yonoataraxia

How much suffering are we able to endure before giving up? I think a lot, because most of us have the desire to live. So I agree that people in power positions should realize that they should give real choices to powerless people on their own. They have to realize that they are self-delusional when they say "Just work hard and you can become one of us".

I think most of them truly don't realize how self-delusional this phrase really is because their own experiences confirm their beliefs (they were able to work hard and achieve something). So I don't think that most of them are purposely intellectually dishonest but just lack awareness.

- - -

> Without the capacity to make those decisions for ourselves, to be allowed to decide that truth is worth the loss of happiness, achievement, fulfillment, we are never ourselves truly human.

I like the small discussion about being human, although I can't agree with the position that we're "truly human" because of our ability to choose. This is a philosophical and subjective question, but basically I think that humans can have inherent value (based on ones belief system) even if we would find all the mechanisms in their decision making process and can predict what they do. I think that humans can be "truly human" even if we find out that free will is an illusion. I believe this, because "being human" is a definition made by humans and it wouldn't be very helpful to see ourselves as worthless just because we don't have real choices (using the assumption that free will is an illusion here - this doesn't mean that I necessarily think it is). It can be that people see humans as worthless, but they don't need the "ability to make choices" as an excuse for their misanthropy, beliefs or nihilism. There are many ways to achieve that.

Therefore it's likely that you'll change your definition of being human (and their inherent value) as soon as research shows us that free will and choices are mostly illusions because our thoughts are based on deterministic processes.

> I became something of a Stoic

I can relate.

> However, the ultimate key to my depression was simply self-acceptance.

This is so important. Learning to love oneself is such a difficult task but so rewarding in the end.

Thanks for sharing your story, it was very inspiring.

> I hope that you may find peace, and the warmth of good feeling.

I'll try to remember to allow myself to find peace in hard times. I hope that you can feel the love and warmth in your life.

Your story gives hope. I feel blessed that you told us your philosophical journey. Have a great day!

Nice, very good recommendation. Would love to add Erich Fromm ("The Art of Listening", but I can recommend all of them), although his works are a bit OT in this conversation.

I hope it's clear to see that obviousness is something I also see as a subjective thing which is related to the reader. That they contain obviousness is based on the fact that both thinkers shaped our thinking through their works or that we see their knowledge as "common knowledge" nowadays.

I used the word because this obviousness leads to boredom for some readers and I can see how both writers have obvious statements (from today's point of view) in them. That this is entirely subjective and based on the knowledge and self-awareness of the reader was never questioned, although I agree that I wasn't clear about it.

- And there is another dimension which was the reason for me to use the word with negative connotation: Sometimes Goethe just wrote about his wishes and desires towards a woman and some people try to see a lot more in some of his works (this is entirely subjective). It's like some of Kafkas works which can be interpreted quite clearly using his biography. But I don't want to start a discussion about the difference between interpretation and what the author tried to say. Many experts interpret works without considering the biography of the author and see the work of someone as something which stands on its own. I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I slightly favor methods that analyze texts based on the biography of the writers. But I can also understand why this is not necessary for a good interpretation.

I like this perspective very much. George Carlin in his later years has a lot of it in his shows.

And of course the great humor of SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-10

Share some comedians, would love to see some new stuff.

It's funny. I had a nihilistic mindset and found Nietzsche afterwards. I guess we're similar. Therefore I didn't had the chance to have any resistance to his ideas.

Recently I've dropped out of college, I was lonely in school and even nowadays, had several relationships that didn't last long and were painful. I've endured the pain of existence until I was able to comprehend it. I still feel this suffering every time I choose to feel.

I'm 20 years old now. I know how to help myself, but maybe there are things you want to say to your younger self. Maybe I can invite you to see this as a chance.

> I’ve just said the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard on the topic, and I’m still bored with it.

Thanks, I chuckled. It's true that the conversation contains a big amount of things that are obvious and trivial as soon as somebody understands them.

