
A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning - cmpb
http://www.meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/
======
jonstaab
Really enjoyed this. I love how practical, humble, and respectful (even of
religions, which I really appreciate) uncompromising nihilists tend to be. I
happen to be a Christian, so I could go on all day about meaning, but if I
could say one thing, it's this:

We all die, and it's more than likely even humanity will die out as well (even
if it's at the heat death of the universe). You've pretty much rejected the
possibility of true objective meaning, focusing instead on various ways of
measuring subjective meaning. But at the end of the day, anything times zero
is zero, which is fine if you're a nihilist, I guess. The focus in this
framework is on you and your "meaning graph", but cool thing about knowing an
ultimate God, is that he's a connection to your graph (both investing in your
meaning, and pulling from your meaning via worship), that sticks in a way
nothing else can. Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus,
nihilism is essentially true; Romans 4:17 says, God "gives life to the dead
and calls into existence the things that do not exist." From what I can see,
He's the only thing/idea/person that has the potential to provide any kind of
objective meaning, so however delusional religion may appear (and I'll admit
lots of it is deluded), there's only one God, and he is "the rock that is
higher than I".

~~~
rimantas
One can find much more objective meaning to existence without outsorcing it to
some imaginable friend.

    
    
      > Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus,
      > nihilism is essentially true
    

And folks who don't give a rat ass about what Christians believe do know that
nobody has monopoly on meaning and don't see the need to reduce everything
else to nihilism. It would be much nicer if religious people would only use
religion to measure those who are part of it, not those who are outside.

~~~
lliamander
> It would be much nicer if religious people would only use religion to
> measure those who are part of it, not those who are outside.

In my experience, they do focus most of that measurement internally.
Christians attend Sunday morning sermons, weekly Bible studies, confess their
sins to one another, read the Bible, read books on Christian living, etc. all
in an attempt to measure themselves against the tenets of their faith. The
Christian faith even talks about the ways in which Christians should be more
strict on fellow members of the Church than on outsiders.

But if you genuinely think you've found salvation and meaning, isn't it kind
of selfish to keep that to yourself?

~~~
bobwaycott
In my experience[0], most religious people use their religion to create and
foster a sense of difference with Others, and do not keep the focus
internally. American politics is a crucible of religious sources of
obligational determinism locked in combat with secular forces.

If you genuinely think you've found meaning, it's not selfish to keep it to
yourself, until such time as someone asks for your thoughts in their own
search for meaning. Which means it's likely to only happen with people you've
grown close enough to that they open their private selves to you.

[0]: A born-and-raised ethnic Christian who helped start two churches, whose
family is still extremely religious, and who lives in the still very religious
southeastern US.

~~~
lliamander
>In my experience[0], most religious people use their religion to create and
foster a sense of difference with Others, and do not keep the focus
internally.

Having lived in both religious and secular communities, it seems to me that
tribalism is a human universal. Secular people have no trouble judging the
religious by secular standards. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just not clear
about what the secularist complaint is at that point.

Also, my point was not that Christians (and religious people in general) never
pass judgement on the rest of the world, but that most outsiders don't see the
investment Christians make in subjecting themselves to scrutiny by the
standards of their beliefs.

Complaints about religious hypocrisy are sometimes relevant, but sometimes
they are a red-herring.

> American politics is a crucible of religious sources of obligational
> determinism locked in combat with secular forces.

Could you clarify what you mean by "obligational determinism"? The only google
search results I could find lead me back to this thread.

> If you genuinely think you've found meaning, it's not selfish to keep it to
> yourself, until such time as someone asks for your thoughts in their own
> search for meaning. Which means it's likely to only happen with people
> you've grown close enough to that they open their private selves to you.

