World's Most Asked Questions: What is the Meaning of Life?

People ask Google everything under the sun. One of the most commonly searched questions in the world is “What Is the Meaning of Life?” Let SciShow explain.

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[StreetlampPro]

The meaning of life is to give life meaning.

[TheBoomersauce]

the meaning of life:
1. don't die
2. have sex

works for me.

[liu]

isn't it obvious? the meaning of life is 42

[nanaasmah]

Here's a couple questions:
- Is it possible for there to be more than one universe?
- Why do we pick favorites?
- How do we know if we're brain washed?
- Is it possible for humans to cause every single creature that's not human to become extinct?
- If cars are bad for the environment, why do we teach people how to drive?
- Is it possible to create oxygen?

[earthunplugged]

Answering the most asked questions on Google - great strand idea!

[phirieric]

"Don't die and have sex"... Basically my new year's resolution

[truthfairy]

Nothing matters except learning how life really works and how the universe relates to us as conscious beings. The mind tries to understand and give meaning to everything, but it cannot comprehend reality for what it is. The mind has become a heavy burden for mind-kind. We need it to some extent, but we dont need it to make nuclear weapons, constant noise, irrational beliefs, delusions, hate, wars, worries, hallucinations and human zombies. Te age of mankind is coming to an end: Life is simple and clear when you overcome yourself and become one with the present moment: Google *truthcontest*, click the earth icon, read *The Present*. What is said will make us sacrifice animals for the benefit of God,  figuratively speaking.

[malignor]

The whole "don't die" and "have sex" is very simple at first glance.

But the environment of biological competition, ever-changing climates, ever-changing availability of resources (like food), and predation (including pathogenic life forms) often forces the *method* of successfully surviving and breeding to become ... more sophisticated. This is why different species have developed different strategies to survive and breed. The strategies are really just devising ways to leverage or mitigate their own biological features in the world they happen to live in.

Humans get the traits of complex social psychology, problem solving and advanced language capabilities (there are more, but I'll not digress). So far it works... too well. However, we social and linguistic apes use our advanced minds to make things really complicated. It's both a blessing (engineering, medicine) and a curse (bureaucracy, harmful cultural practices or belief systems). We inadvertently created out own sort of environment, _on top of_ the more basic environment that animals compete in. As such, we have to succeed in this (social) environment in order to attract a mate, and sometimes even just to survive. The social environment has, for many people, become the only environment to compete in and define ourselves by, because basic survival (food, shelter) has become trivialized by our society.

So asking the meaning of life is... well it's the sort of question asked by people who are already surviving reasonably well. The starving Humans giving their all just to find the next meal, or escape predators, don't tend to dwell on that kind of question. But the question is worth asking when your environment isn't so simple, and is instead built up out of vague ideas and nebulous social and conceptual standards.

[xWink]

The meaning of life is actually kind of dark...
Why do humans even do anything? Why talk, breathe, eat, sleep, kill, play, work, etc? We do these things because they make our lives better.
But why do we care about making our lives enjoyable? Because we will all eventually die. Everything we do is because we know that one day, everything will end for us and the years that we lived will be all we ever had. If humans were immortal, completely unkillable, then nothing would matter because we would literally have all the time in the universe, everything that happened in the world would be random unnecessary events to us because it simply wouldn't matter.

What is the meaning of life? Death.

[pandakabob]

Brace yourselves, Religious debates by people who dont actually want to debate but rather just shout their opinions at people who disagree with no one learning anything in the end. Also winter. 

[caasinom]

I was really hoping this video would just be the number 42 on the screen for 4 minutes :D

[ffRahz]

To me it is to just enjoy life to its fullest while you can, don't worry what the meaning is because if you do, you're just wasting the time you have thinking about something that everyone sees differently

[Ouvii]

I LOVE the unscientific poll results. They are making me laugh like CRAZY.

[quirkemovez]

The meaning of life is to give life a meaning

[Ruby-qrgp]

Wow, 42 views as I'm watching this xDD

[TheRealFlenuan]

I'm glad Hank (an atheist) is answering this question.
Otherwise it might have been more like: "The meanin' o' life is the word o' Gawd in the Holy Bible cuz in th' beginnin', Gawd maked a magical garden an' then he maked a man from the dirt 'n' Adam was lonely 'n' so Gawd took his rib 'n' turned it into an inferior form of him cawled a 'female' named Even 'n' then Adam 'n' his partner Eve ate from the fruit of the tree which Gawd said they couldn't eat cuz th' talkin' demon snake on the tree told Eve to eat it 'n' she listened to the snake not almighty Gawd 'n' then they had kids 'n' their kids had incest kids and jus' a few generations later they all were evil 'n' so Gawd told an old drunken man to build a big ol' boat for his fam'ly 'n' they put two of each animal on it 'n' Gawd flooded the world 'n' everyone died 'n' then they got off the boat 'n' the Pyramids were built 'n' Jesus came down 'n' Jesus died to save us from Eve's sin so that Jesus who is also Gawd but also Gawd's son wouldn't have to burn babies in eternal fire anymore 'n' we all need to be good Christians 'n' thank Jesus fir dyin' fir us 'n' that there's the meanin' o' life. 'N' don't forgit t' vote Republican."

[pacioklot]

But what's the purpose of creating more life?

[DerekWorth]

The universe and everything... Forty-two.

[tehdarkswordsman]

I always thought that the meaning of life was 42

[TheRobotDevilInside]

But the question is, what gave the thing the instructions to replicate?
Why did it replicate? I mean, by doing so, it's meaning became to reproduce.
What gave it it's meaning; to reproduce?
Why did it create a chain of survival and competing?
Why did one of them abstain from their initial quest to reproduce and began devouring the others?