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A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

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

#231

Post by vacuity »

nateb2022 wrote: post #229
vacuity wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the universe is meaningless, and all the things in it are equally meaningless (ourselves included) That is an assumption in itself. No one is obligated to act under that premise. > How is it possible to create meaning? I guess we could just declare that this thing has meaning, but isn't this just a delusion? Like thinking 0 + 0 = 1? We perceive meaning all the time. This thread came to be because many people hol…

> That is an assumption in itself. No one is obligated to act under that premise. No, it is not. By definition, "[t]he universe is often defined as "the totality of existence", or everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist."[0] If we hold that everything is without meaning, we cannot hold that anything has meaning. It would be a contradiction. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

Even if the universe is all of existence, that the universe holds no meaning is an axiom. If that means that I can't hold anything to a meaning, I reject that axiom because I do hold things to have meaning. I'm not mindlessly typing out this reply; I have thoughts about philosophy that I think to present. I at least hold meaning for studying philosophy and participating in a discussion about philosophy.

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

#232

Post by naasking »

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…

> It means somehow intersecting 'play' with 'work', but as many people say: 'work is something people don't do voluntarily'.

I don't think that's true. Lots of work can be fun and satisfying as well. I think the distinction between work and play is more about purpose. Work has a purpose, a specific goal that we're working towards, and play does not.

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

#233

Post by beltsazar »

chronofar wrote: post #224
beltsazar wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, thanks for the compelling discussion so far. > To be honest I'm now a bit confused on your position, as you explicitly brought up points in your previous post that elucidated some of the cracks in attempting to treat survival as the "one true goal": > ... > perhaps first I should ask how this line of questioning doesn't lead you away from survival as the ultimate objective function. To be clear, I don't…

> First of all, thanks for the compelling discussion so far. Likewise thank you for the compelling discussion and clarifications. > To be clear, I don't hold any strong position. All my previous comments are based on the assumption that the three premises I wrote in the very beginning of the first post are true, but I'm not arguing that those premises are true. I was just elaborating the implications if they were tru…

> So ultimately I think that not only is survival not the "ultimate purpose," I think it's difficult to argue there is any intrinsic purpose there at all.

Maybe I was not explaining it clearly enough, but I agreed with this. Similarly to what you said here, I said in the original post that to survive and to reproduce is more of a tautology than a purpose. What I meant is that if there must be a purpose of life, survival would be the closest thing to it, but in some strict senses of "purpose", it is not a purpose.

What's more interesting is the second implication, which suggests that there would be no objective morality if the three premises were true. I wonder if you agree that there's an objective morality. Or, to put it into a question, how do you think humans, almost universally, can distinguish good from bad?

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

#234

Post by beltsazar »

ElFitz wrote: post #186
kogus wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it says: It's actually no more of a purpose than a tautology. It just happens that a species that survives and reproduces will continue to live. Without a creator, there is no real “purpose” at all. Everything came from nothing, will end as nothing, and is ultimately irrelevant. Everything. As a Christian, I sometimes look over into that chasm and wonder how atheists bear it.

> As a Christian, I sometimes look over into that chasm and wonder how atheists bear it. Personally, it’s been easy. I realised it one day on my own. It felt dreadful. Then I realised feeling dreadful about it was ultimately pointless since nothing could be done about it. And I moved on.

> Then I realised feeling dreadful about it was ultimately pointless ... And I moved on

But when you really think about it, moving on is as pointless as feeling dreadful. In fact, anything is as pointless as anything else. It might seem like an insane question, but why exactly is moving on somehow more desirable than feeling dreadful, if everything, including the universe itself, will be gone?

Life is about the journey, not the end, many people would argue. But in reality, most people live their life with long-term thinking. People study hard, so they can get a good job. Then they work hard, so they can retire comfortably. There's always delayed gratification in most life stages and even life activities (saving, exercising, dieting).

If life were all about the journey, we wouldn't need to feel pity for those who "wasted" their life, as long as they enjoyed it. Being drug addicts and die at twenties would not be "less" then being a president, they would be just.. different. But no, most of us think they are not just different, and it says something about human beings.

