bad. if there is no bad would life seem too short, or no good make it seem too long, why are we here and why are we the only species to question existence and try to improve upon it with things like technology and religion. animals don't build rockets or telescopes to see beyond this planet but we do, has curiosity replaced our survival instincts?

oh sorry, what i meant to say was hello everyone, bit new to this community/ topic thing

.. oh great I'm just getting used to what's the meaning of being alone.
. now you wanna lay a heavy one us.
.hmm.. I may have to go on a long sabbatical.. climb up some really high mountains.. and give this one some deep thought.. or perhaps just go to the bathroom with the newspaper..

Because they know it doesn't matter what we know of outside this world. Nothing of it will change our lives here on this world. They spend their time doing more valuable things like surviving and improving their existence on this world. And without the bad, how could you appreciate the good? We would never know what good is without first knowing what bad is. Because without bad, there is no good.

"what is the meaning of life?"

Life is a game.

Have you ever seen a baby smile? They know good long before they have any idea what bad is. Good and bad do not compliment each other they oppose each other, but clearly one can exist without the other.

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hitchhikers guide, lol nice reference

good is better compared to bad, bad is worse compared to good. but which came first, maybe the potential to be good or bad. or since we are clinging to a rock falling through space while clinging to a sun that's cling to the milkyways super massive black hole which may cling to the dark matter being moved by the dark energy. then maybe it's the excitement of being allowed to exist in this chaos of a universe and still being able to just chill out.

From what I remember, the response develops within the first 12 months. As a way to communicate and express pleasure. Either way, still a baby...

true, ignorance is bliss i guess. but imagine animals also had a space program that would be mental, like if the space race was between fish and squirrels and humans. but then again dogs have been to space and they didn't need to build anything. wonder if it knew where it was, i'm getting side tracked i think. didn't they send a jellyfish into space too

the tv and barley sounds so trippy, i like that example very much

.. please tell me you know who barney is...hmm

The smile just means they know love and happiness. They couldn't possibly know good or bad since good and bad are perspectives brought on by our experiences in life we've grown to learn.

oh yeah opps. don't know where i got barley from

yeah he's a dinosaur who says he love's me and i love him and that we are family members for some reason, and he is purple with a green belly and scared me as a child lol

ok so by this, love and happiness are not associated with good, right? my question is, at what age do you think babies can tell the difference? I mean, after all they don't this "life experience" you believe is vital to our learning...wait let the people that study this answer the question...

Professor Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University in Connecticut, whose department has studied morality in babies for years, said: 'A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.

'With the help of well designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life.

'Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bones.'

For one study, the Yale researchers got babies aged between six months and a year to watch a puppet show in which a simple, colourful wooden shape with eyes tries to climb a hill.

Sometimes the shape is helped up the hill by a second toy, while other times a third character pushes it down.

After watching the show several times, the babies were shown the helpful and unhelpful toys. They showed a clear preference for the helpful toys - spending far longer looking at the 'good' shapes than the 'bad' ones.

'In the end, we found that six- and ten-month-old infants overwhelmingly preferred the helpful individual to the hindering individual,' Prof Bloom told the New York Times.

'This wasn't a subtle statistical trend; just about all the babies reached for the good guy...'

now given this, i still suggest that good and bad do not necessarily rely on each other, they can and do exist in their own form. a tree is still, yet its leaves display motion, independent. one does not have to know hate to know love, each thrive independently.

Life=experiences and memories. What you carry in your mind is your life. You can change it and grow it and dilute it and kill it. Without the mind there is no need for a meaning to life because you wouldn't even be aware that there is a life happening.

Do you have a cosmic destination? No, everything you do daily effects the world around you either for the better or for the worse. So your destination would be what damage/good you cause to your environment while you are alive.

Of course this is what I have learned so far. I am currently learning so I expect this knowledge to be outdated sometime soon :)

it is also possible that the study's conclusion is correct. i don't know, perhaps we can invite the professors from yale here to debate the validity of their study. but i am reasonably certain they took earlier studies into account, as i'm sure some of them were familiar with them.

regardless, again i ask, at what point do you accept that the baby in question actually understands the difference, i suggest it is a bit earlier than we adults think it is. at least, that is what everything i have read in the past two days has made me believe.

I'd go with Yoga and sunbathing...as the the meaning of life, I mean

ah well off to bed