Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

meltingasphalt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 236 posts

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#21

Post by gooseus »

Long post and having only skimmed it for now, I think I mostly agree... though I don't think I could ever call myself a nihilist.

The last section captures what I've tried to say in my own (not currently online) writing on the subject of life, existence, and purpose/meaning.

> As far as we know, we and our societies take the prize for being the most complex structures the universe has yet evolved.

This is where I end up in a lot of my own musings on the subject. Another point I typically make is that we KNOW that the immense diversity and complexity that exists on Earth will end in the future, unless some intelligence is able to spread life outside of Earth.

Personally, I think that one of the most important human activities should be actively trying to seed other nebula, stars, and planets with archaic life, since this increases the overall probability that life will continue to evolve somewhere, even if humans fail to expand beyond Earth.

We could be parallelizing the process of life across worlds and creating potential for other interesting life to evolve to solve the unique problems of other parts of the universe. By spreading life from Earth, we also increase the likelihood that future intelligence could find evidence of our (and each others) existence, which would be _very_ interesting (for them), and could help them get through the difficulties we face now.

I'm not sure how you resolve the opening of "we're just here to fart around / dance" nihilism with what you mention at the end about how Earth, life, and humans being the most complex and interesting thing going in the universe, but I like the style/format, and I'm definitely going to give this a longer read later. Thanks for sharing!

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#22

Post by z3c0 »

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #15
grrdotcloud wrote: post #9

I am always curious why one continues to believe the beliefs that lead to pain, suffering, and unhappiness. Even if correct is being miserable worth it?

It's morally repulsive to me to believe something just because it makes me feel better.

If it's morally repulsive to do otherwise, wouldn't this stance be for the sake of feeling better?

I do agree with you; I just love the barber paradox as well.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#23

Post by notnaut »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #14
adasdasdas wrote: post #3

Can "nihilists" stop conflating rejecting objective meaning with having no meaning (nihilism).

This topic interests me, but I've never really studied it. Would you mind sketching out your take on it?

The universe has no ethics. Humanity has no ethics inherent, besides that which is directly encoded in our dna. That doesn’t mean it’s not good/useful for people to have ethics. That doesn’t mean it’s not a meaningful pursuit, to people in a context. It’s just that the context holds the value, rather than the thing itself.

I think nihilism often goes beyond this though.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#24

Post by cosmojg »

pmarreck wrote: post #4

> This may be nihilism, but at least it's good-humored. Whiffed on the fact that humor itself here is meaning. Explaining away positive experiences as "illusory" (which is, without evidence that it IS in fact "illusory" instead of just being conjecture based on currently-known facts, simply "gaslighting" to me), is the problem of nihilism (IMHO). Anyone ever consider the odd fact that every nonliving thing in the uni…

You reminded me of this old article: "A New Physics Theory of Life" https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-o...

I've always thought of biological life as being the macroscopic analog of enzymes. We're literally big balls of protein catalyzing reactions and overcoming activation energies to accelerate the heat death of the universe.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#25

Post by sezycei »

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #15
grrdotcloud wrote: post #9

I am always curious why one continues to believe the beliefs that lead to pain, suffering, and unhappiness. Even if correct is being miserable worth it?

It's morally repulsive to me to believe something just because it makes me feel better.

Why?

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#26

Post by supazek »

pmarreck wrote: post #4

> This may be nihilism, but at least it's good-humored. Whiffed on the fact that humor itself here is meaning. Explaining away positive experiences as "illusory" (which is, without evidence that it IS in fact "illusory" instead of just being conjecture based on currently-known facts, simply "gaslighting" to me), is the problem of nihilism (IMHO). Anyone ever consider the odd fact that every nonliving thing in the uni…

>living things take this weird detour into lower entropy

Take a look at “Into the Cool” by Eric Schneider and Dorian Sagan. It’s about as academic as it can be while remaining accessible. It’s basic premise builds off of the truism that “nature abhors a gradient” and attempts to lay out a theory that the gradient of solar energy falling on the planet (along with a plethora of other rarer factors) generated higher-complexity constructs as a way to absorb and reduce that gradient. There are plenty of non-living phenomena in nature which are subtly very organized but which result in net increases in entropy in the longer term. One of the examples described in the book are a kind of voronoi cell pattern that emerges when heating a thin layer of oil which succeeds in reducing the temperature gradient very effectively. Even if it isn’t a hard hitting proof of the abiogenetic mechanism it is still a very interesting read.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#27

Post by verisimi »

gooseus wrote: post #21

Long post and having only skimmed it for now, I think I mostly agree... though I don't think I could ever call myself a nihilist. The last section captures what I've tried to say in my own (not currently online) writing on the subject of life, existence, and purpose/meaning. > As far as we know, we and our societies take the prize for being the most complex structures the universe has yet evolved. This is where I end…

>> As far as we know, we and our societies take the prize for being the most complex structures the universe has yet evolved.