I'm as annoyed by the door-to-door evangelists as the next person (I think
there are better approaches) but if you genuinely think other people might be
missing out on eternity, then isn't it a bit schadenfreude to not reach out to
them at all?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can respect a secular person who says
to a religious person "please don't talk to me about religion". Assuming the
secularist agrees to do the same, the theist should generally respect that
wish. I can also respect the secularist who engages theists and attempts to
dissuade them of their beliefs. It makes no sense to me that secularists
should ask theists in general to keep their beliefs private, as if they were
talking about the color of their underwear or something.

~~~
bobwaycott
Apologies for missing your reply till now, first of all.

> _Having lived in both religious and secular communities, it seems to me that
> tribalism is a human universal._

Unfortunately, this is all too true. I did not mean to imply the non-religious
were excluded from being tribal and differentiating themselves from Others, as
well. I was only responding from my experience that, particularly within the
public sphere, religion occupies just as strong a force in identity politics
as other personal features.

> _Could you clarify what you mean by "obligational determinism"? The only
> google search results I could find lead me back to this thread._

Thanks for asking. You've caused me to go back to an old text and discover I
had, somewhere over the years, inadvertently mis-remembered a particular
phrasing. The phrasing I should have used is "sources of religious obligation"
or "religious sources of obligation". Basically, minus the determinism—too
much time between studying and recalling philosophy led to a pretty boneheaded
error. I draw the phrase from the excellent debate between Robert Audi and
Nicholas Wolterstorff in _Religion in the Public Square: The Place of
Religious Convictions in Political Debate_. My error, over the years, is
rooted in a careless recollection of the role religious sources of obligation
play in _determining_ what a person thinks should or should not be done,
particularly where coercive public policies are concerned.

I apologize for the error.

~~~
lliamander
Thank you for the response, and for finding the reference.

> I was only responding from my experience that, particularly within the
> public sphere, religion occupies just as strong a force in identity politics
> as other personal features.

That is true. In contrast, one of my main points was that there is a
significant amount of private, sincere religious practice that is not
(primarily) political in nature.

I did not wish to downplay the role of religion in politics (which you
correctly point out is significant) but rather the role of politics in
religion.

Now, the question of what role religion _should_ play (or should be afforded)
in politics is an interesting one; one that I don't have a clear position on
at present. I read some Wolterstorff while I was studying philosophy, but I
don't recall that specific book. From what I have sampled so far it seems
quite interesting.

~~~
bobwaycott
> _Now, the question of what role religion should play (or should be afforded)
> in politics is an interesting one; one that I don 't have a clear position
> on at present._

I definitely recommend the Audi-Wolterstorff book. They both tackle this
specific issue from opposing perspectives, and I found it highly illuminating
at the time. It has remained with me to this day—even in misremembered form.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> 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 science. It seems the
author is trying to smuggle in a particular philosophy under the guise of
science.

~~~
njohnson41
Especially if you assume that the scientific method is always valid--that all
true statements can be determined empirically--you can't make statements like
"Ultimate Meaning doesn't/does exist". If Ultimate Meaning cannot be defined,
it cannot be tested for or measured, so no statements about it can be true or
false. The answer to meaning would not be false, but null (or maybe 42).

Just like 42, "atoms and the void" here is just a science-flavored attempt to
answer a non-question.

~~~
squidlogic
Positivism has fallen out of favor precisely because it cannot withstand its
own criteria for meaning.

For example, the statement that "all true statements can be determined
empirically" is not itself verifiable by empirical means.

~~~
grenoire
What if you do do the determination of all true statements empirically? Is
that not the empirical way to determine the truth of that all-inclusive
statement?

~~~
dragonwriter
> What if you do do the determination of all true statements empirically?

How would you demonstrate that you have done this? Particularly, how would you
demonstrate that there is no true statement which you have not empirically
demonstrated?

------
gglitch
The 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 produce a single example of how it would
materially affect my life or my relationships, except possibly by making me
one of those cocktail party bores who constantly talks about how amazing
process philosophy is. Maybe someone else could/did produce something
"meaningful," out of process philosophy, but for me, getting excited about
process philosophy turned out to be fairly meaningless even if the idea itself
is possibly-meaningful. Corollary: this may be one of the principle advantages
to being able to make art, and especially narrative art: if I were a novelist,
I might have been able to boil these process philosophy ideas down into some
more humanistic narratives that actually would have some impact on some
people. But I'm not, so the conclusion here is, the search for meaning may
just be a red herring for me. Unfortunately, it may actually not be; hence the
weirdness of it all: how would I know the difference, and what would happen
then? And weirdest of all: what is happening in my mind that makes all of
these questions feel so urgent all the time?

