Comment by varunneal
19 days ago
isn't this survivorship bias? e.g. people who genuinely feel highly nihilistic, that there is no order, structure, meaning, etc. are very unlikely to be successful--and also unlikely to continue choosing to be alive
19 days ago
isn't this survivorship bias? e.g. people who genuinely feel highly nihilistic, that there is no order, structure, meaning, etc. are very unlikely to be successful--and also unlikely to continue choosing to be alive
I don't see why believing that life has no inherent meaning would lead to not wanting to be alive. I think this is all the result of random cosmic accident yet I'm having plenty of fun.
Kurt Vonnegut said it best: “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different.”
Just one more thing you teleologists tell yourselves. I'm alive and successful, I just don't delude myself about the universe giving a shit about it.
It may be that people need to believe nonsense about the cosmos in order to "maximize productivity" but I do not think that is the case.
I see two different assertions
1. The universe doesn't care about you
2. Life has no inherent meaning
Do you mean to conflate these two? Do you find them merely agreeable, or do these propositions depend on each other?
I think they are both true and closely related. Typically and colloquially, when people talk about meaning they are talking about some state of affairs about what is good or bad with respect to the universe (if the universe includes things like God, a world of forms, ideas of perfection, etc).
I think its very reasonable to believe that the universe does not have any of those properties and that life is random and has no inherent or universal meaning.
I guess there could be some kind of subjective meaning but I don't really see the utility of that idea.
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That doesn't make you nihilistic, more of an absurdist.
Eh, potato potato.