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BrotherNihil comments on Yet more "stupid" questions - Less Wrong Discussion
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My stupid questions are these: Why are you not a nihilist? What is the refutation of nihilism, in a universe made of atoms and the void? If there is none, why have the philosophers not all been fired and philosophy abolished?
For the same reason why I don't just lie down and stop doing anything at all. Knowledge of the fact that there isn't any ultimate meaning doesn't change the fact that there exist things which I find enjoyable and valuable. The part of my brain that primarily finds things interesting and valuable isn't wired to make its decisions based on that kind of abstract knowledge.
Why are you even reading this comment? :-)
"Sure, there is no ultimate purpose, but so what? I don't need an ultimate purpose to find things enjoyable."
Philosophy is the study of interesting questions, and nihilism hasn't succeeded in making things uninteresting.
Before I can answer the question, I need to have some idea of what "nihilism" means in this context, because there are many different varieties of it. I assume this is the most common one, the one that proposes that life is meaningless and purposeless. If this isn't the kind of nihilism you're referring to, please correct me.
To answer the question, I'm not a nihilist because nihilism is conceptually mistaken.
For example, suppose there is a stick, a normal brown wooden stick of some length. Now, is that stick a meter long or not? Whether it is or isn't, that question is conceptually sound, because the concept of stick has the attribute "length", which we can compare to the length of a meter, Is the stick morally just? This question isn't conceptually sound, because "justice" isn't an attribute of a stick. A stick isn't just, unjust, or morally gray, it completely lacks the attribute of "justice".
How does this apply to life? If you ask whether life is meaningless, that presupposes that conceptually life can have a meaning in the same way a stick can be a meter long - that "meaning" is an attribute of life. However, meaning is informational - words have meanings, as do symbols and signals in general. When I say "apple", you can imagine an apple, or at least know what I'm talking about, which means that the word "apple" is meaningful to both of us. If I say "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously", it doesn't bring anything to mind, so that phrase is meaningless. Life lacks the attribute of "meaning", because it's not information that's being communicated. Therefore, to say "life has no meaning" is more similar to saying "the stick is unjust" than to "the stick is shorter than a meter".
That deals with "life is meaningless". How about "life is purposeless"? To answer that question, consider where purpose comes from - from using something to achieve a desire. For example, if I say "a hammer's purpose is to hammer in nails", what that really means is something more like "A hammer is well-suited for hammering in nails and is often used for that end". If I want to hammer in nails, then, for me, the purpose of a hammer becomes to hammer in nails. If I want to eat porridge with a hammer (something I don't recommend), then to me the purpose of a hammer becomes to move porridge from a plate to my mouth. You may assign the hammer either of those purposes, or an entirely different one. Each of us can even assign multiple purposes to the same object. The point is, purpose is not a property of an object on its own, but one that arises from it having a relation with a being that has some use for it.
So, when you ask "What, if any, is the purpose of life?" that question requires much clarification. The purpose of whose life, and to whom? Just as we can assign different purposes to a hammer, we can assign different purposes to a life. For example, the purpose of my life to me is to keep me around, as I wouldn't be able to experience things if I were dead. Other people may assign different purposes to my life. So, a life can be purposeless, but only if no one, including the possessor of the life, assigns any value to it (and that assignment of value is in a reflective equilibrium).
To summarize:
"Is life meaningless?" - "Wrong question, meaning isn't an attribute of life."
"Is life purposeless?" - "Purpose is subjective and assigned by beings with desires. It is impossible to make a blanket statement about life in general, but it is possible for a particular life to be purposeless, though it is unlikely. Most lives have at least one purpose assigned to them."
Humans are adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers.
Indeed.
Obviously, asking "What's it all about?" did at some point contribute to eating, survival, or reproduction.
I suspect reproduction. It could be a way to signal higher intelligence, which is attractive, because it increases the chance of survival and reproduction of the children.
Not every specific question need have contributed to fitness.
Just as the ability to read never contributed to fitness until someone figured out how to do it with our already existing hardware.
