
Meaningness - espeed
https://meaningness.com/
======
nickstefan12
> If you seriously attempt existentialism, you will fail. You cannot create
> your own meanings. If you take that failure seriously, and analyze what went
> wrong, you may recognize that subjective meanings are impossible. Then—since
> objective meanings are also clearly impossible—you will end up in nihilism.
> > The way out is to recognize that meaningness is neither subjective nor
> objective. It is a collaborative accomplishment of dynamic interaction. One
> might say that it lives in the space-between subject and object; or that it
> pervades the situation in which it manifests, including both subject and
> object. But these metaphors are misleading; meanings simply don’t have
> locations.

The word gymnastics used on that site to disqualify "everybody else's muddled
middle" except for his own personal version of a "muddled middle" seems
hypocritical. He talks in enough circles, and we are supposed to forget that
his muddled middle is pretty much all the other muddled middles he says can't
work.

I wasted so much time reading philosophy stuff in college. Its like a virus
that infects the mind, "there must be a RIGHT answer!" and the infected mind
goes in circles arguing with itself. Its an infinite recursive loop without a
base case.

The base case is this: "would you rather be right or would you rather be
happy?" its not meant to mean that we should all get on "brave new world"
soma. what it does though, is get your mind out of that infinite loop of "i
must know the RIGHT answer with certainty!". These sorts of topics have no
certainty. They are topics worth considering, but trying to find "correct" is
just missing the forest from the trees.

~~~
projektir
I don't think it's fair to say that because the answer to the question of
"there must be a right answer!" is very hard to find, that the question is not
worth pondering.

What if we approached physics that way? And decided that we shouldn't bother
trying to explain gravity because many people in college pondered the question
in circles and couldn't answer it?

Hard questions may just be... hard. And maybe this is far harder than physics.

~~~
nickstefan12
Its more than things being "hard". Its about the nature of the questions
philosophers try and answer.

Kant and his Critique of Pure Reason has those 4 quadrants of "knowing". A
priori vs posteriori. Synthetic vs analytic. Its literally a CRITIQUE of how
far pure reason can take us. In the area much of philosophy dances in, pure
reason simple cant take us very far!

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_dis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_distinction)

Finding "a" reason to live matters far more than finding "the" reason to live.
Would we rather be happy or would we rather be right?

I like this quote attributed to Kant: "Rules for happiness: something to do,
someone to love, and something to hope for".

~~~
projektir
I'm generally interested in philosophy relative to most normal people as
opposed to philosophers, and, to normal people, there are many very real
questions that are worth answering, including those relating to meaning.

Those questions seem like they can be summarized as "What is going on, what
should I do, and why?"

> Finding "a" reason to live matters far more than finding "the" reason to
> live. Would we rather be happy or would we rather be right?

This framing seems strange to me.

When you make this statement you already make a claim: that _the_ reason to
live is to seek happiness.

------
ashark
My go-to read when I find myself getting too lost in the question of meaning:

[http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_frost/poems/731](http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_frost/poems/731)

(Frost, "Maple")

------
dingdingdang
Greatly appreciate the author giving this topic a shot (purpose/meaning is the
grand elephant in room for humanity at large), reading through the
introduction I am so far positively surprised - concise and readable. Whether
this holds when it comes to the meat of it.. who knows, I'm giving it try.

P.S. a compiled epub &/ pdf would be good (and once you got well formatted
epub then the book can go on kdp.amazon.com as a bonus)

~~~
yepguy
It was pretty easy to create a usable epub (not at all perfect but still very
legible on an ereader). Make sure you have wget and calibre installed, then
run:

    
    
        wget -r -l 1 -k -p https://meaningness.com/; ebook-convert meaningness.com/index.html meaningness.epub

~~~
dingdingdang
Thanks, great one-liner!

------
orasis
A good post of David's to start with is "Developing Ethical, Social, and
Cognitive Competence":

[https://vividness.live/2015/10/12/developing-ethical-
social-...](https://vividness.live/2015/10/12/developing-ethical-social-and-
cognitive-competence/)

~~~
danharaj
> Postmodernism’s accurate critique of modernity has had dire consequences for
> the possibility of growing from stage 3 to 4. The very essence of the
> contemporary, postmodern liberal arts curriculum is the claim that all
> systems are merely arbitrary, self-interested justifications for power. That
> makes positive identification with systems impossible. It’s mostly only STEM
> majors who can make this transition—which is probably part of why we are
> taking over the world.

