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But there is no reason to be altruistic. It's a total fantasy, just like any religion is. To believe otherwise is to live an unexamined life, and the unexamine

by javert 11y ago

But there is no reason to be altruistic. It's a total fantasy, just like any religion is. To believe otherwise is to live an unexamined life, and the unexamined life is not worth living. Some people feel like being altruistic, but feelings are the products of ideas. Ideas can be examined and thrown out when irrational (as in this case).

verbin217 11y ago
Sure there is. A person of enough collective benefit becomes valuable enough to the surrounding world that they can be ignorant of their own selfish needs. They will simply be satisfied. You needn't be sacrificial about it. That wouldn't be altruistic. It's just a strategy that can become sort of a fetish. I wouldn't call it a fantasy. It's just got some blind spots that promote a pleasant state of mind. If you're not aware of your own envy for such a state you might not notice yourself contriving reasons for it's absurdity or invalidity. It's really more of an ignorance. While the unexamined life may not be worth living, life cannot be comprehensively examined. You will always be ignorant. To be so affronted by your own ignorance that you only conceptualize it to immediately and compulsively destroy it is a gross limitation. You have the opportunity to accept more ignorance in yourself such that you can then optimize it.
- javert 11y ago
  I can't really follow this. For one thing, I don't know what "person of enough collective benefit" means (seems like you are missing a proposition or something). For another thing, it's not true that people are doomed to ignorance, and it seems like your argument probably rests on that assumption. I don't see for a second why you'd say people are doomed to ignorance. We use sense perception to perceive stuff, and we develop a coherent picture of the world (so we learn to reconcile optical illusions, for instance). And for all intents and purposes, that is reality, and it's objective. Maybe there's some other reality underneath that, but then, maybe there are pink unicorns dancing on Alpha Centauri; it's totally arbitrary, and thus irrelevant.
  - verbin217 11y ago
    Why: "While the unexamined life may not be worth living, life cannot be comprehensively examined." I have chosen to believe that I am more finite than life. Further I believe that I can only examine a subset of each passing moment. I currently believe that the invention of seamless Virtual Reality is inevitable. Also that with it we will actually create a whole new modality of ignorance. I also believe, as Nietzsche did, that society will increasingly trend towards nihilism.
- javert 11y ago
  I meant "preposition" in the first sentence there.
MichaelGG 11y ago
You can't call something irrational without providing the logical framework and values. Replace being altruistic with "having sex" or "enjoying drugs", etc. Some people enjoy being altruistic. Others perhaps do it for the social status it gives them. Saying there's no reason for it is rather pointless.
- javert 11y ago
  So I guess you are defending living blindly and doing whatever you feel like doing, rather than actually thinking about what it makes sense to do. That does not sound like a good strategy. It may lead you to being a totally self-sacrificial shmoo living in a fantasy world, like the woman profiled in the article. Or it may lead you to being a jihadist. Or it may lead you to advocating political ideas that are destructive (like, say, the Nazis). Man has the faculty of reason, let's use it. There is such a thing as empathy for other people or animals that is genuine, but you shouldn't sacrifice more important values for it. Similarly I like playing board games sometimes, but I don't choose to play them all day and impoverish myself.
aikah 11y ago
> Some people feel like being altruistic, but feelings are the products of ideas. Ideas can be examined and thrown out when irrational (as in this case). At the end of the day we all are robot executing a program.Yet saying that serves little purpose. It's as stupid as saying "we're all made of atoms", it doesn't make someone who is pain feel better. There are reasonable solutions today to most problems of mankind. Making a difference is important because we are all on the same "boat". No man is an island, even nihilists like you aren't.
- verbin217 11y ago
  I consider myself to be a nihilist and suspect you may misunderstand it. The full scope of nihilism subsumes the smug and misanthropic blackhole that people seem to relate to it. It's just, as you put it, another robot executing a program. The fundamental belief is in fact that you have agency over this mechanism. You get to choose what to believe. You alone are responsible for your semantic relationship to reality. You can toil in the adaptation of harmony between your desires and an apparently meaningless world. You can get a pre-optimized strategy from your local minister. It's just an expression of a new degree of freedom. It's more of a meta-philosophy than a philosophy. It's intended to describe a lack of meaning and not to prescribe it. Nihilism often goes unidentified. Anyone who has ever changed beliefs has acted momentarily as a nihilist. A person who is open-minded is a partial nihilist. A complete nihilist being someone who has developed a core belief that none of their other beliefs are certainly true. They simply recognize each as subjectively and temporarily optimal. Notably this evaluation changes, for every existing belief, every time you change any single belief. At it's extreme nihilism can be anxiety inducing. There's always that sneaking suspicion that your core belief is no longer subjectively or temporarily optimal. That and no way to test your suspicion but to maintain your core belief. You can get sort've stuck in an anti-dogmatic loop frantically evaluating philosophies. This doesn't have to be your experience of nihilism. You can simply adapt beliefs to manage this problem.
  - javert 11y ago
    Problem is, reality is knowable and there is meaning in life. So you are wrong.

