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A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

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

#61

Post by gooseus »

disadvantage wrote: post #34
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…

> 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. I think merely one Voyager Record[0] is not enough. We need to be sending millions of these in all directions right throughout spa…

I agree to some extent, though I think the trade-off of sending lots of messages into space is lower than sending "seeds of life".

A message has encoded information that can communicate something we're trying to express to another life form, but what is that? How will they respond and what will that response be?

Much of the point of sending a message to other life is to find other life that can respond to us... but if we can't manage to make ourselves sustainable then a response may reach us too late for it to matter, I pessimistically think this is a very likely scenario.

Sending out millions/billions of seeds, and targeting worlds where we believe we'd arrive at an early-ish period of planetary development, we could potentially jump-start the evolution of life on multiple worlds. Perhaps these worlds develop their own intelligent life, or maybe it becomes a world filled with non-intelligent biodiversity with billions of new species with millions of new physical and chemical innovations that a future intelligent race (maybe even humans, assuming my pessimism is misplaced) could learn from.

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

#62

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

lisper wrote: post #55
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…

> We are here on Earth to fart around. Except that we're not. We are here on earth to make copies of our DNA. There are some ancillary effects of this (like sex and eating and the internet) but it's not like life doesn't have a purpose at all. It's just not a particularly hifallutin' one.

Or is there a better abstraction? We're here because intelligence is good, an organizational force. We're here to do that as approximately as we can.

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

#63

Post by tivert »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #36
mensetmanusman wrote: post #32

"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" Is this type of misunderstanding of what Science is that common? It's painfully lacking and I can't tell if it is written as sarcasm...

Yep, it's literally false. Astrophysicists estimate 5% of the universe is visible to us. Modern calculations say dark matter comprises about 27% of the Universe. Whatever else is out there, we truly do not know. https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/big-questions/what-universe-made

>>> "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"

> Yep, it's literally false. Astrophysicists estimate 5% of the universe is visible to us. Modern calculations say dark matter comprises about 27% of the Universe. Whatever else is out there, we truly do not know.

No. At worst it's only technically false, but broadly on the right track. If you're a materialist/physicalist; and Science requires you to take that position, at least methodologically; so "it's all just [particles, fields,] and the void."

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

#65

Post by gooseus »

verisimi wrote: post #27
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…

I say that "knowing" is very much a group activity, in fact, it's the only way one can even approach certainly that what one "knows" isn't just a hallucination or a dream.

We can only "know" by verifying that what we experience is consistent with the experience of others, this is the essence of repeatable scientific experimentation and peer-review in science... which is the group effort of improving the extent and accuracy of what we know, as a group.

You can argue for solipsism if that's what you want, but you ought to know you'll only be arguing with yourself.

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

#66

Post by mistermann »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #32

"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" Is this type of misunderstanding of what Science is that common? It's painfully lacking and I can't tell if it is written as sarcasm...

> Is this type of misunderstanding of what Science is that common?

Extremely common. Unless there is a substantial silent majority that believes otherwise, I suspect it has become the overwhelming norm amongst the general public, as well as a non-trivial percentage of actual scientists.

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

#67

Post by YellOh »

adasdasdas wrote: post #56
YellOh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a weirdly stringent test for nihilism. If a nihilist believes there is no meaning in living but also no meaning in dying, why would they default to dying? A lot of built-in taboos (e.g. against bodily damage) make living a "default" human choice, and unless you're also burying the assumption that without meaning one should actively seek death as soon as possible(?), it seems like nihilists could keep ridin…

When I think of nihilism, I think of depressed people who can't pick themselves up to do anything because of a feeling of hopelessness, or a man experiencing a mid life crisis wondering what he's worked so hard for. These people often resort unhealthy coping mechanisms or even worse, suicide.

You're equivocating between your stereotype of nihilism and what "real nihilists" "should" do to be considered a nihilist. Nihilism != depression, even if there is overlap, and it's useful to let the words have different meanings.

There are a decent number of people who are nihilists without meeting your assumptions above (though they're probably less salient, as if someone seems functional & not-miserable, people don't usually bother to ask whether they're a nihilist).

Nietzche defines nihilism (partially) as those who oppose the affirmation of life which is kind of related to what you say here... except the affirmation of life requires a "yes" to life such that "all of eternity [is] embraced, redeemed, justified and affirmed,"[0] which I think plenty of (functional, happy-ish) people do not experience.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzschean_affirmation

[Footnote: Nietzsche is writing against the nihilism he saw in his own time, not in favor.]

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

#68

Post by jononomo »

"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."

Sheesh, what kind of BS science did this guy get taught? Science discovered the Big Bang, which is essentially a proof of God's existence, and the more science we do around the molecular biology and the origin of life the more obvious it becomes that life was intelligently designed. At this point the existence of life can be considered a definitive proof of the existence of God.

This guy got a second-rate science education for sure.

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

#69

Post by lisper »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #62
lisper wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are here on Earth to fart around. Except that we're not. We are here on earth to make copies of our DNA. There are some ancillary effects of this (like sex and eating and the internet) but it's not like life doesn't have a purpose at all. It's just not a particularly hifallutin' one.

Or is there a better abstraction? We're here because intelligence is good, an organizational force. We're here to do that as approximately as we can.

Oh how I wish that were true, but unfortunately at the end of the day Darwin is running the show. Intelligence exists not because it's "good" but because genes that build brains that can solve problems reproduce better than genes that don't.

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

#70

Post by [deleted] »

pmarreck wrote: post #28
sezycei wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 syst…

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