No, not every specific question, but this one did. I mean, guys even today try to impress girls by being "deep" and "philosophical".
I think "meaning" has also a different interpretation. It can mean something like important, valuable, or that it matters. Something can be experienced as meaningful. That's why for a Christian, a story about finding God would be moving, because they see meaning in having a relationship with God. For an atheist, a story about expanding human knowledge about the universe might be moving, because they see knowledge as meaningful. In this interpretation, life is meaningful. In this interpretation, meaning is something that can be studied by psychologists.
Obviously, when you confuse those two interpretations of "meaning" that you get Eliezer's "one true objective morality to be gloomy and dress in black".
Simple: You're allowed to have values even if they aren't hard-coded into the fabric of the universe.
If you taboo the word "nihilism", the question almost answers itself.
Can you elaborate? I don't understand this.
Ask "Why are you not a nihilist?", replacing the word "nihilist" with a phrase that objectively explains it to a person unfamiliar with the concept of nihilism.
Rationalist taboo is a technique for fighting muddles in discussions. By prohibiting the use of a certain word and all the words synonymous to it, people are forced to elucidate the specific contextual meaning they want to express, thus removing ambiguity otherwise present in a single word.
Take free will as an example. To my knowledge, many compatiblists (free will and determinism are compatible) and people who deny that free will exist do not disagree on anything other than what the correct label for their position is. I imagine the same can often be said about nihilism.
Indeed, Hume, perhaps the most famous compatibilist, denies the existence of free will in his Treatise, only advocating compatibilism later, in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. It certainly seems to me that he doesn't actually change his mind; his early position seems to be "this thing people call free will is incoherent, so we should talk about things that matter instead," and his later position seems to be "people won't stop talking about free will, so I'll call the things that matter free will and reject the incoherent stuff under some other label (indifference)."
So his opinions kind of did change over that time period, but only from "I reject these words" to "alright, if you insist, I'll try to salvage these words". I'm not sure which policy's best. The second risks arguments with people who don't know your definitions. They will pass through two phases, the first is where the two of you legitimately think you're talking about the same thing but the other is a total idiot who doesn't know what it's like. The second phase is perhaps justifiable umbrage on their discovering that you are using a definition you totally just made up, and how were they even supposed to know.
The former position, however, requires us to leave behind what we already sort of kind of suspect about these maybe-not-actual concepts and depart into untilled, unpopulated lands, with a significant risk of wheel-reinvention.
What's a nihilist, and how would you distinguish it empirically from Eliezer?
If you meant to ask why we don't benefit your tribe politically by associating ourselves with it: we don't see any moral or practical reason to do so. It it turns out that nihilists have actually faced discrimination from the general public in the ways atheists have (and therefore declaring ourselves nihilists would help them at our slight expense), I might have to reconsider. Though happily, I don't belong to a religion that requires this, even if I turn out to meet the dictionary definition.
Define 'nihilism'.
In a universe made of atoms and the void, how could it be the one true objective morality to be gloomy and dress in black?
Where do you get this strange idea that a nihilist must be gloomy or dress in black?
It's a snarky way of asking — Okay, even if nihilism were true, how could that motivate us to behave any differently from how we are already inclined to behave?
It is a snarky way of asking that very question.
http://xkcd.com/167/
Not to forget http://xkcd.com/220/ .
This uncaring universe had a misfortune to evolve macroscopic structures who do care about it and each other, as a byproduct of their drive to procreate.
Why is that a misfortune?
That was tongue-in-cheek, of course. No need to anthropomorphize the universe. It hates it.
For me, I am not a nihilist because nihilism is boring. Also nihilism is a choice about how to see things, choosing nihilism vs non-nihilism does not come from learning more about the world, it comes from choosing something.
I am at least a little bit of a nihilist, there is plenty that I deny. I deny god, and more importantly, I deny a rational basis for morality or any human value or preference. I behave morally, more than most, less than some, but I figure i do that because I am genetically programmed to do so, and there is not enough to be gained by going against that. So I feel good when I bring my dog to the park because he has been genetically programmed to hack in to the part of my brain that I use for raising my children when they are babies, and I get powerful good feelings when I succumb to the demands of that part of my brain.