by javert 11y ago

verbin217 11y ago

Sure there is. A person of enough collective benefit becomes valuable enough to the surrounding world that they can be ignorant of their own selfish needs. They will simply be satisfied. You needn't be sacrificial about it. That wouldn't be altruistic. It's just a strategy that can become sort of a fetish. I wouldn't call it a fantasy. It's just got some blind spots that promote a pleasant state of mind. If you're not aware of your own envy for such a state you might not notice yourself contriving reasons for it's absurdity or invalidity. It's really more of an ignorance. While the unexamined life may not be worth living, life cannot be comprehensively examined. You will always be ignorant. To be so affronted by your own ignorance that you only conceptualize it to immediately and compulsively destroy it is a gross limitation. You have the opportunity to accept more ignorance in yourself such that you can then optimize it.

javert 11y ago
I can't really follow this. For one thing, I don't know what "person of enough collective benefit" means (seems like you are missing a proposition or something). For another thing, it's not true that people are doomed to ignorance, and it seems like your argument probably rests on that assumption. I don't see for a second why you'd say people are doomed to ignorance. We use sense perception to perceive stuff, and we develop a coherent picture of the world (so we learn to reconcile optical illusions, for instance). And for all intents and purposes, that is reality, and it's objective. Maybe there's some other reality underneath that, but then, maybe there are pink unicorns dancing on Alpha Centauri; it's totally arbitrary, and thus irrelevant.
- verbin217 11y ago
  Why: "While the unexamined life may not be worth living, life cannot be comprehensively examined." I have chosen to believe that I am more finite than life. Further I believe that I can only examine a subset of each passing moment. I currently believe that the invention of seamless Virtual Reality is inevitable. Also that with it we will actually create a whole new modality of ignorance. I also believe, as Nietzsche did, that society will increasingly trend towards nihilism.
javert 11y ago
I meant "preposition" in the first sentence there.

MichaelGG 11y ago

You can't call something irrational without providing the logical framework and values. Replace being altruistic with "having sex" or "enjoying drugs", etc. Some people enjoy being altruistic. Others perhaps do it for the social status it gives them. Saying there's no reason for it is rather pointless.

javert 11y ago
So I guess you are defending living blindly and doing whatever you feel like doing, rather than actually thinking about what it makes sense to do. That does not sound like a good strategy. It may lead you to being a totally self-sacrificial shmoo living in a fantasy world, like the woman profiled in the article. Or it may lead you to being a jihadist. Or it may lead you to advocating political ideas that are destructive (like, say, the Nazis). Man has the faculty of reason, let's use it. There is such a thing as empathy for other people or animals that is genuine, but you shouldn't sacrifice more important values for it. Similarly I like playing board games sometimes, but I don't choose to play them all day and impoverish myself.

aikah 11y ago

> Some people feel like being altruistic, but feelings are the products of ideas. Ideas can be examined and thrown out when irrational (as in this case). At the end of the day we all are robot executing a program.Yet saying that serves little purpose. It's as stupid as saying "we're all made of atoms", it doesn't make someone who is pain feel better. There are reasonable solutions today to most problems of mankind. Making a difference is important because we are all on the same "boat". No man is an island, even nihilists like you aren't.

verbin217 11y ago
I consider myself to be a nihilist and suspect you may misunderstand it. The full scope of nihilism subsumes the smug and misanthropic blackhole that people seem to relate to it. It's just, as you put it, another robot executing a program. The fundamental belief is in fact that you have agency over this mechanism. You get to choose what to believe. You alone are responsible for your semantic relationship to reality. You can toil in the adaptation of harmony between your desires and an apparently meaningless world. You can get a pre-optimized strategy from your local minister. It's just an expression of a new degree of freedom. It's more of a meta-philosophy than a philosophy. It's intended to describe a lack of meaning and not to prescribe it. Nihilism often goes unidentified. Anyone who has ever changed beliefs has acted momentarily as a nihilist. A person who is open-minded is a partial nihilist. A complete nihilist being someone who has developed a core belief that none of their other beliefs are certainly true. They simply recognize each as subjectively and temporarily optimal. Notably this evaluation changes, for every existing belief, every time you change any single belief. At it's extreme nihilism can be anxiety inducing. There's always that sneaking suspicion that your core belief is no longer subjectively or temporarily optimal. That and no way to test your suspicion but to maintain your core belief. You can get sort've stuck in an anti-dogmatic loop frantically evaluating philosophies. This doesn't have to be your experience of nihilism. You can simply adapt beliefs to manage this problem.
- javert 11y ago
  Problem is, reality is knowable and there is meaning in life. So you are wrong.