As a STEM major who has studied critical theory and postmodern thinkers, I
laughed really hard at this. (because I think it's ridiculous).

~~~
paulbaumgart
I'd be interested in reading your critique.

~~~
danharaj
There's nothing to critique. It's a claim presented without supporting
evidence. Trying to outright refute it is really hard because there's not much
to grasp in all this alluring rhetoric. Here's another whopper occurring
earlier than my last quote:

> Political leftism tends to monism, and rightism to dualism. The communal
> mode tends to mistake the logic of stage 4 for rightish ideologies,
> particularly capitalism. However, stage 4 is not inherently rightist or
> anti-leftist. Marxism is a systematic, technical, rational critique of
> capitalism—and therefore a stage 4 ideology. (Notwithstanding that campus
> communists rarely understand Marxism’s details, and often misuse it as a
> simple stage 3 rejection of systematicity.) John Rawls’ Theory of Justice is
> an elegant stage 4 systematic justification for leftism. Conversely, stage 3
> rightism is common; that is the appeal of simplistic calls to “protect our
> traditional communities.”

This guy thinks he's better at liberal arts than liberal arts majors and there
is no justification for this level of arrogance presented here. This is just a
constant stream of assertions that, I guess, are internally consistent but
because they don't actually engage with the texts he makes claims about or the
people who study those texts and ideologies don't actually say anything. The
rhetoric is structured in a way that it gives everything a tinge of truthiness
without doing any of the hard work of demonstrating something as true.

"Conversely, stage 3 rightism is common; that is the appeal of simplistic
calls to “protect our traditional communities.”" Unraveling the condescension,
the author clearly thinks everything in this world is driven by ideas and
ideology. That doesn't _make any fucking sense_. For example, the resurgence
of far-right politics in Europe and America didn't happen just because a bunch
of people decided to start believing new ideas, but because they are driven by
material circumstances, like the evolution of capitalism leading to large
numbers of people in America's interior losing their middle class status and
any hope of economic mobility, or the use of the "war on terror" as a
justification for the expansion of the mass-surveillance state, the
destabilization of the Middle East, and the subsequent refugee crisis in
Europe.

If he understood Marx _at all_ , and he _better_ if he's going to make claims
about Marxism and have the _gall_ to note how much better he understands Marx
than those "campus communists", then he'd know how deeply materialist analysis
utterly eviscerates his ideas. Ah, tut tut. I must be incapable of _truly
understanding_ stage 4 of his pokemon evolution of human enlightenment.

> The communal mode is characteristic of pre-modern (“traditional”) cultures.
> It’s impossible to base a large-scale society on the communal mode, because
> it’s so ineffective at coordinating complex group activities. (If
> individuals frequently fail to do their specific, agreed tasks, nothing can
> get done.) Modern societies are based on the systematic mode (stage 4).

This is beyond hilarious and to be quite honest implicitly white supremacist.
Let's ignore all of the Native American societies whose structures not only
influenced but _directly informed_ many modern institutions. The examples I
have in mind are the Iroquois and the Navajo. Show this text to any
anthropologist and they will either roll their eyes so hard they pull a muscle
or laugh until they suffocate and pass out. Only mild hyperbole.

In short, lots, and lots and _lots_ of assertions that sound nice together but
have nothing backing them up and just end up being so much loquacious
pseudointellectual masturbation. I hope he uses his intellect more solidly in
whatever his STEM day job is.

------
moyix
I've so far found most of his articles to be a bit too abstract and lacking in
concrete detail (often with a "of course I'll elaborate on this in a future
article" disclaimer). However, I did really like the article on Bongard
puzzles:

[https://meaningness.com/metablog/bongard-meta-
rationality](https://meaningness.com/metablog/bongard-meta-rationality)

------
nxc18
Having a "meaning" that you have given to yourself, that you truly believe in,
and that is used to guide your life as a "meaning" should is, I think the
bedrock of happiness, productivity and mental stability.

Certainly, in a world where everything needs to be questioned and nothing
faithfully believed, it helps to have a meaningful central anchor on which to
moor your self and your actions.

It is amazing to me that so many people go about their lives and couldn't
reliably answer basic questions like, "why are you still doing this(life)?",
"what is your purpose?", "how do you justify the value of your continued
existence?" Alas, you can't ask those questions too often as they have a
tendency to induce some dark thought patterns. However, having a well-
constructed sense of meaning/purpose hardens you against those questions and
also the many other problematic questions in life and it would do many well to
answer them.

~~~
projektir
It's amazing to me that anyone _could_ answer those questions: there's nothing
basic about them and I have yet to see any kind of solid source of knowledge.