Maybe you could make it more interesting if you start to question your own existence, but it's definitely possible that you don't have the problems that most people have with this topic. In this case you found a shortcut to enlightenment. Congratulations! (this is no sarcasm. I like how you interact with those ideas and still believe they're boring af).

Unfortunately I'm German so I can't recommend good translations, but it should definitely be possible to read Goethe in German and English simultaneously. Look for Dual-Language Editions with side-by-side views of German and English texts.

Definitely worth it to freshen up your memory. I hope you find some time to do it. Although I kind of disagree with the view that Goethes thoughts are "more important" than Nietzsches'. Both sometimes contain astonishing levels of obviousness (used here with negative connotation) and both have works which are hyped due to their names.

I think it's ok. When they would instantly understand Nietzsche, it's very likely they already had major depressive episodes in their lives.

Otherwise it's difficult to question everything you thought you knew about anything. Normally it's not a pleasant experience. That is the reason that so-called enlightenment happens only to those who had big inner struggles after many years of reflection.

In a Freudian way their unconscious side protects them from threats attacking their mental health. Knowing what's right and wrong is necessary to do anything with reason. If you accept the fact that there is no right and wrong, you can definitely lose some motivation which is detrimental to the incentive system that our consciousness gets trained with.

It's therefore rational for most people to reject those ideas (although they don't necessarily can reflect on this level). I wouldn't call it "intellectually handicapped", I would say their mental processes protect them very well from thoughts that could lead to a loss of their values and belief system. Otherwise it sounds so negative although it's a rational thing to do for the consciousness. Normally your incentive system is not "I want to know the whole damn truth", it's "I want a happy and fulfilled life, want to feel good about myself and achieve something". Cognitive biases help us to achieve those goals. It just seems irrational from external point of views because of missing profundity in the analysis of the psyche of the other person. They're perfectly logical w.r.t. the incentive system.

Thus Spoke davidpaulyoung, that's why.

Sorry, couldn't resist a good joke. I'm just a mere mortal (although I like ancient philosophy).

I think that the emotional aspect is really important. If you just remove it, you might miss something that is fundamental to human nature. And just removing it is almost certainly a type of self-delusion because the emotional aspect is very hard to remove from human existence.

But yes, if you achieve a level of self-awareness where you're able to live in a near-nihilistic state and be content with it, it can be quite pleasant, although it's very hard to achieve.

Pure nihilism would lead to beings who don't want anything and therefore don't do anything - but even if you want to pee or "achieve nihilism" you stop being a complete nihilist because you start to want something. So it's a catch-22 here. As long as those Zen Nihilists know that they can't achieve pure nihilism and treat it as a goal which can't be reached (like wisdom), I think it can be a good solution (otherwise it could lead to a silly competition where all followers just try to tell everybody how "nihilistic" they are). Not for most of us, but I'm glad you found something.

That's true, but it's much more fun to read about being a camel, lion and finally a child than describing it in a dry and unambiguous way. So in a way he tried to appeal to his readers and made a piece of art. But you should also acknowledge that only 20% of people were able to read back then. His expectations about his readers were based on the time he lived in.

While I don't defend his expression skills I just want to emphasize how hard it is to anticipate what people 100 years in the future will think about your ideas. And the interpretations and emotions which those people use while reading the texts.

The hard part about Nietzsche is being able to let your mind absorb the thoughts without interfering with your own values and belief system. But I guess it's not a secret that it's hard for people to listen without simultaneously judging something.

This is a great analysis of Nietzsche. It's rare to find people who really understand what he's trying to say. Many people interpret him in inaccurate ways.

Essentially, Nietzsche is a person who touches very sensitive parts of being human after he analyzed society. He is a person who asked uncomfortable questions about existence in his quest to describe nihilism. Nihilism is the consequence of the loss of morality and the total annihilation of ones values and belief system - and the loss of morality stems from the "death of god" which means that we got to the point (in science) where there were exceedingly small areas of unknowns. Many questions - also about right and wrong - were suddenly more informed due to increasing knowledge.

