Yet more "stupid" questions

NancyLebovitz

This is a thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. The previous thread is at close to 500 comments.

Can you elaborate? I don't understand this.

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.

4Bobertron13y

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.

8ZankerH13y

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.