I asked a question in the discussion section a little bit ago and got very productive responses. What follows is mostly a paraphrase of people's comments.

From time to time, like Pierre, I don't care. I get emotionally nihilistic. I find myself doing things that are morally awful in the conventional meaning of the word: procrastinating, sneaking other people's food out of the communal fridge, being casually unkind and unhelpful, breaking promises. I don't doubt that these are awful things to do. I figure any moral theory worth its salt will condemn them -- except the moral theory "I don't care," which sometimes seems strangely compelling.

What I want to know is: what goes through people's heads when they're motivated not to be awful? What could you tell someone as a reason not to be awful? If you are, in fact, not awful, why aren't you awful? What do you think, or feel, when you care about things? What would you tell someone who claims "I just don't care" if you wanted to get her to care? What would you tell yourself, in your nihilistic moments?

The (more) trivial utility function

Nihilism feels like a utility function where everything is set to the value zero. Landing that job offer or school admission letter? That's worth nothing. Making someone smile? Worth nothing. Being in good physical shape? Worth nothing. Living according to moral values? Worth nothing. Nothing is fun, or appealing, or worth looking forward to.

The thing about a nihilistic mindset is that you can't really argue your way out of it (at least, I've never succeeded.) It's perfectly logically coherent. A function that's constant at zero is still a function. You can have a function where all the best things in life, all the "peaks," matter much less to you.

Edit: Vladimir_Nesov comments that it's not really a zero utility function because even a nihilistic person doesn't behave totally at random, and can usually keep up some minimal degree of self maintenance. This is a fair point. It's more accurate to say that it feels like nothing matters, or at least that the desire for goal-directed behavior is significantly diminished. Maybe it's not a flat function, but a flatter function, where the things you used to value...

PowerCorrupts

PowerCorrupts