Related, one of my favorite joke twitter accounts is Nihilist Arby's:
A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
151–160 of 261 posts
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
#152The older I get, the more deeply weird and mystical this whole range of questions feels to me. It only recently occurred to me, for example, while reading about Whitehead's process philosophy, that even if he was right, and that by learning about process philosophy I'd discovered a radically different and more energizing explanation for what the fundamental nature of reality is, it just wouldn't matter; I couldn't pr…
I tend to spend a good amount of time thinking about similar types of questions. I like to think my own philosophical developments over the years have allowed me to build a healthier relationship with my own existence. An old friend recently told me that life seemed "easier" for me these days.
So while it is quite difficult to say for sure (correlation != causation), I do think that sometimes these questions can be helpful.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
#153> Existence, he says, is fundamentally playful
If existence is playful it is not without meaning IMO. Its not nihilistic.
Instead its more like a game, an adventure.
The meaning of play is both for fun and also to learn new things.
Play-based learning.
To me this sounds more like the Hindu concept of "lila" or play/sport/spontaneous action rather than nihilism.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Jesus is probably the most discussed/doubted/critiqued figure in history - certainly we've had more time to find out his flaws and the flaws of his followers than we have of science. And yet he hasn't been relegated to the dust heap of history like Baal and Thor. Well, to be fair, Jesus was the central figure of the religion of the people you're talking about and for a long time outing yourself as a non-believer wa…
> Well, to be fair, Jesus was the central figure of the religion of the people you're talking about and for a long time outing yourself as a non-believer was "problematic" for your well-being and status in society. Not before many, including the earliest Christian leaders, were killed for their belief in Jesus. Christianity has proven to be a determined startup.
A start-up that mostly flourished after they were bought out by the enormous Roman Empire.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Jesus is probably the most discussed/doubted/critiqued figure in history - certainly we've had more time to find out his flaws and the flaws of his followers than we have of science. And yet he hasn't been relegated to the dust heap of history like Baal and Thor. Well, to be fair, Jesus was the central figure of the religion of the people you're talking about and for a long time outing yourself as a non-believer wa…
While what you say is true to some extent for Western Christianity, the fact remains that Christianity has taken deep root in a number of places in the world that were free of western biases, e.g., China, Korea, Africa, and South America. A huge diversity of cultures have had their own struggles with Christianity.
An even more interesting comparison is the Eastern Christians of Greece, Russia, the Middle East, etc. Their theology and relationship with science has been fundamentally and increasingly different than the West since the Great Schism.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
What most people believe has no bearing on the truth; truth isn't a democracy, so your point lacks meaning. His point, was truth, you make your own meaning in this world.
>His point, was truth, you make your own meaning in this world That is an entirely subjective belief. You and I might hold that opinion, but the majority of people in the world do not. For them, the "truth" about the meaning of life is externally imposed and exists outside any one person's opinion.
That one can make ones own meaning is objectively true, that there exists outside meaning is only subjectively true as there's no evidence such an outside force exists while ones own existence is not in question, so no, what I stated was objectively true while what most people believe is only subjectively true.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why?
Because one of the main payoffs from getting here to the nearest habitable star system is that you're now closer to more habitable star systems. But if turns out that it's very very expensive to get from one star system to another, then that recursive payoff might be very close to zero.
Are you saying you think we have to completely deplete all resources in a stellar system to colonize the next? There is way more energy to harvest in a star system than that.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
#158Nihilism is a question about meaning, not an answer, so this author starts off in the wrong place by trying to find a meaning - as most do who take the moniker of "Nihilist." Seems like the author is taking the absurdist/existentialist solution of choosing what is valuable. In this case trying to tie a more complex understanding of individualist hedonism ("feeling" meaning) with some kind of combinatorial pluralistic…
Camus would tell you that by killing yourself, you have utterly failed to embrace the absurd. I would say the same for anyone chasing scientific techno utopias.
Camus would tell you that by killing yourself you have utterly failed to embrace the absurd
As an absurdist (not a nihilist) of course he would!
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
#159> Science taught me that it's all just atoms and the void, so there can't be any deeper point or purpose to the whole thing; the kind of meaning most people yearn for — Ultimate Meaning — simply doesn't exist. I don't think that is something science can teach you. Science can give you the scientific method, but answering the question "Is the scientific method the only valid means of knowledge?" is philosophy not scie…
> I don't think that is something science can teach you Science can teach you that "it's all just atoms and the void"; the other part of the sentence is inference. And interestingly a similar inference as I made as a teenager, though I wasn't eloquent enough to really discuss it with anybody. The basic premise is that if you reject the notion of a deity, there isn't even any standard by which any configuration of the…
> Science can teach you that "it's all just atoms and the void"
Science can only teach you about things that can be measured. There are limits to what we can measure. For example, can we accept string theory to be true without being able to measure the activity from the additional dimensions it predicts? How do we get around the problems of quantum physics where the movement of particles cannot be measured without altering the state of those particles?
I'd suggest that whilst science is a noble endeavour, there will be limits to what we can discover scientifically. At this point, will we find that scientific leaders fall back on 'leaps of faith' to explain what we can only form an educated guess at? Time will tell.
Going back to the "all just atoms and the void" statement, we can't even say that without understanding what dark matter and dark energy are, as there's good evidence that they are something that exists beyond the "atoms and the void" we're currently familiar with.
Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Jesus is probably the most discussed/doubted/critiqued figure in history - certainly we've had more time to find out his flaws and the flaws of his followers than we have of science. And yet he hasn't been relegated to the dust heap of history like Baal and Thor. Well, to be fair, Jesus was the central figure of the religion of the people you're talking about and for a long time outing yourself as a non-believer wa…
While what you say is true to some extent for Western Christianity, the fact remains that Christianity has taken deep root in a number of places in the world that were free of western biases, e.g., China, Korea, Africa, and South America. A huge diversity of cultures have had their own struggles with Christianity.
While I can't speak about every culture, in W. Africa, Christianity took root because the colonial powers brought missionaries who established religious schools wherein the practice of traditional religion was impossible. For the longest time, these were the only schools available so the educated became Christian, and thus the powerful and well-connected were all Christian as a result.