~~~
ashark
The older I get and the more philosophy/literature/science I digest, the
greater the urge to disconnect. Forget about the news, forget about history,
forget about philosophy, forget about travel, forget about tech (for the most
part). Throw out the macbooks and the TVs and my library. It's all brain-
clutter. I could be growing flowers or napping in a hammock instead.

I'm increasingly less convinced that satisfaction is ultimately aided by any
of it. Probably that stuff was a useful stepping-stone to where I am, but it
seems so much less important than it used to. I'm starting to wonder how akin
_knowing_ and _finding answers_ are to various manifestations of pointless,
restless acquisitiveness.

~~~
Practicality
You sound a lot like the preacher in Ecclesiastes

------
dahart
I found it interesting to have a discussion about the meaning of life that
mentions children _and_ mentions marital affairs _and_ concludes with the hope
of science, and still never quite touches on our biological foundation.
Shouldn't that be the jumping off point? All life is built to be physically
and biologically dedicated to reproduction and the furthering of more life.

"children create meaning for their parents because (in most cases) they
outlive their parents and become part of their legacy."

While true for (perhaps) most people, to me that seems to miss the mark a
little, it feels slightly awkward to me. Children also create meaning for
their parents because their parents satisfy their inherent biological mission
to futher the species. Science has proven (as if we needed proof) that we have
built in mechanisms that seek out and reward us for mating. It's the same
reason affairs happen (another arrow, thus more meaning!): the biological
mating mechanisms are strong enough to override our better judgements, we're
driven to mate even if it has big risks.

~~~
gtirloni
Yes. I have a hard time getting excited about children when the species
survival is in no danger, family names care so little value these days (I will
be dead anyway) and there is no guarantee your kid will be a good thing for
the world (we hope they will and that would be our legacy). There is the
argument that says children will make you see life differently but that
requires a lot of faith. Will it? Can I see it differently without the cost of
raising children?

Anyway, I bet it's something a lot of people have thought about and come to
terms with either choice. I still am unsure.

------
strictnein
> "these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of"

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464761](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464761)

~~~
forgottenpass
[http://www.postmodernize.com/2014/03/the-dude-abides-but-
sho...](http://www.postmodernize.com/2014/03/the-dude-abides-but-should-he/)

------
sjwright
I've never had an issue valuing my life knowing that it has no eternally
persistent meaning. A poor analogy, but I like to explain a finite life's
meaning by asking if a movie is any less enjoyable knowing that it's going to
end.

Sure, eventually our existence is rendered meaningless but that doesn't make
it meaningless for me, now. Call that an illusion if you want, but it's as
concrete as anything you can prove. Besides, what would a "not-ultimately-
meaningless" existence look like? I haven't heard any proposals that sound
appealing to me.

~~~
adrianN
Finding meaning in pleasure sounds like Hedonism to me.

~~~
CompelTechnic
Ain't nothin' wrong with Hedonism.

~~~
ctrlalt_g
There are many fundamental problems with hedonism, but hedonism avoids dealing
with the problems because that's its nature.

~~~
marcosdumay
Thus, no problem.

The fact that if it fails to cause a fast death, it causes a big deal of
suffering to the individual is not out of irony. But is still not a problem
for it.

~~~
ctrlalt_g
Case in point.

------
labrador
Sarah wondered why people started avoiding her at cocktail parties after the
publication of her book "Every Cradle is a Grave."

------
AndrewKemendo
Nihilism 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 hedonism.

Pretty simply this is just a more verbose version of the existentialist
hedonistic answer to the question of meaninglessness.

To quote the author:

 _I 'm almost certainly reinventing the wheel_

Pretty typical really. Most people who truly embrace the absurd either don't
seek meaning or have already killed themselves.

~~~
Chattered
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.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_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!

------
Gatsky
I didn't find this to be a very useful article. It takes steps to create an
abstract-symbolic definition of meaning, but doesn't develop it further and
also doesn't use it again in the rest of the article. At least half of it
could have been left out, therefore.

The conclusion is also rather trite, and seems to adopt humanity's tendency
towards techno-optimistic hubris as a proxy for meaning. The conclusion
doesn't support the thesis that science can lead us to meaning. I can
appreciate the complexity of human society by reading the Koran, or going to a
death metal concert. I don't need science for that.

Science is truly great, it is the most successful and useful paradigm for
organising knowledge. But I don't think it is a path to meaning, no matter how
much you romanticize it. It's just as likely to kill us all and destroy the
planet as it is to save it, the former being considerably easier than the
latter.

