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“Nihilism is OK” is not OK

meaningness.com

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Re: “Nihilism is OK” is not OK

#61

Post by aogaili »

My personal take on this, is that life is not only meaningless, it is in fact absurd. That is to say, it is beyond reason or logic, not in a supernatural or spiritual way, no, it fails to compute or make any sense when subjected to intense hardcore reasoning.

Yet, given that, what options do you really have if any? Why do we wake up in the morning and do something instead of doing nothing?

By the time you grow to be able to comprehend the incomprehensible, the absurdity and meaninglessness of human conscious existence and subjective experience, then it is too late, you are already tangled in a web of relations and responsibilities, surely you are paying some bills to enable you to read this, or you believed in some simplistic story about life and death, or you have narrowed your scope of thinking, or busy yourself with the hedonistic pursue of pleasure.

And if you conclude against living and your brain is still functioning, you'll sense hanger, fear, anxiety, etc, your hardwired survival instincts will kick-in and override your thinking, it would push you out of bed. In other words, if you are not severely depressed, you won't have enough pain threshold to commit suicide. Thus, you don't really have a choice but to wake up and do something until you fail to do so or it gets too painful to continue. You can tell yourself a nice story to make sense of it all, or you can just accept the absurdity and lack of control and leave hacker news to enjoy the outdoors and hangout with someone, and try to do some good (minimize suffering) while you can.

Re: “Nihilism is OK” is not OK

#62

Post by danaris »

rjbwork wrote: post #31
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individualism is a closed system. Any attempt to find meaning in isolation as a lone consciousness is subject to the same kind of force as the entropy of closed physical systems. It becomes almost impossible to pattern match on significance because the dataset is too small and the variance in factors that might influence our thinking is too great. All Nihilists are focused only on their own existence because they fai…

And yet, as Sartre shows us in No Exit, it is the very presence of other humans and our being forced to view ourselves from the perspective of others that causes us so much existential dread and pain. The mere presence of other sentient beings which perceive, judge, interpret, and conceive of us in some abstract mental model of our being, as opposed to the actual and/or self-perception of our being, causes untold psy…

> And yet, as Sartre shows us in No Exit, it is the very presence of other humans and our being forced to view ourselves from the perspective of others that causes us so much existential dread and pain.

I've never been entirely clear on whether Sartre intended this or not, but it always seemed glaringly obvious to me that the problem in Huis Clos was not that they were trapped for eternity with other people: it was the specific other people they were trapped with. People who magnified all their own flaws and threw them back in their faces.

If, instead, you were bound for eternity to people with whom you shared mutual respect, understanding, and commitment to each other's happiness, that would be heaven.

It is not truly that "hell is other people", whatever Sartre might say. Isolation is the worst punishment we have in this lifetime. Being condemned to an eternity of isolation would truly be hell.

Even if you started out with people you couldn't stand, and spent aeons torturing each other, what's to say you couldn't then come to some form of co-commitment to happiness with them?

Heaven and hell are defined by how we interact with the people around us.

Re: “Nihilism is OK” is not OK

#63

Post by rramadass »

Talanes wrote: post #54
rramadass wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Patently Wrong!

The societies that dominate others through violence need an even more advanced moral system around killing than those that don't. "Killing is wrong" is enough to get some basic internal stability around, but to start pillaging your neighbors you need a moral code with loopholes.

There is nothing called "Advanced" Moral System, just "Different" ones. "Morality" is entirely Subjective and evolves over Time. Thus it can be used to do and justify anything.

Re: “Nihilism is OK” is not OK

#64

Post by kongin »

0-_-0 wrote: post #58
kongin wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it caused no other harm yes. Because you would still get to live a long life, just not inflict it on someone else.

Why is living bad? Would you rather not live right now?

Killing something alive is different to not creating a life. Asking me to kill myself is a rather poor attempt at a gotcha.

The better question is why aren't you having children as often as possible if you think life is worth while. On average any fertile couple can produce around 12 children, if you're not on track to have that number of children but think that life is so grand then why aren't you?

The difference between you and me is that you're ok with not creating 9 to 11 lives during your reproductive age, I'm ok with not creating 12.

Re: “Nihilism is OK” is not OK

#65

Post by 0-_-0 »

kongin wrote: post #64
0-_-0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is living bad? Would you rather not live right now?

