Kazuo_Thow comments on Rationality quotes: September 2010 - Less Wrong
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Finally, a third from Russell that I admire chiefly for its unflinching courage. And love him or hate him, you've got to admit - the guy had a way with words:
"That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
"Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding dispair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."
Eh... "inevitably" is one of those words that takes a very high degree of confidence to use correctly - a degree of confidence we really don't have with current cosmology, if the simulation hypothesis is true.
(By the way, here's the quote from last month's thread which Apprentice was repurposing.)
Kazuo, I agree; given our current knowledge that quote is open to criticism on several points of fact (most obviously its focus on the solar system rather than whatever passes for the universe these days). That's why I said I admire it mainly for its courage and style.