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A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning

325 points by cmpb 10y ago

ebbv 10y ago
I've never read this guy's writing before but in this article I think he is way over-intellectualizing things. Meaning is whatever you want it to be. Some people find meaning in easing the suffering of others. Some people find meaning in raising children who will raise children, etc. even if in the fullness of time they will all cease to exist. Some people find meaning in really good sushi. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. When I eat really good red snapper nigiri I experience pleasure. That is a real joy that meant something to me in the moment. The big picture of the entirety of time and space means nothing because I don't live in that full reality. I live in a small pocket of time in a small pocket of space because I am a tiny being.
- dublinben 10y ago
  >Meaning is whatever you want it to be. That is basically the post-modern absurdist position on the meaning of life. Most people still believe in an external source of meaning (religion) that exists regardless of your personal opinion.
  - gnaritas 10y ago
    What most people believe has no bearing on the truth; truth isn't a democracy, so your point lacks meaning. His point, was truth, you make your own meaning in this world.
    - dublinben 10y ago
      >His point, was truth, you make your own meaning in this world That is an entirely subjective belief. You and I might hold that opinion, but the majority of people in the world do not. For them, the "truth" about the meaning of life is externally imposed and exists outside any one person's opinion.
      - gnaritas 10y ago
        That one can make ones own meaning is objectively true, that there exists outside meaning is only subjectively true as there's no evidence such an outside force exists while ones own existence is not in question, so no, what I stated was objectively true while what most people believe is only subjectively true.
        dublinben 10y ago
        >what I stated was objectively true while what most people believe is only subjectively true It's not really, but of course you believe it is. Nobody wants to believe that their beliefs are just as arbitrary any anyone else's.
        gnaritas 10y ago
        It isn't a matter of what I believe, it is objectively true that people can "can" choose their own meanings in life; that is not a belief, it is a fact, this is objectively demonstrable by the fact that people do exactly that and you'll find many people in this thread saying exactly that. It is also objectively true that people can choose to rely on an external source of meaning, but it is only subjectively true that external objective meaning exists precisely because it cannot be objectively demonstrated that the source of said external objective meaning actually exists, therefore it is a subjective belief that there is objective meaning outside ones self. It's notable that you're selectively quoting leaving out exactly that part that explain the logic behind said statement. You're either unable to discern the meaning of objective/subjective, or you're being dishonest with the selective quoting. Either way, you're incorrect. If you want to continue to debate this, you must demonstrate the logical flaw in either of the two above paragraphs.
  - ebbv 10y ago
    People finding meaning in religion falls under my suggestion that people find their own meaning. They find it in that religion and belief. Now, you and they may take the opinion that their meaning exists whether I believe in it or not, and that their view is truth and my view is heresy. That's fine, they can believe that if they want to. I don't. However, my belief system has room for theirs.
- dgreensp 10y ago
  Thanks for bringing this up. Small things can have huge personal significance. I think the article makes sense until it tries to model meaning in an impersonal way; there's a bit of a switcheroo when the author goes from saying meaning is an emotion to saying it is a matter of fact. I'd say that meaning, as a cognitive emotion, is heavily dependent on what "facts" we hold to be true and what stories we tell ourselves. Most people are not telling themselves stories about the entirety of time and space, so it literally has no impact on their experience of meaning. Death, on the other hand, affects us all; everyone has an attitude towards their own future and eventual death, however unexamined it is. That doesn't mean everyone has the same attitude, though. Some people would like to become immortal above all else, while others are not bothered in the slightest by having a finite lifespan, or believe that their "spirit" is somehow infinite. It is possible to intellectualize about where meaning comes from in order to bring more into your life, as a kind of therapy; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy
seletskiy 10y ago
> So: meaning isn't a substance, but rather a feeling. In this way, it's a lot like beauty. If I understand correctly, author is saying, that you can't measure nor exactly define meaning, and then building follow up logical chain based on that axiom. If so, then it's just wrong, because all human feelings are results of biochemical processes inside a brain. They arise in exact situations and they are predictable as patterns. So, we can define feelings and analyze them to the point where we can see how they are building and what is causing one or another.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "If so, then it's just wrong, because all human feelings are results of biochemical processes inside a brain. They arise in exact situations and they are predictable as patterns. So, we can define feelings and analyze them to the point where we can see how they are building and what is causing one or another." I doubt we know enough about these processes to make such a claim. For example, will one set of patterns always result in envy, or can the patterns behind envy also produce adoration? Furthermore, with what we think of as the 'mind', what influence does it have over the response of the 'body'. In practice these may be one and the same thing, but phenomena related to 'mind over matter' definitely seem to exist. For example, practitioners of tummo can voluntarily alter their body temperature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo Without a deeper understanding of the relationship between the mind and the body, I wouldn't want to make any claims about how deterministic our minds are.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  Modern science is a long way from mapping physical states to feelings. And even if we could, it still doesn't explain why certain physical states cause certain mental states: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Explangap http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Explangap
seletskiy 10y ago
I think, that meaning can be only defined in the case, when one is immortal. If I'm mortal, everything I do, good or bad, is meaningless for consciousness, because it will cease to exist and everything that will happen after death will have no effect on it. Any meaning, that's is defined while one is mortal is no more than illusion, in which people immerse themselves for whatever reason.
- colordrops 10y ago
  I agree. One workaround is to identify with your family or humanity instead of just yourself, then there is a shot at immortality. There are lots of instances of individuals dying in service of a greater good, such as the amoeba Dictyostelid, which when food runs out, climb on top of each other to form a stalk and then die, allowing the rest to climb to the top and form a spore which then explodes and spreads the rest of the amoeba toward greener pastures. Depending on the lifecycle stage, the Dictyostelid takes on the form of a group of individuals, a single animal-like creature, or a single plant like creature. Pretty amazing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyostelid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyostelid
- Mahn 10y ago
  That's a bit pessimist, isn't it? It's a little bit like saying that living is not worth it because you'll die anyway. I think what we do is not about an indefinite future impact or goal, but about the how it impacts us and the people around us today, right now. I see meaning as something not like a hard drive, where you store data once you are done, but like RAM, where you read, write and modify on the fly, constantly, while the machine is powered on. Sure, at some point the machine will be powered off you'll be gone, but meaning doesn't have to be everlasting to exist and have an impact.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    So much this. For some reason humans have no appreciation for the value of time. Because a relationship ends, doesn't mean it wasn't good while it lasted. Because I have something now, doesn't mean I will have it forever.
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RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago
> Science taught me that it's all just atoms and the void, so there can't be any deeper point or purpose to the whole thing; the kind of meaning most people yearn for — Ultimate Meaning — simply doesn't exist. I don't think that is something science can teach you. Science can give you the scientific method, but answering the question "Is the scientific method the only valid means of knowledge?" is philosophy not science. It seems the author is trying to smuggle in a particular philosophy under the guise of science.
- szemet 10y ago
  Yes. Science based on methodological naturalism (where one only assumes naturalism). But I guess the success of the scientific method may add some support for metaphysical naturalism (where one actually believes that naturalism is true) too.
- njohnson41 10y ago
  Especially if you assume that the scientific method is always valid--that all true statements can be determined empirically--you can't make statements like "Ultimate Meaning doesn't/does exist". If Ultimate Meaning cannot be defined, it cannot be tested for or measured, so no statements about it can be true or false. The answer to meaning would not be false, but null (or maybe 42). Just like 42, "atoms and the void" here is just a science-flavored attempt to answer a non-question.
  - rimantas 10y ago
    But if it cannot be measured it by definition cannot have any effect on reality so can be safely ignored.
    - Natsu 10y ago
      I assume you mean that in the absolute sense, but one also has to realize that "cannot be measured" can also be a measure of our ability to measure things. So you certainly can have real effects that we're simply not able to measure. And so in that sense, I'm not sure the premise follows, as some of the things we cannot measure are things like the conditions of the early universe, which certainly did effect[1] us. [1] It affects us too, but I chose that word deliberately
koonsolo 10y ago
People are able to push through a whole lot of suffering when they have meaning. When all pleasure is taken away (e.g. concentration camps), only the people who have something to live for are able to survive. (ref. "Man's search for meaning" by Viktor Frankl) Too bad he doesn't mention evolution, because it plays an important role in preferring individuals who find meaning in something.
- cmpb 10y ago
  He does mention the evolutionary advantages of finding meaning briefly, at first, and then comes back to it toward the end of the essay. (He does a poor job of breaking his essays up into obvious sections, though; sorry for the lack of links to back me up).
sjwright 10y ago
I've never had an issue valuing my life knowing that it has no eternally persistent meaning. A poor analogy, but I like to explain a finite life's meaning by asking if a movie is any less enjoyable knowing that it's going to end. Sure, eventually our existence is rendered meaningless but that doesn't make it meaningless for me, now. Call that an illusion if you want, but it's as concrete as anything you can prove. Besides, what would a "not-ultimately-meaningless" existence look like? I haven't heard any proposals that sound appealing to me.
- adrianN 10y ago
  Finding meaning in pleasure sounds like Hedonism to me.
  - hx87 10y ago
    OP didn't say anything about finding meaning in pleasure, only finding meaning in every single moment instead of at some metaphysical end of time.
  - CompelTechnic 10y ago
    Ain't nothin' wrong with Hedonism.
    - ctrlalt_g 10y ago
      There are many fundamental problems with hedonism, but hedonism avoids dealing with the problems because that's its nature.
      - delluminatus 10y ago
        Like what?
        ctrlalt_g 10y ago
        Mercy killings and martyrdom (or any beliefs that optimize for the afterlife)
nibs 10y ago
Meaning is what you feel when you act and others benefit, regardless of the effect that action has on you. Happiness is when you benefit, regardless of who acted or why. In order to have a happy, meaningful life, you have to contribute to people who accept you and have those efforts reciprocated. Lots of smart people find survival in the selfish sense very trivially easy. If you do not seek out opportunities to contribute, you will lack meaning in your life. And if those opportunities do not challenge you, you will lack meaning in your life. We are an interdependent species. Not great white sharks (independent) and not ants (dependent).
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "In order to have a happy, meaningful life, you have to contribute to people who accept you and have those efforts reciprocated." I'd say finding meaning is broader than that. "Life is what you make it" rings true for me. It's possible to live a fulfilling life as a hermit if that's what you prefer, it's not always about finding meaning through relationships with other humans.
  - armitron 10y ago
    Unless you are projecting your own subjective mental map onto others which is what parent did with his proclamations. His definition of meaning is a popular one that stems mostly from "consensus reality" but it, as you and virmundi point out, is far from objective. In fact, the work of John C. Lilly [among others] teaches us that there is no objective reality of any sort and that the human mental map is programmable. We can learn to shift and radically alter the way we view the world and therefore the reality we experience, and thus create and project our own meaning, which is no longer immutable but ever-shifting. In philosophical terms, this is very similar to Nietzche's concept of the Übermensch. Alas, I feel that collectively, we have a long way to go until "consensus" catches up.
- virmundi 10y ago
  You have no logical grounds for your first sentence. As a result everything else collapses. Meaning is whatever a person defines to have value to them in a material world. They enjoy rape, the it provides meaning. You can't tell them they're wrong because it hurts others abstractly, and can't concretely if that's part of what makes it so meaningful to them. There is nothing stopping someone from being a great white shark aside from the threat of violence from the group. If someone can figure out how get around that, like with home made genetic manipulation for viruses, well, they get to have their own meaning spread across the world.
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strictnein 10y ago
> "these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464761 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464761