What makes Nietzsche great is his ability to foresee what this leads to. It's like he knew what will happen in the future. And he tried to give us a solution using "will to power". I'm not necessarily a fan of his solution, but I appreciate it. He's a man who had a positive attitude towards people and society. He wanted to help society. This deep empathy based on insane levels of self-awareness and profundity is what I like about him. Unfortunately, his ideas were not understood properly and used by fascists (the "master race" of the Nazis is built on the definition of ubermensch a.k.a. superman). Which is the reason I really appreciate your comment.

I think that "will to power" is one of many possible solutions. But everyone has to find a solution for the big deep hole of emptiness in their existence. Failing to find a solution leads to nihilism which is a very painful and unpleasant place to be (although it has the advantage that you don't have to take responsibilities - for some people this can feel better than dealing with their emptiness). If we as a society fail to help to give people different solutions for this emptiness, it will lead to a society full of unhappy people who are in quiet despair. We can see that this is already happening.

So Nietzsche talked about a question that hit us hard 100 years after his death. Sometimes we acknowledge when sci-fi authors were able to predict the future. I would like to acknowledge that Nietzsche was able to anticipate our reality based on his knowledge of human nature. In the same realm I would like to thank Sigmund Freud - both shared similar thoughts about the human nature which shows that Nietzsche was also a type of psychologist (before it was a distinct research field). Sigmund Freud once articulated his admiration for Nietzsches work and said that Nietzsches thoughts were amazing in that they captured many thoughts that Freud thought to be true due to his works in psychoanalysis.

Although I share your point of view w.r.t. scientific thinking and I don't disagree on objective reality (personally), this question can still be answered in a different way and may lead to the conclusion that objective reality is a construct that gets created by perceiving.

Subjective idealism states that there don't has to be objective reality to get truth values from it. Trying to understand this from a materialistic point of view is not easy because those philosophies are basically in contradiction to each other.

It's just important to realize that the belief that objective reality exists is one of many points of view.

> As in, it is theoretically possible for a system to be 100% secure. The difficulty lies in designing one and proving it.

> It's not fundamentally impossible.

How is "100% secure" defined in this context if you can't prove it?

In a sufficient complex logical system Gödel's incompleteness theorems are turning relevant. It might not be possible to prove some aspects of it if the system is logically consistent. This may also apply if you model reality in a logically consistent way. Logics has its limits.

Although I agree with you, I think it's important to realize that our positions are and can't exceed to be beliefs or even strong beliefs called facts.

To say it in programmer terms: belief systems are functions that assign truth values to assumptions.

for example a belief system can look like this:

belief_system("earth is flat") -> false

belief_system("life is meaningless") -> true

Where is the truth value coming from? For a flat earther: They can e.g. use a emotional and individual belief system to determine truth values. For a scientific-minded person: They assign truth values based on scientific evidence (which is a type of assumption).

btw: saying there is absolute and objective truth is highly unscientific - science is based on the premise that you can replace theories with another theory if the evidence suggests it. The problem of induction shows the limit of empiric evidence and I hope that most scientists are aligned with this scientific principles (otherwise they aren't scientists by definition). IMHO there is no absolute truth that can be identified as such (I'm not assuming that there isn't objective truth, but merely that we couldn't identify it if there is such a thing).

It's like IT security, it is a relative measurement and the relations (in this case) are made by belief systems. There is a consensus that there is no "absolute security" in the security sector. If you accept that there is no absolute security in IT systems and only "reasonable security" (I do not assume that you do assume this), why do you have problems to accept that there might not be a way to recognize the "true truth values"? If you see absolute security as a given you don't have to solve this conflict.

I'm merely exercising logic here using my assumptions (and yes, some of them I call "facts", but I see them as something which gets defined by my belief system).

your belief:

belief_system("there is such a thing as absolute, objective truth")

my belief:

belief_system("truth as we use it in our daily lives is defined by our belief systems")

btw, would love to see discussions using assumptions and then logically deriving conclusions. Especially funny when somebody has conflicting assumptions (logic of explosion).

One of many atheist interpretations.