> This is where I end up in a lot of my own musings on the subject. Another point I typically make is that we KNOW that the immense diversity and complexity that exists on Earth will end in the future, unless some intelligence is able to spread life outside of Earth.

"Knowing" is NOT a group activity. Either one knows (because one has personally verified whatever-it-is) or one believes/assumes/hypothesises.

PS

The point of my comment being that if one doesn't understand what "knowing" is, I don't see how it is possible to approach finding "meaning".

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#28

Post by pmarreck »

sezycei wrote: post #25
downWidOutaFite wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's morally repulsive to me to believe something just because it makes me feel better.

Why?

(I wrote this whole comment to you only to find out just now that you deleted the original comment. Sorry, I had to convey it somehow. LOL)

I understand your confusion about using "entropy" outside a thermodynamics context, and you're absolutely correct to point out that the term "entropy" originated in the field of thermodynamics. However, the concept has been extended metaphorically in other fields to describe systems of complexity and order. It's in this latter, metaphorical sense that I'm using the term.

Now, let's apply this to living systems. Organisms are highly ordered, containing complex structures at various scales from cells to organs. They can maintain and even increase their internal order, or decrease their "entropy," by consuming energy from their environment (like food). This is the "detour into lower entropy" I was talking about.

While this seems to contradict the second law of thermodynamics, remember that organisms are not closed systems – they constantly exchange energy and matter with their environment. The increase in order within the organism is more than offset by the increase in disorder in the environment, resulting in an overall increase in entropy in the universe. This is completely consistent with the second law of thermodynamics.

What I find fascinating is that life can maintain this high degree of organization for such a long period of time, despite the natural tendency towards disorder. This is not to say that the process is unexplained; science has a lot to say about how this happens, but rather that it's a remarkable (and seemingly unique) characteristic of life. Does this make more sense? I hope this clarifies the concept a bit.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#29

Post by adasdasdas »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #14
adasdasdas wrote: post #3

Can "nihilists" stop conflating rejecting objective meaning with having no meaning (nihilism).

This topic interests me, but I've never really studied it. Would you mind sketching out your take on it?

It goes back to the answer to the question of, "what is the meaning of life", or its darker brother of a question "why bother living when you can kill yourself and end the suffering".

A Christian might respond with, "God tells me to live and spread the gospel, raise children, and feed the needy". A Christian will tell you that this is how you ought to think too because all truth comes from the bible, which is why I call it objective meaning. There is a single source of truth.

An atheist might say, "I find meaning through living life, understanding the world, human connection, etc". This person will usually readily admit that what makes them happy might not make you happy. Hence, subjective meaning.

A real nihilist in my opinion would probably kill themself because there is not purpose in life. A fake nihilist will say, "I can make sense of my suffering" which makes them not a nihilist because they found meaning.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#30

Post by speak_plainly »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #19
disadvantage wrote: post #17

> In lieu of meaning, I mostly adopted the attitude of Alan Watts. Existence, he says, is fundamentally playful. It's less like a journey, and more like a piece of music or a dance. And the point of dancing isn't to arrive at a particular spot on the floor; the point of dancing is simply to dance. Vonnegut expresses a similar sentiment when he says, "We are here on Earth to fart around." Ikigai[0] is worth exploring…

I don’t think making work a form of play is feasible (perhaps easy is a better word) for most people, simply because of the nature of their job. Without some creative and exploratory aspect, it’s just menial, boring, devoid of any stimulation. I am lucky enough that my work is such, but I got extremely lucky and basically made it my reality.

I think the way to look at it perhaps is that there is an element of challenge in play and an opportunity to win. So a job can be boring and menial but you have the opportunity to be the best in the world at what you're doing and you can treat every day as a challenge and opportunity at excellence, and in turn any job can be fun.

You could easily look at chess as menial, boring, and devoid of any stimulation but it's possible to find fun in that. Everyone should stop taking everything so seriously and challenge themselves to be the best.

Post reply on HN