Proving that the Meaning of Life is not 42!

This is my rather amusing proof that the Meaning of Life can’t be 42 as stated by Douglas Adams in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books.

Proof By Contradiction:

  1. Take Meaning of Life (MoL)=42
  2. MoL = Purpose + People
  3. 42 = Purpose + People
  4. There are about 6 billion People on earth, so..
  5. 42 = Purpose + 6billion
  6. Purpose = 42 - 6billion
  7. So, Purpose = - 5,000,000,042

Purpose can’t be a NEGATIVE value, because purpose is a GOOD thing and therefore is POSITIVE. This means that the Meaning of Life cannot be 42, because it would require Purpose to be a negative value (which it clearly isn’t).

Hmmm…. Coming to think of it, this is a bit random. But I guess that’s why I named this the Random Blog!!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Philosophy . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Proving that the Meaning of Life is not 42!”

  • Jase Says:
    February 14th, 2007 at 12:17 am

    Proof by contradiction?

  • rakie_love Says:
    February 25th, 2007 at 1:55 am

    So you assume that purpose has the same units as people? This must be so or you cannot subtract one from the other.

    Also, on what do you premise that the meaning of life is purpose + people? If that *is* the meaning of life, then why didn’t the mice say that instead of 42?

    Does good always = positive? Maybe when we are talking about numbers of oranges, but less so when talking about number of pages left to read in “European Union Law” by Chalmers et al

    I think the real question is: how many oranges have you eaten today?

  • Liam Says:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm

    And who says the number 42 is a unit number.

    The meaning of life is open to opinion, as no one knows what the meaning of life is, so Douglas Adams thought it’d be a giggle to say he thinks the meaning of life is 42. It has no relation to anything apart from it being before 43 and after 41.

    What is the meaning of life? Surely if you can judge one mans opinion, you must have one of your own.

  • joel Says:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 6:51 pm

    >And who says the number 42 is a unit number.
    I do.

    Just to clarify it was actually a JOKE, not meant to be serious or taken seriously — of course the meaning of life can’t be a number, and obviously I didn’t take Douglas Adams seriously either. I mean how could anyone read Douglas Adams’ books and take them seriously?!?!

    What is the meaning of life? I’m still working that one out…

    :)

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