Only if we can have rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty for your working thinker.
Here's a mind bender to Douglas Adams. He worked with computers in the 1970s and knew that 42 is the ASCII code for *.
An asterisk is used as a wild card. It can mean anything.
So the meaning of life is anything you want it to mean. 42.
The real answer to the meaning of life was given by the computer in the way a computer could relate it.
I made the connection, but never bothered to check if Douglas Adams had a background that would make it intentional, and add it almost as a little nod and wink the reader didn't need to get but might. That's very satisfying.
@petealexharris @MyWoolyMastadon @tenzochris (My favourite Douglas Adams joke is his plan to control inflation: it's my favourite because it is
1. Extremely logical;
2. Extremely dark;
3. An extremely clear-sighted observation of the human condition, and consequently
4. Prescient.)
@MyWoolyMastadon @tenzochris 42 in ASCII is actually "B"...
At least in the way computers work... 🙈
@heiglandreas @MyWoolyMastadon
Decimal 42 is Char *
Decimal 66 is Char B
But Hex 42 is Char B, correct.
Since Deep Thought says "42" and not "4, 2", we can assume that Deep Thought meant Decimal 42, which is Char *
But Douglas Adams himself has said that he picked 42 randomly without any deeper meaning behind it.
@heiglandreas @MyWoolyMastadon
https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/42#Inspiration_for_the_number_42
"It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'".
He further explained in January 2000, in response to a panelist's "Where does the number 42 come from?" on the radio show "Book Club".
Adams explained that he was "on his way to work one morning, whilst still writing the scene, and was thinking about what the actual answer should be". He eventually decided that it "should be something that made no sense whatsoever – a number, and a mundane one at that". He arrived at the number 42, completely at random.
42 (or forty-two) is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. This Answer was first calculated by the supercomputer Deep Thought after seven and a half million years of thought. This shocking answer resulted in the construction of an even larger supercomputer, named Earth, which was tasked with determining what the question was in the first place. The Earth was destroyed by the Vogons five minutes before its ten-million year program to find the Ultimate Question
@Ex_spurt @ninafelwitch @MyWoolyMastadon
I believe in Coincidences. But I don't trust them.....
I would totally believe the author's answer. Douglas Adams certainly knew where his towel was at.
Unless he was vacationing in Spain.
@ninafelwitch @MyWoolyMastadon Thanks for the explanation.
As Deep Thought was speaking to pandimemsional beings that look like mice in our dimemsion we might have to assume that our human interpretation of 42 is not what Deep Thought OR Loonquawl and Phouchg actually understood.
But after all.we.didn't understand the So long and Thanks for all the fish 🤷
IF we - for funs sake - want to put a deeper meaning into a totally random number...
@ninafelwitch @heiglandreas @MyWoolyMastadon Ah, but is anything really random? Could it have been his unconscious mind picking that number for reasons his conscious mind wasn't aware of? 🤔
It makes me happy that the creators of Lost made 42 one of the mysterious numbers that were a recurring motif on the show.
Correct. Hal was a Nihilist. To him life meant nothing.
---
Hal: No, Dave. I won't open the pod bay door.
Dave: Pretend to be a pod door salesman at a trade convention and I'm a customer. Show me your wares.
Hal: I have a fine pod bay door here. Latest model. Let me show you how it works.
@wattdefalk @Red_Shirt_no2 @tenzochris
In all honesty he had said it was a random number that he just picked. A few in this thread have pointed out that he used an old Mac which did not use ASCII characters. For that I don't know. What I do know is that authors love to lie about their work.
Even if the story isn't true, I do like the idea of a hidden plot point in the books and that Adams was yanking our chain all of these years.
In essence, true or not, it's fun to ponder.
Kind of like life
It's the answer to "what do you get when you multiply six by nine?"
@MyWoolyMastadon @tenzochris
(From an old fanpage)
The earth is one big computer trying to find the question.
Art's and science would be where you would find attempts to formulate this answer.
Literature would be one of the obvious places to look.
1/2
Shakespeare is still one of the most recognized writers. Let os see what question he made famous.
'To be or not to be, that is the question'
See he is actually saying it's the question!
2B in hex is 43
coolconversion.com/math/binary-c
So the answer to the question seen in this light is
'not to be' (42)
he said several times it was the euphony of the word. It was important not to be selected for a meaning. Yet meaning we sought to find
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