Killing something alive is different to not creating a life. Asking me to kill myself is a rather poor attempt at a gotcha. The better question is why aren't you having children as often as possible if you think life is worth while. On average any fertile couple can produce around 12 children, if you're not on track to have that number of children but think that life is so grand then why aren't you? The difference be…

Would you prefer to not have been born in the first place?

I'll have enough children to sustain humanity and keep consciousness in the universe, having 2.1 children still means a potentially infinite line of descendants, so no reason to have 12. 12 would decrease the average well-being, while having none would decrease it as well.

Also, I would be interested what you think the crucial difference is between not continuing to live and not being born.

Re: “Nihilism is OK” is not OK

#66

Post by ryandvm »

kongin wrote: post #64
0-_-0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is living bad? Would you rather not live right now?

Killing something alive is different to not creating a life. Asking me to kill myself is a rather poor attempt at a gotcha. The better question is why aren't you having children as often as possible if you think life is worth while. On average any fertile couple can produce around 12 children, if you're not on track to have that number of children but think that life is so grand then why aren't you? The difference be…

> The better question is why aren't you having children as often as possible if you think life is worth while.

That's a pretty weak "gotcha" as well.

The reason I have had 3 children instead of 12 is because it balances my interest and desire to be a parent with the work/cost of doing so.

I doubt anyone's decision to reproduce is centered around bestowing the maximal amount of meaning to the universe.

Re: “Nihilism is OK” is not OK

#67

Post by ryandvm »

Barrin92 wrote: post #15

the article is purely didactic and pedagogical. Nihilism is bad for society, therefore it's not okay, without nihilism there's no morality, therefore it's not okay, and so on. It's a sort of finger-wagging attitude of a parent. This purely instrumental stance of viewing the world is basically just cope. A more mature and real approach is what you could call having an honest stance towards the world. If you come to th…

> Nonetheless it is necessary, because it has the benefit of being true.

Who cares about truth?

Ultimately, if you don't have absolute values handed down to you by magic, every other alternative we can construct are ultimately based on nothing more than natural preferences.

Re: “Nihilism is OK” is not OK

#68

Post by kongin »

0-_-0 wrote: post #65
kongin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing something alive is different to not creating a life. Asking me to kill myself is a rather poor attempt at a gotcha. The better question is why aren't you having children as often as possible if you think life is worth while. On average any fertile couple can produce around 12 children, if you're not on track to have that number of children but think that life is so grand then why aren't you? The difference be…

Would you prefer to not have been born in the first place? I'll have enough children to sustain humanity and keep consciousness in the universe, having 2.1 children still means a potentially infinite line of descendants, so no reason to have 12. 12 would decrease the average well-being, while having none would decrease it as well. Also, I would be interested what you think the crucial difference is between not contin…

>Also, I would be interested what you think the crucial difference is between not continuing to live and not being born.

It is the difference between killing two children and deciding to not have 10 extra ones.

Re: “Nihilism is OK” is not OK

#69

Post by [deleted] »

0-_-0 wrote: post #65
kongin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing something alive is different to not creating a life. Asking me to kill myself is a rather poor attempt at a gotcha. The better question is why aren't you having children as often as possible if you think life is worth while. On average any fertile couple can produce around 12 children, if you're not on track to have that number of children but think that life is so grand then why aren't you? The difference be…

Would you prefer to not have been born in the first place? I'll have enough children to sustain humanity and keep consciousness in the universe, having 2.1 children still means a potentially infinite line of descendants, so no reason to have 12. 12 would decrease the average well-being, while having none would decrease it as well. Also, I would be interested what you think the crucial difference is between not contin…

[deleted]

Re: “Nihilism is OK” is not OK

#70

Post by 0-_-0 »

kongin wrote: post #68
0-_-0 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you prefer to not have been born in the first place? I'll have enough children to sustain humanity and keep consciousness in the universe, having 2.1 children still means a potentially infinite line of descendants, so no reason to have 12. 12 would decrease the average well-being, while having none would decrease it as well. Also, I would be interested what you think the crucial difference is between not contin…

>Also, I would be interested what you think the crucial difference is between not continuing to live and not being born. It is the difference between killing two children and deciding to not have 10 extra ones.

That makes no sense, since children want to live, so you can't apply the logic to children, only to yourself.

So I ask you again, would you prefer not to have been born? And if yes, what's your argument for continuing your own life?

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