~~~
hxegon
You might be romanticizing meaning itself there.

------
190807
"As always, there are caveats. I have a degree in philosophy, but haven't read
any of the classic literature on this subject, so I'm almost certainly
reinventing the wheel. And although I lean heavily on what I've gleaned from
Sarah, David, and Venkat, I'm not sure any of them would endorse what I've
written here. You might want to think of it as my own funky synthesis — and if
it comes up short, that's entirely my fault."

Greatest and most self-aware disclaimer I've read in a long time.

------
jokoon
One thought I have, is that human thinking is just one perspective which is
limited to the realm of living thoughts. Meaning our thoughts are biased
towards what we can see and think about, so we cannot see anything else. Human
thinking has a limited range.

That's always what I conclude when I hear about life or intelligent life in
the universe. We are made of life, but intelligence may be specific only to
the life on earth, or maybe there are other forms of intelligence that are so
different from our own that we could not even recognize them as intelligent of
even communicate with them.

That's essentially what I think when I hear "we are a speck of dust in the
universe". We're no just small and far from everything, we are not able to
understand how our brain can be intelligent. That's why I'm a nihilist. I
don't really see any interesting food for thought to chew on. What's
"meaningful" is beyond our reach for now, and it will stay that way until our
brain evolve, or we create AI smarter than us, or we just find ways to
directly improve our intelligence (more neuron connections, neuro-stimulants
or drugs, brain extensions, what have you).

~~~
seanp2k2
Totally agree. IMO it's also be amazing if we could create an AI which could
evolve itself to the point of understanding things we can't while
understanding humans well enough to be able to explain those things in terms
we could understand.

Then again, maybe if it found out "higher" "actual" truths, it could see that
possibly explaining those to humanity wouldn't be "good", and thus lie /
withhold information for our own "benefit".

And now we're back to morals and ethics.

~~~
jokoon
Imagine if AI could just solve math or physics problems, or come up with
theories.

------
koonsolo
People are able to push through a whole lot of suffering when they have
meaning. When all pleasure is taken away (e.g. concentration camps), only the
people who have something to live for are able to survive. (ref. "Man's search
for meaning" by Viktor Frankl)

Too bad he doesn't mention evolution, because it plays an important role in
preferring individuals who find meaning in something.

~~~
cmpb
He does mention the evolutionary advantages of finding meaning briefly, at
first, and then comes back to it toward the end of the essay. (He does a poor
job of breaking his essays up into obvious sections, though; sorry for the
lack of links to back me up).

------
Double_Cast
Here's an observation of mine which Simler misses: I suspect that Meaning is
the categorical dual of Power. In this context, Power is defined as "your
influence on the state of world". Whereas Meaning is defined as "a
phenomenon's influence on your state-of-mind and decision-making".

E.g. when a Vietnam Vet looks at a War Monument, that's meaningful because it
impacts his emotional state. Maybe his buddy Bubba Gump died in the war. Maybe
he'll resolve to live life to the fullest and open a Shrimpin Business.

Connections make it more likely that a phenomenon will impact your decision
making, or carry an affect on something you value highly. The
connections/gravitas hypothesis that Simler discusses is just a corollary.

------
nibs
Meaning is what you feel when you act and others benefit, regardless of the
effect that action has on you. Happiness is when you benefit, regardless of
who acted or why.

In order to have a happy, meaningful life, you have to contribute to people
who accept you and have those efforts reciprocated.

Lots of smart people find survival in the selfish sense very trivially easy.
If you do not seek out opportunities to contribute, you will lack meaning in
your life. And if those opportunities do not challenge you, you will lack
meaning in your life.

We are an interdependent species. Not great white sharks (independent) and not
ants (dependent).

~~~
virmundi
You have no logical grounds for your first sentence. As a result everything
else collapses. Meaning is whatever a person defines to have value to them in
a material world. They enjoy rape, the it provides meaning. You can't tell
them they're wrong because it hurts others abstractly, and can't concretely if
that's part of what makes it so meaningful to them.