There's no consensus in the group of atheists except that they reject the idea of a god. Trying to frame it like there are more common assumptions ("Atheist interpretation: <your assumptions what you and other atheists think>") seems generalizing to me.

Speak for yourself. I'm an atheist and I see how people have purpose and I also find meaning in life (although I struggle with it all the time like many other people including theists).

> How can life be good if it's not comfortable and easy

Good question. Nietzsche talked alot about this issue, this was his very main concern when he talked about "becoming oneself" as one of many desirable (subjective) goals in life that can give us meaning. You don't even need religion to endure suffering with meaning.

It depends on your definition of a good life. I hope you see that it's not a objective truth that life is good when it's comfortable and easy. It can be that you see it as your goal, but e.g. I don't want that - but this isn't even relevant. Important is to understand that all truths that we believe in are assumptions (some of them called "facts" which are assumptions commonly shared by many people or in a group) and that they can differ between individuals which means that we perceive reality differently. Objectively describing what reality is is not possible - this is one key aspect of epistemology.

"Bad stuff" and "good stuff" has also subjective and normative aspects. What do we perceive as good or bad? It's based on values and a belief system. For a nihilist there's not even "good" or "bad" because those can only be defined with a belief system. Nihilists have a collapsed belief system which says that nothing has inherent value. But the question is: What is the motivation for an individual to become a nihilist? (pro: you don't have to take responsibility and fight for your beliefs, con: it can suck alot to have a meaningless life)

Does your belief system enables you to be happy and fulfilled (in your terms)? This is the relevant question I would personally use to assess if a belief system is enabling or hindering you.

This seems to be a very shallow analysis of the question of theodicy. Modern theology isn't that ignorant of suffering and its origin as you might imagine.

I'm not a religious person, but I see how people see meaning in their belief systems. I don't see any underlying beliefs in your comment that have a positive attitude, it has a rather negative focus (without trying to neglect it).

I just happen to wonder what your goals are. What are you fighting for with this statement, what is the underlying belief system that leads you to this statement?

Your field of study is the source for this video, the preservation of greek philosophy and many other important thought schools and religions.

The majority may not care so much about the daily life of the people of the past. But we sure care about their significant thoughts.

Thanks for doing this job, it's more important for people today than it seems.

I'm pretty sure that you're going to work this out :)

> glorified copy machines

> So I strive for one thing I know I cannot achieve

There's some serious cynism going on here. Maybe cabaret artist is something for you to consider. The late George Carlin was incredibly funny because of it.

Some people love jokes based on materialistic and dry analysis of human behavior. I do.

> This whole idea contradicts the very nature of being human which is to make up meaning according to the culture and trends of the time.

We all do it: we have assumptions in form of learned concepts or experiences, place importance on some of them and then use it to prove a point.

You state that it didn't "struck a chord with you at all" and then proceed with your assumptions / value system ("... physics formula can have eternal significance within the grand scheme of things"). For all positions, assumptions and opinions there exists a position where all of it doesn't matter.

Trying to be scientific is also a belief system. Recognizing that all human beings share the trait of having assumptions (some of them called facts) and deriving behavior and opinions from it is the key.

This understanding can support empathy which was generally a good strategy to have in the past (e.g. even monkeys implement fairness concepts based on individuals trying to manage resources in groups which IMHO is one important aspect of the origin of empathy).

I can understand your position of relativism, but it's very close to nihilism. This is not inherently bad (nothing is good or bad, anyways - I'm also a big fan of relativism), but it can be detrimental to mental health and overall well-being.

The tactic may be too simple to "get you", but your point of view is equally flawed in another way (as well as mine).

The question is: What are you standing for if you don't find his arguments convincing? Nitpicking and being anti is not a good long-term strategy, maybe we can help him with better arguments for empathy that resonate with scientific-minded thinkers like you.

> and yes, the role of bananas may be exaggerated here

Tried to be funny. It seems I've failed. It's not about that banana.

Point was that our social structures can be explained by some first principles e.g. individuals try to acquire enough resources (what a trivial assertion, but I guess that is the point of first principles) and that we can explain the origin of our social structures with them.