- deleted 10y ago
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- forgottenpass 10y ago
  http://www.postmodernize.com/2014/03/the-dude-abides-but-should-he/ http://www.postmodernize.com/2014/03/the-dude-abides-but-sho...
- nathancahill 10y ago
  Nihilists! ..Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
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atemerev 10y ago
An excellent writeup, slightly distorted by its title. If you are concerned with meaning and try to find it and explain it, you are by definition not a nihilist.
sunstone 10y ago
Embrace the abyss, but stay human.
labrador 10y ago
Sarah wondered why people started avoiding her at cocktail parties after the publication of her book "Every Cradle is a Grave."
- deleted 10y ago
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jonstaab 10y ago
Really enjoyed this. I love how practical, humble, and respectful (even of religions, which I really appreciate) uncompromising nihilists tend to be. I happen to be a Christian, so I could go on all day about meaning, but if I could say one thing, it's this: We all die, and it's more than likely even humanity will die out as well (even if it's at the heat death of the universe). You've pretty much rejected the possibility of true objective meaning, focusing instead on various ways of measuring subjective meaning. But at the end of the day, anything times zero is zero, which is fine if you're a nihilist, I guess. The focus in this framework is on you and your "meaning graph", but cool thing about knowing an ultimate God, is that he's a connection to your graph (both investing in your meaning, and pulling from your meaning via worship), that sticks in a way nothing else can. Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, nihilism is essentially true; Romans 4:17 says, God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist." From what I can see, He's the only thing/idea/person that has the potential to provide any kind of objective meaning, so however delusional religion may appear (and I'll admit lots of it is deluded), there's only one God, and he is "the rock that is higher than I".
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, nihilism is essentially true Some Christians believe this. Some Christians don't. And some Christians believe something which technically agrees with this, but doesn't actually hold that knowing Jesus by name or having any contact with formal Christianity is essential, which makes it functionally more like the reverse ("people for whom nihilism is true don't know Christ"). Christians, even by the narrow creedal definition, believe lots of different things.
- jackmott 10y ago
  All of it is deluded.
- pmarreck 10y ago
  I think the (seeming) existence (or open question) of meaning hints at least at something "spiritual," but I think it's an extra stretch to paint it as some proof of theism and by association religious beliefs, some of which are (in a secular context) ethically debatable (but which are unable to be debated simply by nature of being deemed "sacred" and the debating of which is considered "blasphemy") Personally, I think "music" is probably the most succinct example that our existence may not be purely materialistic in nature (... as I crank up my techno of debatable quality lol) Laws have survived secular debate and been made stronger by it; medicine has survived secular debate and been made stronger by it; why would religious beliefs (if indeed they have something true and useful, nay, meaningful about the world to say) not potentially be made stronger by seeing "what remains standing" after fierce, intellectual, honest, secular debate? They could even start with "the puzzle of 'meaning'" and work from there. Sacrifice the more extreme/intellectually-weak beliefs to save the others, I say! ;) But beware, there is a rocky road there, which you elect to base religion on: a very interesting blog post linked directly off of this one (http://meaningness.com/nebulosity-of-meaningness http://meaningness.com/nebulosity-of-meaningness) talks about "intense meaning" in the context of an affair.
gglitch 10y ago
The older I get, the more deeply weird and mystical this whole range of questions feels to me. It only recently occurred to me, for example, while reading about Whitehead's process philosophy, that even if he was right, and that by learning about process philosophy I'd discovered a radically different and more energizing explanation for what the fundamental nature of reality is, it just wouldn't matter; I couldn't produce a single example of how it would materially affect my life or my relationships, except possibly by making me one of those cocktail party bores who constantly talks about how amazing process philosophy is. Maybe someone else could/did produce something "meaningful," out of process philosophy, but for me, getting excited about process philosophy turned out to be fairly meaningless even if the idea itself is possibly-meaningful. Corollary: this may be one of the principle advantages to being able to make art, and especially narrative art: if I were a novelist, I might have been able to boil these process philosophy ideas down into some more humanistic narratives that actually would have some impact on some people. But I'm not, so the conclusion here is, the search for meaning may just be a red herring for me. Unfortunately, it may actually not be; hence the weirdness of it all: how would I know the difference, and what would happen then? And weirdest of all: what is happening in my mind that makes all of these questions feel so urgent all the time?
- arthur_pryor 10y ago
  i haven't read about process philosophy and don't really know about whitehead other than recognizing the name, but a couple possible things it could do for you based just on what you said above: * it could give you structural analogies and metaphorical tools for understanding other problems, the way any mathematical/artistic/philosophical discipline can. * you might not be able to create your own art from it, but you might better be able to understand someone else's art, which might indirectly lead to more meaning for you or someone else. people, like organizations, should do blue sky research. not everything that you learn has an immediately apparent application.
- ashark 10y ago
  The older I get and the more philosophy/literature/science I digest, the greater the urge to disconnect. Forget about the news, forget about history, forget about philosophy, forget about travel, forget about tech (for the most part). Throw out the macbooks and the TVs and my library. It's all brain-clutter. I could be growing flowers or napping in a hammock instead. I'm increasingly less convinced that satisfaction is ultimately aided by any of it. Probably that stuff was a useful stepping-stone to where I am, but it seems so much less important than it used to. I'm starting to wonder how akin knowing and finding answers are to various manifestations of pointless, restless acquisitiveness.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Nihilism is a question about meaning, not an answer, so this author starts off in the wrong place by trying to find a meaning - as most do who take the moniker of "Nihilist." Seems like the author is taking the absurdist/existentialist solution of choosing what is valuable. In this case trying to tie a more complex understanding of individualist hedonism ("feeling" meaning) with some kind of combinatorial pluralistic hedonism. Pretty simply this is just a more verbose version of the existentialist hedonistic answer to the question of meaninglessness. To quote the author: I'm almost certainly reinventing the wheel Pretty typical really. Most people who truly embrace the absurd either don't seek meaning or have already killed themselves.
