

Sucky Things You'd Rather Not Think About - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2012/01/sucky-things-yo.php

======
Typhon
What we have here is a list of trite, mostly useless if not wrong,
observations, followed by an explanation that "religious people were right all
along", without anything to back this up.

The essence of religion is not "finding meaning by artistically living an
authentic life", for several reasons :

Religion is not a way to find meaning. Religion gives you a meaning (Either
revealed by a god to a prophet, or made up on the spot by the latter) that
hopefully transcends your mortal life (i.e. the trite observations listed
above). This meaning involves respecting things that are deemed sacred (divine
commandments, symbols, rites or whatnot), in the hope of gaining something
(going to heaven, escape this meaningless cycle of reincarnation, and so on)

"Living artistically", whatever that means, has nothing to do with religion.
Artists may find their inspiration in their beliefs, but there are plenty of
atheist artists, and there are even more religious people who have absolutely
no kind of artistic talent, taste, or inclination.

Finally, the phrase "authentic life" is pretty much devoid of meaning. How do
you decide which life is more authentic ? Is living a hedonistic life of
excess ending by an overdose less authentic than dying alone at seventy-eight
after years of hard work ? Or more authentic ? What _are_ your criteria ?

Besides, to "creatively speculate on what values you want for life and why" is
something most people never do and don't particularly care about. It's
certainly not the only rational thing to do. It is just as rational to decide
that yes, life is a pointless maelstrom of absurdity that never amounts to
anything, and keep on doing what you do, just because.

------
itmag
For anyone who wants a dose of philosophical ultra-pessimism without any hope
for the future, check out this book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Against-Human-Race-
Contriva...](http://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Against-Human-Race-
Contrivance/dp/098242969X)

It's basically a philosophical treatise written by a lovecraftian horror
writer, containing discussions on existentialism, neuroscience, cognitive
psychology, etc.

Don't say I didn't warn you, though.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
On the flip side, there's "The Rational Optimist" <http://amzn.to/Al7nQB>
(affiliate link)

I hate to use cliches, but I think you can look at reality and argue it either
way -- it's truly arbitrary, a "glass half-full" thing. I'd the nature of
being able to argue it both ways only emphasizes the necessity of taking
Kierkegaard's leap: the nature of the problem is truly about working with
incomplete information.

------
Lewton
> Science will never be able to transfer your mind into a machine. Yes, maybe
> one day in the distant future some miracle will happen where all of your
> mind can be analyzed and copied, but that will only be a copy. The "real"
> you will die.

How about this? The -real- you dies every second (or, every "Planck time") and
is replaced with an almost exact copy of you

------
thinkdevcode
Another philosopher discussing, with all of his empirical wisdom, what we can
and cannot do in life... Who are they to say what is possible? Does this
person understand and is up to the latest on every different branch of
science? Something very few, if any, can do.

Philosophers are good at one thing, and one thing only: Exclaiming grandiose
statements to make themselves appear intelligent so people take them
seriously.

It's a wasted mind - what could he have done had he went into pharmacology,
biology, technology, physics, something concrete that is pushing our species
into the future, not hold it back with thoughts.

+1 for science, -1 for "philosophy"

------
nodata
> The religious people were right all along. Given all this uncertainty and
> almost pointless nature of existence, the only rational course of action is
> to creatively speculate on what values you want for your life and why.

And it was going so well. The first sentence has no relation at all to the
second.

Knowing you have a finite life doesn't make you do any less good, I'd argue it
does the opposite. Religious or not, you can consider your values. _sigh_

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I think you've missed the point. "The religious people were right" refers to
each individual having to make value decisions based on incomplete
information, not conformity to an external value system. We completely agree.

I figured people would misread that section. I rewrote a couple of times, but
in all honesty people see the word "religion" and then the conversation is
over, as you have demonstrated. The problem is that the driver of religion --
creatively speculating on the unknown -- is a completely different thing than
the application of these common myths in some kind of social structure. But
the word has both meanings.

Sorry about that. I'll think about how to word it better.

EDIT: Reworded it a bit to try to clear it up.

~~~
bmj
I don't think it is poorly worded, though this sentence is a bit clumsy:

 _The existentialists argue that any formal, self-consistent religious
structure is necessarily broken -- God is dead -- not that the essence of
religion, finding meaning by artistically living an authentic life, doesn't
work._

That cuts to the chase, but due to its structure, it can be easy to misread.

[Edit: grammar]

------
itmag
A core point of existentialism is the need to act without certainty. Ie the
dizziness of freedom, as Kierkegaard puts it.

Fundamentalists are trying to satisfy their need for certainty by pointing at
a certain holy text and going "this is the Truth!".

I think there has to be a way of satisfying the need for certainty without
compromising epistemic rationality, however. I have yet to find it, though :(