~~~
clock_tower
This will probably sound sophomoric, but I like Aristotle's answer to the
question of purpose: that a living creature's purpose is to live the kind of
life characteristic of its species, to the extent that it's able to. Whether
or not there's more than that is a matter of philosophy and theology, but I
think he does well enough proving that this is a bare minimum level of purpose
for all living beings...

~~~
projektir
That seems to be an assigned purpose, where the will is attributed to some
other process.

If a creature starts talking about having purpose, that usually means the
creature's own purpose, not purpose assigned to it by something else.

I imagine nxc1 had the latter in mind, not the former.

------
spyckie2
Having skimmed it over, this book summarizes a couple of traps that you can
fall into if you're thinking too binary about meaning. The world is not 0s and
1s from a meaning standpoint.

The best way I can describe it is a quantum theory approach to meaning. No
meaning in life is like saying light is a particle, and meaning in life is
like saying light is a wave. In reality thinking those things can lead to
incorrect systems that lead to all sorts of trouble, and you must learn how to
live in that quantum zone in order to find inner peace or something.

Unfortunately, in the realm of self help which this is, you cannot avoid guru
speak, which he falls into.

His definition of religion is eternalism, and I think that is historically
correct. However, he states clearly that you can't believe in a God because it
leads to eternalism, which I disagree with - it's not nebulous enough.

------
scandox
> “Meaningness” is a word I invented, referring to the quality of being
> meaningful and/or meaningless.

...

> The various dimensions of meaningness are discussed in religion and
> philosophy; but, strangely, the topic as a whole is never addressed.

I don't know anything about the author, but this feels like the classic
sophomoric illusion of having discovered an entire field of "mysteriously
neglected" ideas, combined with the classic sophomoric attempt at an
overarching everything-fits-into-this theory of life.

~~~
sago
tl;dr, but concluded it is sophomoric rubbish?

The author is pretty well known, technically, and has been applying Buddhist-
style inquiry patterns to a western vernacular for a long time. I don't think
the knee-jerk cynicism is warranted. You may disagree with his conclusions,
but he isn't a superficial guy.

And the fact that you think a search for meaning outside traditional religious
models is 'mysteriously neglected' is baffling. Nothing in your comment seems
to correspond to David's work, as far as I can tell.

~~~
scandox
Making a slightly better answer here. Your last observation seems to
misunderstand what I'm saying. I only mean that it is common for people new to
a field (in this case undoubtedly the art-science formerly known as
philosophy) to imagine that they have discovered new territory of
investigation.

In a sense I'm saying the opposite of what you think I am. I'm saying that the
whole topic under discussion has been broadly under discussion since the
beginning of recorded civilisation. So saying "strangely, the topic as a whole
is never addressed" seems a tad like a new minted programmer saying "strangely
no-one has addressed the entire topic of OO programming".

~~~
jolux
When I was first getting into philosophy for the first year or so I was
convinced I was brilliant because I was coming up with all these great ideas
that people loved to talk about but then I realized that it was all addressed
(largely by the existentialists and postmodernists, but also the German
idealists and Plato) decades, centuries or millennia ago. Now when I have what
seems to be a unique idea I spend a while googling different formulations of
it to make sure it's truly original.

This isn't to say that philosophy has already asked and answered every
possible question, just that the most obvious versions of these (obvious for
the kinds of people who would bother doing this in the first place, i.e.
relatively intelligent people) probably have good discussions going on and
that the philosophy of those questions is more about joining that discussion
and adding your perspective (if it's new) than about formulating original
paradigms and meta-narratives for solving them, because that's been done
already for a lot of questions.

~~~
vanderZwan
> Now when I have what seems to be a unique idea I spend a while googling
> different formulations of it to make sure it's truly original.

The problem is that you often can't really find this through Google, unless
you know the name we've given it (or happen to phrase your question in almost
the same way someone else did on StackExchange). That's why it is so valuable
to have a good human search engine to talke to (say, a professor who knows
their field really well).

~~~
jolux
For me I know the fundamentals well enough that I can kind of winnow it down
to a couple movements that would be good to start looking around in, but I'm
not sure if it's a strategy you can use when you're just breaking in. You
first have to know the history, then you can determine how original your ideas
are.

