Whats up with the number 42? I keep seeing it a lot here, and there are many members who are hyping it up. Why? Thanks, Jozen-Bo Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything has a numeric solution in Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, a "simple answer" to The Ultimate Question is requested from the computer Deep Thought—specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer which turns out to be 42. Unfortunately, The Ultimate Question itself is unknown - suggesting on an allegorical level that it is more important to ask the right questions than to seek definite answers. When asked to produce The Ultimate Question, the computer says that it can't, but can help design an even more powerful computer (the Earth) which can. The programmers then embark on a further, ultimately futile, ten million year program to discover The Ultimate Question, a process that is hindered after eight million years by the unexpected arrival on Earth of the Golgafrinchans, and then ruined completely, five minutes before completion, when the Earth is destroyed by the Vogons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Answer_to_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything
In literature Many occurrences of the number 42 in pop culture can be attributed to homage to Douglas Adams's book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which the number 42 is The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. According to the fifth Hitchhiker volume, Mostly Harmless, 42 is the location of Stavromula Beta. Thus, 42 may be the world's longest written riddle, since the riddle of the question to the answer was raised in the first volume, and not answered until the final page of the fifth, and then passes unnoticed by the story's ever-bumbling characters. Douglas later (1994) created the 42 Puzzle, a game based on the number 42. Since Adams's book, people have looked for and found 42 in older literature, such as Shakespeare's plays and Carroll's Alice, which has 42 illustrations. In Chapter XII, the king explains "the oldest rule in the book": "Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court". For other meanings see
WTF??? You just let the cat out of the bag? Thanks KMGuru!!! I see there is a lot more to ask about then the original question. The book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy doesn't compare to the bizzareness of this link! I will have to further investigate it, as that number has been occurring a lot lately outside of my seeing it here. Thus, I asked. Thanks! I will probably have more questions after reading everything. Jozen-Bo Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
That depends on how the question is asked. What I meant to ask, is why does it appear to mean something to many people, and does it contain any signifigance, you really ought to check the link out by KMGuru. There's much more to the number then simply nothing. It has mathematical values of great interest! Not to mention the biblical and other strange things connected to it. If 42 has no meaning, then no numbers have any meaning, If this is that case, why are we learning math when its all a bunch of meaningless numbers?
Is that your view Shichimenshyo, or is that the book you are referring to in a joking manner. If that is your own view, could you build on it?
I do believe, from reading the book, that someone can in fact say that the real value to the universe is zero: Which would agree well with quantum theory of renormalization...
I thought that was obvious? Isn't there only 1 zero, not two or three? Then isn't the only value of zero 1? If so....err this is about 42!!! This is 42's spotlight. Where does 42 fit in to the scheme of things?
I don't need to check that link, Douglas Adams is a favourite writer of mine and I have read the books and am well aware of the number 42, and what D.Adams has said on it. Sometimes humans search for some deep meaning where there isn't any. p.s.
Well its the books view point. I however think that the book was trying to convey that the asnwer to everything does not make sense because the whole of existence doesnt make sense, we just are so why go trying to make meaning out of something that doesnt really have a meaning.:shrug:
So life is meaningless unless you write a book about how meaningless it is then that would be a meaning to the meaningless we are surrounded by, right? :shrug:
