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Comment by Jasamba | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for the links! I guess I'd like to know because without it, there's not much else I can do except wake up/eat/take s shit/go back to sleep. We are even able to have this conversation because someone somewhere wanted to go deeper and know more. About mathematicians, as a physicist, I'm no better myself and don't see why the possibility of going crazy should stop you from going after a problem you think you just need to know and are uniquely equipped to find the answer to, especially if you happen to be a famous(so probably a very talented) mathematician.

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You're welcome. :-) Thank you for your answer, I think I understand your reasoning a little better.

With the example of the mathematician, you can read it a number of different ways, but one of the things I took from it was the difference between a healthy curiosity and an unhealthy curiosity. It sounds to me that you have a healthy curiosity, and enjoy the mental stimulation of exploring the big questions. As long as it remains something you enjoy and you're still open to enjoying other things then you can't really go wrong. If you'd like to find kindred spirits that also enjoy thinking about the big questions, you can find plenty in the world of philosophy. I can recommend The School of Life as an enjoyable way to explore philosophy. As some examples, here are a couple of my favourites from TSoL:

http://youtu.be/fI1OeMmwYjU

http://youtu.be/WLAtXWaz76o

Learning can be done for your own enjoyment, but what I would suggest is the mindset that many of us used to get us through school isn't likely to help with that. I think this video puts it well:

http://youtu.be/ERbvKrH-GC4

Related to this, here's a discussion about deschooling you may find interesting:

http://youtu.be/Avd1EgAHnD8

One last thing...

http://youtu.be/KgzQuE1pR1w

Best of luck!

Thanks! Loved the songs you had linked, esp the drums. Deschooling sounds very close to what I assume will be required to cope and thrive with nihilism. We are given some very shallow arguments to 'keep going' mainly centering around, 'You need to be successful/find a succesful partner/Be the next einstein'.You only need to go a couple of steps deeper, to realise that these statements are hollow and incomplete. I'm not saying one needs to have a why to do anything at all, just that it needs to be understand that there is no answer to that why. Otherwise it is no different from religious dogma that crumbles at the slightest questioning. Thanks for the aweosme links, gonna check them out one by one!

Glad you liked the songs! Would be interested to hear what you thought of the other videos too (even if you didn't like them).

Whilst I can see that you're looking into nihilism, it's worth knowing that nihilism isn't the only alternative to conventional views and religious dogma. To start this exploration, let's look at reincarnation. My favourite way to look at this is... If you eat an apple, has that apple been reincarnated as a human?

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