------
jolux
What's the difference between this "meaningness" and, say, phenomenology?

~~~
Zelmor
That the author has not heard of the latter.

~~~
mbrock
That's uncharitable and definitely incorrect.

------
combatentropy
In [https://meaningness.com/finding-god-in-a-
casino](https://meaningness.com/finding-god-in-a-casino), he says explains
religion as an addiction to warm fuzzies, kept alive by the brain's ability to
everywhere find patterns.

I agree that such can describe many people, but orthodox Christianity doesn't
prescribe wishful thinking or worse, blind faith. If you read the Bible, it is
very much an evidence-based religion. A good summary is _More Than a
Carpenter_ , by Josh McDowell (192 pages).

~~~
tyingq
Does thinking that Christianity is "evidence based" require assuming that
parts of the bible are not meant to be taken literally?

Without going into a litany of examples, surely even devout Christians
understand that large portions of the Bible are difficult to match to
reality/science/etc.

~~~
smhost
I think it requires stretching the definition of "literally". For example,
"seven days" might not necessarily mean "seven human days" but rather it might
be some kind of magical God-time unit. An "ark" may not be a literal ship; or
maybe it is, and the "popular" version of the evolutionary tree is misguided.
And so on.

~~~
tyingq
> For example, "seven days" might not necessarily mean "seven human days"

I really didn't want to get into a point-for-point thing, but the "day" is
just one issue. Birds and whales (great sea monsters) precede reptiles and
insects, grass precedes light, etc. The Ark, and other stories, have similar
issues that are hard to wave away.

~~~
combatentropy
> Birds and whales (great sea monsters) precede reptiles and insects

What's the problem?

> grass precedes light

verse 3: And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

verse 11: Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation . . . "

~~~
tyingq
>What's the problem

Really?

> verse 3: And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

What are verses 14-17 about, then?

Edit: For clarity...

a) Birds preceding reptiles and insects seems obviously flawed.

b) Verse 3 "Let there be light" would almost have to correlate with the big
bang...light somewhere, but not on the earth. Verses 14-17 seem clearly to be
about the sun being created. Created millions of years after the grass (and
other things that need light?), if we take the notion that "days" aren't
literal, and are meant to match what we've seen in science.

This has the verses laid out in a way that's easy to follow:
[http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-
Chapter-1/](http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-Chapter-1/)

~~~
yberreby
I agree with you regarding "Let there be light" referring to the Big Bang.
However, it's not unreasonable to assume that there might have been another
source of light for these plants to grow. Alternatively, even if there wasn't,
do you not think that a God who could create the Sun and the Earth from
nothing would be unable to make plants grow without the Sun? It seems that
many so-called 'rebuttals' of the Bible try to disprove it by explaining why
some events are physically impossible, but what _is_ impossible to an all-
powerful God who created the laws of physics themselves? Is he not able to
bend them to His will?

If one tries to nitpick on every little detail in the Scriptures, they will
have a lot of occasions to do so. It is quite easy to find apparent
contradictions by interpreting the Bible in a way that is suited to your goal.
It is not, however, a proof that the Bible contradicts itself, as it relies on
a specific interpretation. When it come to religious matters, very few things
can be proven or disproven.

The way I see it, Christian faith is about being humble. You can't find God if
you read the Bible with a self-righteous, know-it-all attitude, trying to
disprove it line by line. I found this[1] page to explain this point of view
quite well.

You cannot apply the principles of science to metaphysical matters, because
science concerns itself purely with the physical, tangible world, and has no
answers to offer regarding its origins, its meaning, etc. Science and faith do
not contradict each other; rather, they complement each other. I like to think
of myself as a highly rational individual; mathematics and programming, for
example, delight me. Yet I have no issue believing that the Bible is true, and
that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the creator of the Universe. Does
that make me a fool? In the eyes of some, yes. Is it possible to be
cognitively biased in a specific area yet highly rational in others?
Absolutely. But to say that reason precludes faith is simply incorrect.

[1]: [http://www.christiananswers.net/q-comfort/contradictions-
bib...](http://www.christiananswers.net/q-comfort/contradictions-bible.html)

~~~
tyingq
I'm not trying to disprove the Bible. I'm trying to disprove the notion that
Christianity is somehow "Evidence Based". You mention faith, not nitpicking,
etc. Or, in short, you're pointing out that it's "Faith Based"...which I have
no qualms with.