- Chattered 10y ago
  Camus would tell you that by killing yourself, you have utterly failed to embrace the absurd. I would say the same for anyone chasing scientific techno utopias.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    Camus would tell you that by killing yourself you have utterly failed to embrace the absurd As an absurdist (not a nihilist) of course he would!
charlieflowers 10y ago
As I first looked at this headline on the HN front page, it had a perfect "42" comments. (I hate to ruin it, but it was bound to happen anyway).
Gatsky 10y ago
I didn't find this to be a very useful article. It takes steps to create an abstract-symbolic definition of meaning, but doesn't develop it further and also doesn't use it again in the rest of the article. At least half of it could have been left out, therefore. The conclusion is also rather trite, and seems to adopt humanity's tendency towards techno-optimistic hubris as a proxy for meaning. The conclusion doesn't support the thesis that science can lead us to meaning. I can appreciate the complexity of human society by reading the Koran, or going to a death metal concert. I don't need science for that. Science is truly great, it is the most successful and useful paradigm for organising knowledge. But I don't think it is a path to meaning, no matter how much you romanticize it. It's just as likely to kill us all and destroy the planet as it is to save it, the former being considerably easier than the latter.
- johnmarius 10y ago
  "But I don't think it is a path to meaning." No, it's not the path to meaning, but it is one.
- hxegon 10y ago
  You might be romanticizing meaning itself there.
nedsma 10y ago
I recommend reading Schopenhauer's Studies in Pessimism and Wisdom of Life to anyone interested in open-minded treatise of the subject so individually complicated as the meaning of the one's own life. It may sound gloomy, potentially distressed, yet, it offers philosophy that you'll not find consoling, but very helpful as you're growing your own meaning.
kens 10y ago
The article measures meaning by the amount of directed connection to other meaningful things. Interesting that this is almost exactly the same as PageRank. I think there's actually a significant relationship here.
Double_Cast 10y ago
Here's an observation of mine which Simler misses: I suspect that Meaning is the categorical dual of Power. In this context, Power is defined as "your influence on the state of world". Whereas Meaning is defined as "a phenomenon's influence on your state-of-mind and decision-making". E.g. when a Vietnam Vet looks at a War Monument, that's meaningful because it impacts his emotional state. Maybe his buddy Bubba Gump died in the war. Maybe he'll resolve to live life to the fullest and open a Shrimpin Business. Connections make it more likely that a phenomenon will impact your decision making, or carry an affect on something you value highly. The connections/gravitas hypothesis that Simler discusses is just a corollary.
jokoon 10y ago
One thought I have, is that human thinking is just one perspective which is limited to the realm of living thoughts. Meaning our thoughts are biased towards what we can see and think about, so we cannot see anything else. Human thinking has a limited range. That's always what I conclude when I hear about life or intelligent life in the universe. We are made of life, but intelligence may be specific only to the life on earth, or maybe there are other forms of intelligence that are so different from our own that we could not even recognize them as intelligent of even communicate with them. That's essentially what I think when I hear "we are a speck of dust in the universe". We're no just small and far from everything, we are not able to understand how our brain can be intelligent. That's why I'm a nihilist. I don't really see any interesting food for thought to chew on. What's "meaningful" is beyond our reach for now, and it will stay that way until our brain evolve, or we create AI smarter than us, or we just find ways to directly improve our intelligence (more neuron connections, neuro-stimulants or drugs, brain extensions, what have you).
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Totally agree. IMO it's also be amazing if we could create an AI which could evolve itself to the point of understanding things we can't while understanding humans well enough to be able to explain those things in terms we could understand. Then again, maybe if it found out "higher" "actual" truths, it could see that possibly explaining those to humanity wouldn't be "good", and thus lie / withhold information for our own "benefit". And now we're back to morals and ethics.
  - jokoon 10y ago
    Imagine if AI could just solve math or physics problems, or come up with theories.
jgrowl 10y ago
I half expected the page to blank.
pklausler 10y ago
I for one don't mind a large silent empty universe that's pretty to look at.
stared 10y ago
A great, and wise, reading! Excuse me for this less serious comment. Jokingly (but only a bit), I am waiting for "Show HN: Eigenmeaning" (or SimlerRank). Vide: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1820 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1820
GnarlyWhale 10y ago
A nice exploration of a typically domineering subject. I especially appreciate how starkly digestible the piece is in comparison to more formal philosophy works.
crasm 10y ago
I think the idea of meaning being contextual is spot-on. For instance, leaderboards and stats in gaming communities approach zero meaning to the world at large, but they're intensely meaningful within specific games themselves, and somewhat meaningful to gamers in general.
doki_pen 10y ago
Isn't existentialism the cure for nihilism? It doesn't matter to the universe, but it matters to ME. I exist. From this we are left with the heavy burden of deciding what we think is good and bad, right and wrong.
gp7 10y ago
Disclosure: I'm a big time nihilist and genuinely take questions like "does the morality of an action propagate at the speed of light," seriously which i encourage everyone who understands relatively to at least consider for a brief time I don't really agree with much in this post, principally because it's preoccupied by personal meaning, for the individual. Often when reading contemporary philosophical texts you come across this idea of neoliberal logic (try searching google for it as a phrase)--it is, I think, 90% of the time, a nonsense idea used to obscure a bad argument, but in this case I think it applies: it's an atomised way of thinking about people and how they relate to the world. You'll note towards the end that the list of examples given of meaningful objects/activities are all entirely social in nature; except perhaps one, a career, a notion very central to our (neoliberal!) age, which hides is social nature under a cloak of economic relationships. The mention of Marx's idea of alienation is therefore funny to me: although one can understand alienation as the ennui of rote labour, you should remember that the idea is rooted too in commodity fetishism. The mistaking of relationships between people as the relationships between commodities. Each of his examples are, in strange way, social "commodities": abstract objects that an individual "has", and whose use-value is defined from its abilities to grant "meaning" to her, and can be "exchanged" between other individuals so that you might benefit from a fulfilling father-son relationship, or between the collaboration between famous artists, or the networking with workers from a prestigious company. I say: it is the very relationships between people that are the generators of meaning, and (stands up on soapbox, music swells) that all meaning is rooted in