There is nothing stopping someone from being a great white shark aside from
the threat of violence from the group. If someone can figure out how get
around that, like with home made genetic manipulation for viruses, well, they
get to have their own meaning spread across the world.

~~~
nibs
The grounds are scientific, not logical:
[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1207%2Fs15327558ijbm1202...](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1207%2Fs15327558ijbm1202_4)

What you are describing is the broader context of innate drive for something.
Meaning is a feeling you get from satisfying certain (not all) drives.

~~~
virmundi
But you're presuming that mostly suicidal is an nonfunctional mode. If a
person has been depressed for 15 years, held loaded weapons to their head
while they cried, and have a good way to kill themselves, it's good to be good
doesn't matter. If that person doesn't care about longevity, but hopes for a
fast death soon, meh. There is no meaning. Especially when you have only one
drive, a fast death.

------
kens
The article measures meaning by the amount of directed connection to other
meaningful things. Interesting that this is almost exactly the same as
PageRank. I think there's actually a significant relationship here.

------
AnthonyNagid
Architect Christpher Alexander has developed a beautiful theory that is
absolutely applicable to this topic (dare I say, second to none?) in his work
'A Pattern Language' and especially in his 'The Nature of Order' series. It's
painful to think how little attention his work seems to get when you think of
what could come from further exploration of the ground work he has laid in
regards to understanding and creating meaning, that which comes from the heart
and life preserving / nurturing processes.

------
nedsma
I recommend reading Schopenhauer's Studies in Pessimism and Wisdom of Life to
anyone interested in open-minded treatise of the subject so individually
complicated as the meaning of the one's own life. It may sound gloomy,
potentially distressed, yet, it offers philosophy that you'll not find
consoling, but very helpful as you're growing your own meaning.

------
ThomPete
I always like to position nihilism like this:

Just because there is no meaning with life does not mean there isn't meaning
in life.

You cannot be a nihilist by action only by intellect because you cannot not
have a value system where somethings are prioritized over others.

The very fact that you need to pee, don't want to die, love your kids and so
on are all things that create this value system in life.

Being a nihilist is mostly an analytical framework more than it's a way of
life.

The good thing is that those "in life" values we all come with are mostly
enough to create stable societies and human lifes.

Or put a completely different way.

Nihilist do not find meaning with life, but plenty in life.

------
callmeed
Related, one of my favorite joke twitter accounts is Nihilist Arby's:

[https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys](https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys)

------
GnarlyWhale
A nice exploration of a typically domineering subject. I especially appreciate
how starkly digestible the piece is in comparison to more formal philosophy
works.

------
atemerev
An excellent writeup, slightly distorted by its title. If you are concerned
with meaning and try to find it and explain it, you are by definition not a
nihilist.

------
stared
A great, and wise, reading! Excuse me for this less serious comment.

Jokingly (but only a bit), I am waiting for "Show HN: Eigenmeaning" (or
SimlerRank). Vide:
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1820](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1820)

------
mcguire
I'm surprised no one has invoked Kant's categorical imperative. It doesn't
directly address 'meaning'n but (a) the idea of a moral statement being
_necessarily_ true has implications for nihilism, and (b) the discussion in
the thread touches often on moral philosophy.

------
up_and_up
> 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.

------
crasm
I think the idea of meaning being contextual is spot-on. For instance,
leaderboards and stats in gaming communities approach zero meaning to the
world at large, but they're intensely meaningful within specific games
themselves, and somewhat meaningful to gamers in general.

------
doki_pen
Isn't existentialism the cure for nihilism? It doesn't matter to the universe,
but it matters to ME. I exist. From this we are left with the heavy burden of
deciding what we think is good and bad, right and wrong.

------
tanlermin
Does this obviate the issue that one has to assign the definition of meaning
somewhere in the graph? ie Meaning is subjective, and it has to be inserted to
propagate down.

------
charlieflowers
As I first looked at this headline on the HN front page, it had a perfect "42"
comments.

(I hate to ruin it, but it was bound to happen anyway).