~~~
yberreby
Then it would seem that we agree, because I don't either. Christianity is
definitely faith based.

------
Analemma_
Meaningness: the blog that all the cool kids switched to in order to keep our
hipster cred, once Scott Alexander got too mainstream ;)

------
hasbroslasher
I found the author's chauvinism unbearable: dismissing nihilism and eternalism
as "obviously wrong" throughout just re-raised the same question in me every
time - why?

I'll start with something that absolutely made me nearly snap my neck from
shaking my head.

> The way out is to recognize that meaningness is neither subjective nor
> objective. It is a collaborative accomplishment of dynamic interaction. One
> might say that it lives in the space-between subject and object; or that it
> pervades the situation in which it manifests, including both subject and
> object. But these metaphors are misleading; meanings simply don’t have
> locations.

First - what? This is the kind of drivel people in drum circles mutter about,
not rigorous thought. This is pseudo-religious psychobabble, informed and
supported by nothing but a hunch. To reject all of the worlds religious
traditions, authors from Camus to Nietzsche, and several thousand years of
disciplined human thought in favor of this guy's musings on a website would be
the height of insanity. To be more specific:

I understand that eternalism is unfavorable in the scientific mind, and don't
feel too much need to explain or defend it. Though I will say this: if we live
in a deterministic and finite universe, then everything has some sense of
meaning or purpose, at least insofar as its relationship to the other moving
parts. Eastern philosophy hints at this sort of part-to-whole meaningfulness
constantly, to dismiss it wholesale in favor of your prejudice for your own
wonky beliefs is the height of chauvinism.

His bias towards nihilism was sickening as well as wholly circular. First,
nihilists generally believe that "life has no meaning" \- which is a good
place to start the debate. If we believe that rocks have no meaning, that
plants or clouds have no meaning, then what makes us so special? What exactly
gives _us_ meaning? Are we not a coincidence in the great book of history? Are
we to just blindly commit the fallacy of placing ourselves at the center of
our beliefs about how the universe works? I'm not saying that nihilism is the
_one true way_ or anything (as I'm not with Eastern religion) but I am saying
that it's more coherent and rational than this dude's blog.

Furthermore, it is okay to be a nihilist and have preferences about things
while accepting that those preferences are either arbitrary, irrelevant to the
world outside of them, pre-determined, unstable, or in some other way
meaningless. In support of his belief that nihilism is obviously wrong, he
generally points to a belief that "it doesn't work" or that meaning is obvious
- when it clearly isn't. If meaning were obvious, why the hell would you have
to write a half baked e-book about it? That which is truly obvious doesn't
need the kind of straw-grasping this guy attempts to rationalize his
worldview.

In closing, I give this article a 2/10\. I did like his emphasis on the
practical, and on stances over ideologies. But the actual content is barren-
marred by a need to make up new words while ignoring the work of others, as
well as a totally lackluster conclusion that gets in its own way for lack of
supporting detail. This is what happens when you give someone with apparently
no formal understanding of the history of thought a platform to espouse their
Freshman-level beliefs about the way the universe works to a crowd of
interested onlookers.

------
yks
> Both these stances [eternalism, nihilism] are wrong, factually

citation needed.

Author throws around too many unsupported claims to be taken seriously. And
then "nihilism is wrong" becomes "this stance is unworkable". Dubious logic at
best.

~~~
callinyouin
This was the first page I navigated to and I too wondered how the author could
make that claim. This is yet another case of someone projecting their personal
belief system as objective truth. I'm actually pretty interested in having
philosophical debates around the topic of existence, morality, religion, etc.
in general, but I'm bored to death of people starting the conversation by
assuming their position on the topic as fact without evidence.

~~~
hobarrera
For any debate of the sort, certain axioms must be accepted (otherwise, it's
impossible to start a debate).

However, that's not the case here, as he _does_ explain why both of these are
actually wrong.

------
Zelmor
Was this linked again for the humour factor of low quality philosophy? Please
stop. 9 times in 2 years now.

We get it. It's mediocre.

------
mememachine
Is this on topic?

~~~
myth_drannon
I think it is related to the many comments in "On Getting Older in Tech"
thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136060)

Our software development work is meaningless in the grand scheme of life.

~~~
gkya
> Our software development work is meaningless in the grand scheme of life.

This is a tool for presenting things meaningless. One can also say any sort of
philanthropy and medicine as a whole are meaningless as we'll all die
eventually.