Fun fact: It is not very common for monkeys to eat bananas in the wild - they simply don't have them [1].

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/wild-monkeys-do-not-eat-banan...

Totally OT: wild birds cooperate with humans to get some honey. I love such articles. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/21/486471339/ho...

Maybe this is more than semantic discrepancies here. There is evidence for "learning by experience" that can be inherited. I suggest reading about epigenetics and how the experiences of your ancestors might be encoded using switches on your DNA (which turn areas on or off and gives the organism a way to pass on knowledge - hence "learning by experience" supported by epigenetics).

See e.g. [1] or [2] - even simpler organisms like worms have this ability, it is very likely that we also have those capabilities (because we are descended from simpler organisms).

I hope that you find something interesting in the current research of biology and psychology, some things are not like what we used to think.

[1] http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences... [2] https://futurism.com/memories-can-inherited-scientists-may-j...

This is more of a semantic discussion: after a while, there will be individuals with better strategies to survive and reproduce (this is the implicit teleology of evolution: living things live on, dead things go extinct). You don't even need someone giving this orders because we define living things as those who live (research communities can't even agree on the definition of life - see viruses). Our words imply specific meaning.

I guess you mean that there is another meaning in the word "learning" in that context: That the species follows a specific purpose. But what is the species? The aggregation of all individuals of some kind (the research community can't even agree on a definition for "species").

Some individuals will do stuff or become something (due to genetic modifications) that gives them more resources or better reproduction rates - sometimes individuals will learn and teach it to their offspring. If it's a good strategy, the species will contain a lot of individuals who acquired this strategy.

So I guess "learning" is accurate enough for common usage.

Somewhat interesting: Bananas contain the ingredients necessary to produce dopamine.

I can see how this all plays out as a way for some apes to get some bananas. Even social structures, fairness and other things (I love this video - two monkeys getting unequal pay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg ) can be explained by a dopamine system that just likes to give us bananas and sex. And it's incentivized to conserve energy because this is better for survival (also called lazy) - interesting is that humans have some tendency to do stuff that don't necessarily is conserving energy. Maybe this is what makes us successful: Sometimes we invest excessive energy to try new things which happens to let us survive better through innovation (which leads to genetics that encode this behavior).

I like it, although it isn't necessarily what I call my meaning of life (I'm a dualist, because materialism is too damn dry). I like bananas, though (and yes, the role of bananas may be exaggerated here).

Thought long about it. From a materialistic standpoint there are only quantitative differences between a organism which has a sensor, some type of memory and an actuator and human beings, although they sure look different. Still following the same principles.

When I further simplify, we are all just energy (and matter, which is just a form of it) following some first principles hallucinating our consciousnesses trying to evade the eventual entropy that we'll reach nevertheless because this is how the universe works.

- - -

Cool fact is that animals are capable of rational thinking (crows drop nuts to break them approx. at the minimal height necessary to achieve that - optimal energy usage. I'm pretty sure they don't even realize that their brains calculate this based on their experience) and I'm sure that all people act rational w.r.t their training data (some outliers like traumatic events and other life circumstances that differ from the average just change some weights in a way that it looks irrational for outsiders). This is indeed difficult to defend because it depends on the semantics on the word "irrational" which is man-made after all.

Interesting resources for this topic:

a theory trying to explain human behavior and the emergence of consciousness using knowledge of psychology: https://unifiedtheoryofpsychology.files.wordpress.com/2011/1... (principles how the brain works)

https://unifiedtheoryofpsychology.files.wordpress.com/2011/1... (why culture and religion emerges)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo (consciousness as a hallucination)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRVGA9zxXzk (a bird which can identify itself in a mirror, simple self-awareness - I like the fact that the brains of birds are more efficient because they are space-constrained to be able to fly better)

(the brain as a neural net with meta-learning capabilities that tries to guess what happens next and what it should do next. Emotions and some pre-wiring based on genetics enables us that we don't start with a complete random brain structure because it gives us better surviving abilities if we're able to see and feel as soon as we get out of our mothers).