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

#235

Post by chronofar »

beltsazar wrote: post #233
chronofar wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First of all, thanks for the compelling discussion so far. Likewise thank you for the compelling discussion and clarifications. > To be clear, I don't hold any strong position. All my previous comments are based on the assumption that the three premises I wrote in the very beginning of the first post are true, but I'm not arguing that those premises are true. I was just elaborating the implications if they were tru…

> So ultimately I think that not only is survival not the "ultimate purpose," I think it's difficult to argue there is any intrinsic purpose there at all. Maybe I was not explaining it clearly enough, but I agreed with this. Similarly to what you said here, I said in the original post that to survive and to reproduce is more of a tautology than a purpose. What I meant is that if there must be a purpose of life, survi…

> Maybe I was not explaining it clearly enough, but I agreed with this. Similarly to what you said here, I said in the original post that to survive and to reproduce is more of a tautology than a purpose. What I meant is that if there must be a purpose of life, survival would be the closest thing to it, but in some strict senses of "purpose", it is not a purpose.

Ah, well apologies I spent several replies only to be redundant :-).

> I wonder if you agree that there's an objective morality.

I don't think there is an intrinsic value function we can perceive/verify writ into the universe. There could be one or many, but I don't think we're presently in a position to assert what it is with any degree of confidence beyond wild speculation. This doesn't leave us with pure subjectivity/relativism, I think it just means we need to use a priori means to arrive at value functions. And once you do reason yourself to a value function or combination of value functions there are objective (though often quite difficult to analyze) answers to its optimization.

So I don't think there can be pure objectivity in value assignment, however once you bootstrap into value propositions, which could be so universally recognized so as to be very difficult to argue against (the reduction of suffering for instance), there are objective answers to optimizing for those values.

> Or, to put it into a question, how do you think humans, almost universally, can distinguish good from bad?

Without rigor I think most people instinctively tend to distinguish good from bad (insofar as those words have real meaning) by way of empathy, by the recognition of one's own internal desires and suffering and joy and recognizing the same states in others. The golden rule if you will, it's about as inherent a moral compass as I can think of.

And this indeed could be traced back to evolutionary origins and our sociability as a species. It's also quite fallible, and at scale you can see it break down again and again (empathy is a face to face sort of mechanism and tends to struggle to maintain its hold at a distance over space and time and in large numbers we find ourselves congregating and competing in, and as already noted good/bad are pretty poor substitutes for the complicated situations we find ourselves in at scale, and our evolutionary toolset is rather lacking in getting us to pay attention to the nuance and working through optimization deliberately), thus I think one could give pretty good reasons why this should not be an overriding guiding value function but rather a sort of starter's pack.

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

#236

Post by ElFitz »

beltsazar wrote: post #234
ElFitz wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a Christian, I sometimes look over into that chasm and wonder how atheists bear it. Personally, it’s been easy. I realised it one day on my own. It felt dreadful. Then I realised feeling dreadful about it was ultimately pointless since nothing could be done about it. And I moved on.

> Then I realised feeling dreadful about it was ultimately pointless ... And I moved on But when you really think about it, moving on is as pointless as feeling dreadful. In fact, anything is as pointless as anything else. It might seem like an insane question, but why exactly is moving on somehow more desirable than feeling dreadful, if everything, including the universe itself, will be gone? Life is about the journ…

> But when you really think about it, moving on is as pointless as feeling dreadful.

Yes.

> In fact, anything is as pointless as anything else.

Absolutely.

> It might seem like an insane question, but why exactly is moving on somehow more desirable than feeling dreadful, if everything, including the universe itself, will be gone?

It isn’t. Once we’ve reached the conclusion that anything and everything is vain and pointless, we are simply faced with a choice. One that sure is as pointless as everything else. And one to which everyone is ultimately free to find whatever answer, or lack of answer they please. For better or worse we are alive, whatever that means, and it will probably only last so long. What will we do with that?

Edit: basically, to be unoriginal, "To be or not to be".

Some will believe they are entitled to have an opinion on others’ answers. Some will say it’s nobody’s business. Some are convinced they somehow have a somewhat universal answer. Others try to coerce others into what will benefit them.

> Life is about the journey, not the end, many people would argue. But in reality, most people live their life with long-term thinking.

I’d argue many believe they do, but few actually do. Considering their many long term impacts on quality of life, obesity and tobacco addiction are a few examples that come to mind.

> People study hard, so they can get a good job. Then they work hard, so they can retire comfortably. There's always delayed gratification in most life stages and even life activities (saving, exercising, dieting).

> If life were all about the journey, we wouldn't need to feel pity for those who "wasted" their life, as long as they enjoyed it.

I would argue that most have no clue as to what they are talking about. Myself included.

> Being drug addicts and die at twenties would not be "less" then being a president, they would be just.. different. But no, most of us think they are not just different, and it says something about human beings.

It sure does.

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