social relationships between people, and that for anything to meaning anything whatsoever is necessarily proof of a relationship between you and some other person who may even be hidden from you. Reading an ancient text is a relationship that stretches back before you were even born: it's not an object that exists as a person does but is as real as a mathematical entity, and its understanding as a thing that can be conceived of in it's own right is the only way to build a worthwhile theory of meaning that is not just a handwavey precursor to information theory and problems of interpretation. Meaning is a relationship between people. For a better treatment on nihilism--which better reckons on the effect science has on philosophy, or more to say the direction philosophy must take in order to be relevant after the ruin science has made of it--I recommend the work of Ray Brassier, altho it is.. very technical. There's a good interview with him here http://www.kronos.org.pl/index.php?23151,896 http://www.kronos.org.pl/index.php?23151,896 and in particular the following quote still lights a fire in my timid heart: > Like Nietzsche, I think nihilism is a consequence of the ‘will to truth’. But unlike Nietzsche, I do not think nihilism culminates in the claim that there is no truth. Nietzsche conflated truth with meaning, and concluded that since the latter is always a result of human artifice, the former is nothing but a matter of convention. However, once truth is dismissed, all that remains is the difference between empowering and disempowering fictions, where ‘life’ is the fundamental source of empowerment and the ultimate arbiter of the difference between life-enhancing and life-depreciating fictions. Since the abandonment of truth undermines the reason for relinquishing illusion, it ends up licensing the concoction of further fictional narratives, the only requirement for which is that they prove to be ‘life-enhancing’. > I consider myself a nihilist precisely to the extent that I refuse this Nietzschean solution and continue to believe in the difference between truth and falsity, reality and appearance. In other words, I am a nihilist precisely because I still believe in truth, unlike those whose triumph over nihilism is won at the cost of sacrificing truth. I think that it is possible to understand the meaninglessness of existence, and that this capacity to understand meaning as a regional or bounded phenomenon marks a fundamental progress in cognition.
tanlermin 10y ago
Does this obviate the issue that one has to assign the definition of meaning somewhere in the graph? ie Meaning is subjective, and it has to be inserted to propagate down.
ihaveahadron 10y ago
I find this stuff interesting to read and think about. But I think that ultimately all arguments expressed about the subject in words are in the same category: works of fiction. In the end, things... are -- including all the different ways people describe, or attempt, to describe meaning. I would also add that I am logically correct about this, as things are in fact... are. Which is kind of a stupid thing to say but often times i think that stupid things being said in fact are smart things when they are said in a context of being a response to stupid things. Add #2: I also think that this falls under "philosophy" which is an academic discipline that became outdated and was superseded by science about a century ago now.
dahart 10y ago
I found it interesting to have a discussion about the meaning of life that mentions children and mentions marital affairs and concludes with the hope of science, and still never quite touches on our biological foundation. Shouldn't that be the jumping off point? All life is built to be physically and biologically dedicated to reproduction and the furthering of more life. "children create meaning for their parents because (in most cases) they outlive their parents and become part of their legacy." While true for (perhaps) most people, to me that seems to miss the mark a little, it feels slightly awkward to me. Children also create meaning for their parents because their parents satisfy their inherent biological mission to futher the species. Science has proven (as if we needed proof) that we have built in mechanisms that seek out and reward us for mating. It's the same reason affairs happen (another arrow, thus more meaning!): the biological mating mechanisms are strong enough to override our better judgements, we're driven to mate even if it has big risks.
- gtirloni 10y ago
  Yes. I have a hard time getting excited about children when the species survival is in no danger, family names care so little value these days (I will be dead anyway) and there is no guarantee your kid will be a good thing for the world (we hope they will and that would be our legacy). There is the argument that says children will make you see life differently but that requires a lot of faith. Will it? Can I see it differently without the cost of raising children? Anyway, I bet it's something a lot of people have thought about and come to terms with either choice. I still am unsure.
callmeed 10y ago
Related, one of my favorite joke twitter accounts is Nihilist Arby's: https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys
up_and_up 10y ago
> Existence, he says, is fundamentally playful If existence is playful it is not without meaning IMO. Its not nihilistic. Instead its more like a game, an adventure. The meaning of play is both for fun and also to learn new things. Play-based learning. To me this sounds more like the Hindu concept of "lila" or play/sport/spontaneous action rather than nihilism.
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190807 10y ago
"As always, there are caveats. I have a degree in philosophy, but haven't read any of the classic literature on this subject, so I'm almost certainly reinventing the wheel. And although I lean heavily on what I've gleaned from Sarah, David, and Venkat, I'm not sure any of them would endorse what I've written here. You might want to think of it as my own funky synthesis — and if it comes up short, that's entirely my fault." Greatest and most self-aware disclaimer I've read in a long time.
ThomPete 10y ago
I always like to position nihilism like this: Just because there is no meaning with life does not mean there isn't meaning in life. You cannot be a nihilist by action only by intellect because you cannot not have a value system where somethings are prioritized over others. The very fact that you need to pee, don't want to die, love your kids and so on are all things that create this value system in life. Being a nihilist is mostly an analytical framework more than it's a way of life. The good thing is that those "in life" values we all come with are mostly enough to create stable societies and human lifes. Or put a completely different way. Nihilist do not find meaning with life, but plenty in life.
francasso 10y ago
I will put it "in vacca" but: I suggest LSD, for a new perspective on life.
mcguire 10y ago
I'm surprised no one has invoked Kant's categorical imperative. It doesn't directly address 'meaning'n but (a) the idea of a moral statement being necessarily true has implications for nihilism, and (b) the discussion in the thread touches often on moral philosophy.
AnthonyNagid 10y ago
Architect Christpher Alexander has developed a beautiful theory that is absolutely applicable to this topic (dare I say, second to none?) in his work 'A Pattern Language' and especially in his 'The Nature of Order' series. It's painful to think how little attention his work seems to get when you think of what could come from further exploration of the ground work he has laid in regards to understanding and creating meaning, that which comes from the heart and life preserving / nurturing processes.