It makes no more rational sense to embrace nihilism than to deny it. It is like picking chocolate vs. vanilla, or more to the point, like picking chocolate vs poop-flavored. Why pick the one that makes you miserable when it is no more or less true than the one that is fun?
What makes you think that nihilism makes me miserable, or that nihilism is boring? I find that it can be liberating, exciting and fun. I was just curious to know how other intelligent people thought about it. This idea that nihilists are miserable or suicidal seems like propaganda to me -- I see no reason why nihilists can't be as happy and successful as anyone else.
What makes you think that I have an opinion one way or another about what nihilism does for you? Your original post asked why I wasn't a nihilist.
If you are a nihilist and that helps you be happy or fun, bully for you!
Death - SMBC Theater
Listen to the last guy.
Fired by whom?
A good quote on this:
In other words, even though it's true that every war, every destroyed relationship, every wonderful interaction, and everything else that's ever occurred in history happened on the pale blue dot, most likely quite ephemeral in its existence by contrast to the rest of the universe, this doesn't change about the fact that we as humans are programmed to care about certain things--things that do exist at this time, however transient they would be from a universe perspective--and this is the source of all enjoyment and suffering. The goal is to be on the 'enjoyment' side of it, of course.
Nihilism is just a confusion, a failure to take seriously the maxim 'it all comes back to normalcy'.
Your argument is that we shouldn't be nihilists because we're "programmed" not to be? Programmed by what? Doesn't the fact that we're having this conversation suggest that we also have meta-programming? What if I reject your programming and want off this wheel of enjoyment and suffering? What is "normalcy"? I find your comment to be full of baffling assertions!
I was trying to address an idea or attitude some people call "nihilism". If my response was baffling to you, then perhaps this suggests we're using different definitions of this word. What do you personally mean by "nihilism"? What beliefs do you have on this topic, and/or what actions do you take as a result of these beliefs?
I'm sorry if my kind ever confused you by saying things like "It is important that I make an impressive display in the lek", what I actually mean is "It is likely my intrinsic goals would be well met if I made an impressive display in the lek". There is an ommitted variable in the original phrasing. Its importance isn't just a function of our situation, it's a function of the situation and of me, and of my value system.
So I think the real difference between nihilists and non-nihilists as we may call them, is that non-nihilists [think they]have a clearer idea of what they want to do with their life. Life's purpose isn't written on the void, it's written within us. Nobody sane will argue otherwise.
Actually... "within".. now I think of it, the only resolute nihilist I've probed has terrible introspection relative to myself, and it took a very long time to determine this, introspective clarity doesn't manifest as you might expect. This might be a lead.
I am a machine bent on maxemizing the result of a function when run over the multiverse, that measures the amount of certain types of computation it is isomorphic to.
I'm a nicilist instead
I found myself experiencing a sort of "emotional nihilism" after de-converting from Christianity...
To your questions:
I don't know that I'm not, though I don't really define myself that way. I don't know if life or the universe has some ultimate/absolute/objective purpose (and I suspect it does not) or even what "purpose" really means... but I'm content enough with the novelty and intrigue of learning about everything at the moment that nihilism seems a bit bleak for a label to apply to myself. (Maybe on rainy days?)
I don't know. I'd also be interested to hear a good refutation. I suppose one could say "you are free to create your own meaning" or something like that...and then you'd have personally thwarted nihilism. Meh.
I gotta believe a good chunk of the world still believes in meaning of some kind, if for no other reason than their adherence to religion. This is an economic reason for the survival of philosophy and ongoing speculation about meaning -- Clergy are often are just philosophers with magical pre-suppositions & funny outfits.
And, practically speaking, it seems like purpose/meaning is a pretty good thing to stubbornly look for even when facing seemingly irrefutable odds.
Hm... maybe you could say the refutation of nihilism is the meaning you find in not giving up the search for meaning even though things seem meaningless?
I know they love meta concepts around here...
Who told you the universe is made of atoms and the void?
The usual suspects. What are you getting at?