The Amoral Cosmos, Accidental Ethics, and What Our Platforms Reveal
Late Night MBA musings : short conversation
The air in the hostel common room was thick with the scent of instant coffee and impending deadlines. Stacks of textbooks and printouts littered the table between Geeta and Sonu, but their discussion had long since drifted from case studies and market analysis of the year 1998. Outside, the city hummed, a distant, indifferent backdrop to their late-night existential detour.
Geeta leaned back, rubbing her temples. "Seriously though, Sonu. We just spent three hours analyzing corporate power structures and leadership styles, and all I can think is... isn't it just the same thing everywhere? Like, the guy at the top, the one with the most leverage, just... wins?"
Sonu, hunched over a cold cup of coffee, nodded slowly. "Yeah, it feels less about merit sometimes, and more about just... who has the power. It's like that cynical quote we read for that one philosophy elective, remember? Something about the universe having a fundamental 'equation'?"
"Oh God, that one," Geeta groaned, but a flicker of interest was in her eyes. "The 'Limits of Universe' thing? Where it's always X is powerful, Y is less powerful? And that's just... how it is?"
"Exactly!" Sonu snapped his fingers. "It's not about good or evil, right? Just potential energy gradients, leverage, market share... whatever you want to call power. And the universe itself doesn't care. Dr. Sharma was saying something similar about chaos theory the other day – how beneath the patterns, it's just... randomness. Like, total, unpredictable randomness." He gestured vaguely. "Like trying to map every single tiny variable affecting the stock market. It's just a giant, branching tree of random events."
Geeta frowned. "So, you're saying, like, the rise of a massive, unstoppable corporation, or even... a dictator, is just a random, powerful branch on that tree? Because the universe doesn't have any moral values to stop it?"
"Pretty much," Sonu said, looking uncomfortable but sticking to the logic. "If there's no inherent 'good' or 'bad' built into the system, and power follows its own rules, then yeah. Dictators arise from those laws. It's just power filling a vacuum created by randomness."
"That's... depressing," Geeta muttered. "So, are we just born without any built-in sense of right and wrong then? Is that what that implies?"
Sonu shrugged. "That was the other part of that philosophy stuff, right? That moral and ethics are accidental and situational. They're not, like, ingredients of the common man. Or even of someone who's super religious, necessarily."
"But that can't be true!" Geeta protested. "People are good. They help each other. Religions teach morality."
"They teach codes, yeah," Sonu conceded. "But is the capacity for morality an ingredient, or is it something we learn? Something that's totally dependent on where you grew up, who taught you, the specific situation you're in? Look at how business ethics change depending on the country, or even the company culture. What's okay here is totally not okay there. It feels... situational."
Geeta was quiet for a moment, processing. "Okay, fine. Maybe it's situational. But if the universe is just random, and we're just accidentally ethical... why do some random things feel so incredibly significant? Like, a total coincidence that changes your whole plan?"
Sonu leaned back, stretching. "Ah, coincidence. Yeah, Dr. Sharma would say that's just our brains trying to find patterns in randomness. It's statistically bound to happen sometimes."
"But some feel too big for that!" Geeta insisted. "Like, meeting someone randomly who gives you exactly the contact you needed, or missing a flight because of a weird delay, only to find out that flight had issues. It feels like... yes, some events are created to create new futures."
"Created by what, though?" Sonu asked, echoing Sam from the other fictional conversation.
"I don't know!" Geeta threw her hands up. "Not necessarily a plan, but maybe... a necessary glitch? A pivot point in randomness? Whatever it is, the coincidence itself feels clear when it happens. And the consequences? Once that thing happens, the fallout, the next steps... they feel totally inevitable. Consequences are crystal clear."
Sonu nodded slowly. "Okay, yeah. I get that. Like, the initial random spark of a new tech trend... feels like a coincidence. But once it catches? The market disruption, the new business models... crystal clear consequences." He paused, then grinned. "Speaking of random sparks and clear consequences... think about social media."
"Oh God," Geeta laughed. "How does that fit into our amoral, random universe?"
"Well," Sonu said, picking up his phone. "Think about Twitter, back in the day. It felt like it used to expose the 'brains' of people. Just the raw, unfiltered, immediate reaction. Whatever popped into your head, out it went. Impulse, emotion, half-baked thoughts."
"Totally!" Geeta agreed. "Just... brain vomit sometimes."
"Right," Sonu continued. "But now, with X... maybe it's trying to expose something else? With longer posts, different content types... maybe it's trying to expose Minds of the people? Like, what people actually believe, their deeper arguments, their whole messy worldview? Though," he added with a wry look, "you still get plenty of brain vomit."
Geeta smiled. "So, even our apps reflect this whole thing? The random impulse versus the structured thought? The surface versus the... maybe not 'moral ingredient', but the built-up ethical layer?"
"Maybe," Sonu said, looking at his phone screen, then back at the scattered books. "It's a lot to think about, isn't it? Power, randomness, accidental ethics, meaningful coincidences, and... what our phones show the world."
Geeta sighed, running a hand through her hair again. "Yeah. And we have an ethics case study due tomorrow."
Sonu chuckled. "Maybe we should just write about how ethics are accidental and situational?"
"And get an F?" Geeta retorted, but the thought lingered in the air between them, a small, unsettling truth in the face of their looming academic tasks. The rain outside had stopped, but the questions they had stirred up felt just as vast and uncertain as the night sky over the city.
Key Takeaways from the Conversation:
The universe might operate on fundamental principles of power disparity and randomness, which could explain phenomena like the rise of powerful entities (including dictators or corporations) as amoral outcomes.
Morality and ethics may not be inherent qualities we are born with, but rather learned, situational constructs heavily influenced by context and circumstance.
Even in a random world, "coincidences" feel significant and can act as pivotal events that steer future outcomes, with their consequences becoming clear in hindsight.
Social media platforms like Twitter and X can expose different layers of human thought – from immediate, unfiltered "brains" to more structured "Minds" – reflecting the complexity of our inner lives.
What did you learn from this conversation incidence, Do you think , Universe is random, and religion has an adequate karma theory to explain it ..