------
gp7
Disclosure: I'm a big time nihilist and genuinely take questions like "does
the morality of an action propagate at the speed of light," seriously which i
encourage everyone who understands relatively to at least consider for a brief
time

I don't really agree with much in this post, principally because it's
preoccupied by personal meaning, for the individual. Often when reading
contemporary philosophical texts you come across this idea of neoliberal logic
(try searching google for it as a phrase)--it is, I think, 90% of the time, a
nonsense idea used to obscure a bad argument, but in this case I think it
applies: it's an atomised way of thinking about people and how they relate to
the world. You'll note towards the end that the list of examples given of
meaningful objects/activities are all entirely social in nature; except
perhaps one, a career, a notion very central to our (neoliberal!) age, which
hides is social nature under a cloak of economic relationships. The mention of
Marx's idea of alienation is therefore funny to me: although one can
understand alienation as the ennui of rote labour, you should remember that
the idea is rooted too in commodity fetishism. The mistaking of relationships
between people as the relationships between commodities. Each of his examples
are, in strange way, social "commodities": abstract objects that an individual
"has", and whose use-value is defined from its abilities to grant "meaning" to
her, and can be "exchanged" between other individuals so that you might
benefit from a fulfilling father-son relationship, or between the
collaboration between famous artists, or the networking with workers from a
prestigious company.

I say: it is the very relationships between people that are the generators of
meaning, and ( _stands up on soapbox, music swells_ ) that all meaning is
rooted in social relationships between people, and that for anything to
meaning anything whatsoever is necessarily proof of a relationship between you
and some other person who may even be hidden from you. Reading an ancient text
is a relationship that stretches back before you were even born: it's not an
object that exists as a person does but is as real as a mathematical entity,
and its understanding as a thing that can be conceived of in it's own right is
the only way to build a worthwhile theory of meaning that is not just a
handwavey precursor to information theory and problems of interpretation.
Meaning is a relationship between people.

For a better treatment on nihilism--which better reckons on the effect science
has on philosophy, or more to say the direction philosophy must take in order
to be relevant after the ruin science has made of it--I recommend the work of
Ray Brassier, altho it is.. very technical. There's a good interview with him
here
[http://www.kronos.org.pl/index.php?23151,896](http://www.kronos.org.pl/index.php?23151,896)
and in particular the following quote still lights a fire in my timid heart:

> Like Nietzsche, I think nihilism is a consequence of the ‘will to truth’.
> But unlike Nietzsche, I do not think nihilism culminates in the claim that
> there is no truth. Nietzsche conflated truth with meaning, and concluded
> that since the latter is always a result of human artifice, the former is
> nothing but a matter of convention. However, once truth is dismissed, all
> that remains is the difference between empowering and disempowering
> fictions, where ‘life’ is the fundamental source of empowerment and the
> ultimate arbiter of the difference between life-enhancing and life-
> depreciating fictions. Since the abandonment of truth undermines the reason
> for relinquishing illusion, it ends up licensing the concoction of further
> fictional narratives, the only requirement for which is that they prove to
> be ‘life-enhancing’.

> I consider myself a nihilist precisely to the extent that I refuse this
> Nietzschean solution and continue to believe in the difference between truth
> and falsity, reality and appearance. In other words, I am a nihilist
> precisely because I still believe in truth, unlike those whose triumph over
> nihilism is won at the cost of sacrificing truth. I think that it is
> possible to understand the meaninglessness of existence, and that this
> capacity to understand meaning as a regional or bounded phenomenon marks a
> fundamental progress in cognition.

------
sunstone
Embrace the abyss, but stay human.

------
pklausler
I for one don't mind a large silent empty universe that's pretty to look at.

------
francasso
I will put it "in vacca" but: I suggest LSD, for a new perspective on life.

------
jgrowl
I half expected the page to blank.

------
seletskiy
I think, that meaning can be only defined in the case, when one is immortal.
If I'm mortal, everything I do, good or bad, is meaningless for consciousness,
because it will cease to exist and everything that will happen after death
will have no effect on it.

Any meaning, that's is defined while one is mortal is no more than illusion,
in which people immerse themselves for whatever reason.

~~~
amelius
Let me explain that you are in fact immortal. First, you have to see that
there is no reason for your brain and my brain to have different "souls"
(whatever that may mean). It only appears to you that we are different beings
because there is no strong neurological connection between our brains. But
there is a connection (albeit very weak), in e.g. electromagnetic and gravity
forces between our brains. The universe, of course, really doesn't care about
all this. So you could say that we are both one being, and we are one with the
universe. This means that we (and everybody else) will only die when the
universe ceases to exist. Which is not likely to happen soon, so for all
practical purposes, you are immortal.