325 points by cmpb 10y ago

ebbv 10y ago

I've never read this guy's writing before but in this article I think he is way over-intellectualizing things. Meaning is whatever you want it to be. Some people find meaning in easing the suffering of others. Some people find meaning in raising children who will raise children, etc. even if in the fullness of time they will all cease to exist. Some people find meaning in really good sushi. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. When I eat really good red snapper nigiri I experience pleasure. That is a real joy that meant something to me in the moment. The big picture of the entirety of time and space means nothing because I don't live in that full reality. I live in a small pocket of time in a small pocket of space because I am a tiny being.

dublinben 10y ago
>Meaning is whatever you want it to be. That is basically the post-modern absurdist position on the meaning of life. Most people still believe in an external source of meaning (religion) that exists regardless of your personal opinion.
- gnaritas 10y ago
  What most people believe has no bearing on the truth; truth isn't a democracy, so your point lacks meaning. His point, was truth, you make your own meaning in this world.
  - dublinben 10y ago
    >His point, was truth, you make your own meaning in this world That is an entirely subjective belief. You and I might hold that opinion, but the majority of people in the world do not. For them, the "truth" about the meaning of life is externally imposed and exists outside any one person's opinion.
    - gnaritas 10y ago
      That one can make ones own meaning is objectively true, that there exists outside meaning is only subjectively true as there's no evidence such an outside force exists while ones own existence is not in question, so no, what I stated was objectively true while what most people believe is only subjectively true.
      - dublinben 10y ago
        >what I stated was objectively true while what most people believe is only subjectively true It's not really, but of course you believe it is. Nobody wants to believe that their beliefs are just as arbitrary any anyone else's.
        gnaritas 10y ago
        It isn't a matter of what I believe, it is objectively true that people can "can" choose their own meanings in life; that is not a belief, it is a fact, this is objectively demonstrable by the fact that people do exactly that and you'll find many people in this thread saying exactly that. It is also objectively true that people can choose to rely on an external source of meaning, but it is only subjectively true that external objective meaning exists precisely because it cannot be objectively demonstrated that the source of said external objective meaning actually exists, therefore it is a subjective belief that there is objective meaning outside ones self. It's notable that you're selectively quoting leaving out exactly that part that explain the logic behind said statement. You're either unable to discern the meaning of objective/subjective, or you're being dishonest with the selective quoting. Either way, you're incorrect. If you want to continue to debate this, you must demonstrate the logical flaw in either of the two above paragraphs.
- ebbv 10y ago
  People finding meaning in religion falls under my suggestion that people find their own meaning. They find it in that religion and belief. Now, you and they may take the opinion that their meaning exists whether I believe in it or not, and that their view is truth and my view is heresy. That's fine, they can believe that if they want to. I don't. However, my belief system has room for theirs.
dgreensp 10y ago
Thanks for bringing this up. Small things can have huge personal significance. I think the article makes sense until it tries to model meaning in an impersonal way; there's a bit of a switcheroo when the author goes from saying meaning is an emotion to saying it is a matter of fact. I'd say that meaning, as a cognitive emotion, is heavily dependent on what "facts" we hold to be true and what stories we tell ourselves. Most people are not telling themselves stories about the entirety of time and space, so it literally has no impact on their experience of meaning. Death, on the other hand, affects us all; everyone has an attitude towards their own future and eventual death, however unexamined it is. That doesn't mean everyone has the same attitude, though. Some people would like to become immortal above all else, while others are not bothered in the slightest by having a finite lifespan, or believe that their "spirit" is somehow infinite. It is possible to intellectualize about where meaning comes from in order to bring more into your life, as a kind of therapy; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotherapy

seletskiy 10y ago

> So: meaning isn't a substance, but rather a feeling. In this way, it's a lot like beauty. If I understand correctly, author is saying, that you can't measure nor exactly define meaning, and then building follow up logical chain based on that axiom. If so, then it's just wrong, because all human feelings are results of biochemical processes inside a brain. They arise in exact situations and they are predictable as patterns. So, we can define feelings and analyze them to the point where we can see how they are building and what is causing one or another.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "If so, then it's just wrong, because all human feelings are results of biochemical processes inside a brain. They arise in exact situations and they are predictable as patterns. So, we can define feelings and analyze them to the point where we can see how they are building and what is causing one or another." I doubt we know enough about these processes to make such a claim. For example, will one set of patterns always result in envy, or can the patterns behind envy also produce adoration? Furthermore, with what we think of as the 'mind', what influence does it have over the response of the 'body'. In practice these may be one and the same thing, but phenomena related to 'mind over matter' definitely seem to exist. For example, practitioners of tummo can voluntarily alter their body temperature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo Without a deeper understanding of the relationship between the mind and the body, I wouldn't want to make any claims about how deterministic our minds are.
smallnamespace 10y ago
Modern science is a long way from mapping physical states to feelings. And even if we could, it still doesn't explain why certain physical states cause certain mental states: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Explangap http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Explangap

seletskiy 10y ago

I think, that meaning can be only defined in the case, when one is immortal. If I'm mortal, everything I do, good or bad, is meaningless for consciousness, because it will cease to exist and everything that will happen after death will have no effect on it. Any meaning, that's is defined while one is mortal is no more than illusion, in which people immerse themselves for whatever reason.

colordrops 10y ago
I agree. One workaround is to identify with your family or humanity instead of just yourself, then there is a shot at immortality. There are lots of instances of individuals dying in service of a greater good, such as the amoeba Dictyostelid, which when food runs out, climb on top of each other to form a stalk and then die, allowing the rest to climb to the top and form a spore which then explodes and spreads the rest of the amoeba toward greener pastures. Depending on the lifecycle stage, the Dictyostelid takes on the form of a group of individuals, a single animal-like creature, or a single plant like creature. Pretty amazing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyostelid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyostelid
Mahn 10y ago
That's a bit pessimist, isn't it? It's a little bit like saying that living is not worth it because you'll die anyway. I think what we do is not about an indefinite future impact or goal, but about the how it impacts us and the people around us today, right now. I see meaning as something not like a hard drive, where you store data once you are done, but like RAM, where you read, write and modify on the fly, constantly, while the machine is powered on. Sure, at some point the machine will be powered off you'll be gone, but meaning doesn't have to be everlasting to exist and have an impact.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  So much this. For some reason humans have no appreciation for the value of time. Because a relationship ends, doesn't mean it wasn't good while it lasted. Because I have something now, doesn't mean I will have it forever.
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RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago

> Science taught me that it's all just atoms and the void, so there can't be any deeper point or purpose to the whole thing; the kind of meaning most people yearn for — Ultimate Meaning — simply doesn't exist. I don't think that is something science can teach you. Science can give you the scientific method, but answering the question "Is the scientific method the only valid means of knowledge?" is philosophy not science. It seems the author is trying to smuggle in a particular philosophy under the guise of science.

szemet 10y ago
Yes. Science based on methodological naturalism (where one only assumes naturalism). But I guess the success of the scientific method may add some support for metaphysical naturalism (where one actually believes that naturalism is true) too.
njohnson41 10y ago
Especially if you assume that the scientific method is always valid--that all true statements can be determined empirically--you can't make statements like "Ultimate Meaning doesn't/does exist". If Ultimate Meaning cannot be defined, it cannot be tested for or measured, so no statements about it can be true or false. The answer to meaning would not be false, but null (or maybe 42). Just like 42, "atoms and the void" here is just a science-flavored attempt to answer a non-question.
- rimantas 10y ago
  But if it cannot be measured it by definition cannot have any effect on reality so can be safely ignored.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    I assume you mean that in the absolute sense, but one also has to realize that "cannot be measured" can also be a measure of our ability to measure things. So you certainly can have real effects that we're simply not able to measure. And so in that sense, I'm not sure the premise follows, as some of the things we cannot measure are things like the conditions of the early universe, which certainly did effect[1] us. [1] It affects us too, but I chose that word deliberately

koonsolo 10y ago

People are able to push through a whole lot of suffering when they have meaning. When all pleasure is taken away (e.g. concentration camps), only the people who have something to live for are able to survive. (ref. "Man's search for meaning" by Viktor Frankl) Too bad he doesn't mention evolution, because it plays an important role in preferring individuals who find meaning in something.

cmpb 10y ago
He does mention the evolutionary advantages of finding meaning briefly, at first, and then comes back to it toward the end of the essay. (He does a poor job of breaking his essays up into obvious sections, though; sorry for the lack of links to back me up).

sjwright 10y ago

I've never had an issue valuing my life knowing that it has no eternally persistent meaning. A poor analogy, but I like to explain a finite life's meaning by asking if a movie is any less enjoyable knowing that it's going to end. Sure, eventually our existence is rendered meaningless but that doesn't make it meaningless for me, now. Call that an illusion if you want, but it's as concrete as anything you can prove. Besides, what would a "not-ultimately-meaningless" existence look like? I haven't heard any proposals that sound appealing to me.