~~~
gnaritas
> This means that we (and everybody else) will only die when the universe
> ceases to exist.

You're playing a trick there by jumping from brain to atoms, but people do not
define themselves by their atoms, but by their consciousness which will not
survive death making what you're saying about all being one rather
meaningless. So..

> so for all practical purposes, you are immortal.

Not even close, because I cease to exist the second my brain dies and whatever
happens to my atoms after my mind is gone is completely meaningless.

------
ebbv
I've never read this guy's writing before but in this article I think he is
way over-intellectualizing things.

Meaning is whatever you want it to be. Some people find meaning in easing the
suffering of others. Some people find meaning in raising children who will
raise children, etc. even if in the fullness of time they will all cease to
exist. Some people find meaning in really good sushi. It doesn't need to be
any more complicated than that. When I eat really good red snapper nigiri I
experience pleasure. That is a real joy that meant something to me in the
moment.

The big picture of the entirety of time and space means nothing because I
don't live in that full reality. I live in a small pocket of time in a small
pocket of space because I am a tiny being.

~~~
dublinben
>Meaning is whatever you want it to be.

That is basically the post-modern absurdist position on the meaning of life.
Most people still believe in an external source of meaning (religion) that
exists regardless of your personal opinion.

~~~
gnaritas
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.

~~~
dublinben
>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.

~~~
gnaritas
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.

~~~
dublinben
>what I stated was objectively true while what most people believe is only
subjectively true

It's not really, but of course you believe it is. Nobody wants to believe that
their beliefs are just as arbitrary any anyone else's.

~~~
gnaritas
It isn't a matter of what I believe, it is objectively true that people can
"can" choose their own meanings in life; that is not a belief, it is a fact,
this is objectively demonstrable by the fact that people do exactly that and
you'll find many people in this thread saying exactly that.

It is also objectively true that people can choose to rely on an external
source of meaning, but it is only subjectively true that external objective
meaning exists precisely because it cannot be objectively demonstrated that
the source of said external objective meaning actually exists, therefore it is
a subjective belief that there is objective meaning outside ones self.

It's notable that you're selectively quoting leaving out exactly that part
that explain the logic behind said statement. You're either unable to discern
the meaning of objective/subjective, or you're being dishonest with the
selective quoting. Either way, you're incorrect. If you want to continue to
debate this, you must demonstrate the logical flaw in either of the two above
paragraphs.

------
ihaveahadron
I find this stuff interesting to read and think about. But I think that
ultimately all arguments expressed about the subject in words are in the same
category: works of fiction. In the end, things... are -- including all the
different ways people describe, or attempt, to describe meaning.

I would also add that I am logically correct about this, as things are in
fact... are. Which is kind of a stupid thing to say but often times i think
that stupid things being said in fact are smart things when they are said in a
context of being a response _to_ stupid things.

Add #2:

I also think that this falls under "philosophy" which is an academic
discipline that became outdated and was superseded by science about a century
ago now.

------
seletskiy
> So: meaning isn't a substance, but rather a feeling. In this way, it's a lot
> like beauty.

If I understand correctly, author is saying, that you can't measure nor
exactly define meaning, and then building follow up logical chain based on
that axiom.

If so, then it's just wrong, because all human feelings are results of
biochemical processes inside a brain. They arise in exact situations and they
are predictable as patterns. So, we can define feelings and analyze them to
the point where we can see how they are building and what is causing one or
another.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "If so, then it's just wrong, because all human feelings are results of
> biochemical processes inside a brain. They arise in exact situations and
> they are predictable as patterns. So, we can define feelings and analyze
> them to the point where we can see how they are building and what is causing
> one or another."

I doubt we know enough about these processes to make such a claim. For
example, will one set of patterns always result in envy, or can the patterns
behind envy also produce adoration?

Furthermore, with what we think of as the 'mind', what influence does it have
over the response of the 'body'. In practice these may be one and the same
thing, but phenomena related to 'mind over matter' definitely seem to exist.
For example, practitioners of tummo can voluntarily alter their body
temperature:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo)

Without a deeper understanding of the relationship between the mind and the
body, I wouldn't want to make any claims about how deterministic our minds
are.