adrianN 10y ago
Finding meaning in pleasure sounds like Hedonism to me.
- hx87 10y ago
  OP didn't say anything about finding meaning in pleasure, only finding meaning in every single moment instead of at some metaphysical end of time.
- CompelTechnic 10y ago
  Ain't nothin' wrong with Hedonism.
  - ctrlalt_g 10y ago
    There are many fundamental problems with hedonism, but hedonism avoids dealing with the problems because that's its nature.
    - delluminatus 10y ago
      Like what?
      - ctrlalt_g 10y ago
        Mercy killings and martyrdom (or any beliefs that optimize for the afterlife)

nibs 10y ago

Meaning is what you feel when you act and others benefit, regardless of the effect that action has on you. Happiness is when you benefit, regardless of who acted or why. In order to have a happy, meaningful life, you have to contribute to people who accept you and have those efforts reciprocated. Lots of smart people find survival in the selfish sense very trivially easy. If you do not seek out opportunities to contribute, you will lack meaning in your life. And if those opportunities do not challenge you, you will lack meaning in your life. We are an interdependent species. Not great white sharks (independent) and not ants (dependent).

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "In order to have a happy, meaningful life, you have to contribute to people who accept you and have those efforts reciprocated." I'd say finding meaning is broader than that. "Life is what you make it" rings true for me. It's possible to live a fulfilling life as a hermit if that's what you prefer, it's not always about finding meaning through relationships with other humans.
- armitron 10y ago
  Unless you are projecting your own subjective mental map onto others which is what parent did with his proclamations. His definition of meaning is a popular one that stems mostly from "consensus reality" but it, as you and virmundi point out, is far from objective. In fact, the work of John C. Lilly [among others] teaches us that there is no objective reality of any sort and that the human mental map is programmable. We can learn to shift and radically alter the way we view the world and therefore the reality we experience, and thus create and project our own meaning, which is no longer immutable but ever-shifting. In philosophical terms, this is very similar to Nietzche's concept of the Übermensch. Alas, I feel that collectively, we have a long way to go until "consensus" catches up.
virmundi 10y ago
You have no logical grounds for your first sentence. As a result everything else collapses. Meaning is whatever a person defines to have value to them in a material world. They enjoy rape, the it provides meaning. You can't tell them they're wrong because it hurts others abstractly, and can't concretely if that's part of what makes it so meaningful to them. There is nothing stopping someone from being a great white shark aside from the threat of violence from the group. If someone can figure out how get around that, like with home made genetic manipulation for viruses, well, they get to have their own meaning spread across the world.

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strictnein 10y ago

> "these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464761 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?item=qt0464761

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forgottenpass 10y ago
http://www.postmodernize.com/2014/03/the-dude-abides-but-should-he/ http://www.postmodernize.com/2014/03/the-dude-abides-but-sho...
nathancahill 10y ago
Nihilists! ..Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

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atemerev 10y ago

An excellent writeup, slightly distorted by its title. If you are concerned with meaning and try to find it and explain it, you are by definition not a nihilist.

sunstone 10y ago

Embrace the abyss, but stay human.

labrador 10y ago

Sarah wondered why people started avoiding her at cocktail parties after the publication of her book "Every Cradle is a Grave."

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jonstaab 10y ago

Really enjoyed this. I love how practical, humble, and respectful (even of religions, which I really appreciate) uncompromising nihilists tend to be. I happen to be a Christian, so I could go on all day about meaning, but if I could say one thing, it's this: We all die, and it's more than likely even humanity will die out as well (even if it's at the heat death of the universe). You've pretty much rejected the possibility of true objective meaning, focusing instead on various ways of measuring subjective meaning. But at the end of the day, anything times zero is zero, which is fine if you're a nihilist, I guess. The focus in this framework is on you and your "meaning graph", but cool thing about knowing an ultimate God, is that he's a connection to your graph (both investing in your meaning, and pulling from your meaning via worship), that sticks in a way nothing else can. Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, nihilism is essentially true; Romans 4:17 says, God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist." From what I can see, He's the only thing/idea/person that has the potential to provide any kind of objective meaning, so however delusional religion may appear (and I'll admit lots of it is deluded), there's only one God, and he is "the rock that is higher than I".

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, nihilism is essentially true Some Christians believe this. Some Christians don't. And some Christians believe something which technically agrees with this, but doesn't actually hold that knowing Jesus by name or having any contact with formal Christianity is essential, which makes it functionally more like the reverse ("people for whom nihilism is true don't know Christ"). Christians, even by the narrow creedal definition, believe lots of different things.
jackmott 10y ago
All of it is deluded.
pmarreck 10y ago
I think the (seeming) existence (or open question) of meaning hints at least at something "spiritual," but I think it's an extra stretch to paint it as some proof of theism and by association religious beliefs, some of which are (in a secular context) ethically debatable (but which are unable to be debated simply by nature of being deemed "sacred" and the debating of which is considered "blasphemy") Personally, I think "music" is probably the most succinct example that our existence may not be purely materialistic in nature (... as I crank up my techno of debatable quality lol) Laws have survived secular debate and been made stronger by it; medicine has survived secular debate and been made stronger by it; why would religious beliefs (if indeed they have something true and useful, nay, meaningful about the world to say) not potentially be made stronger by seeing "what remains standing" after fierce, intellectual, honest, secular debate? They could even start with "the puzzle of 'meaning'" and work from there. Sacrifice the more extreme/intellectually-weak beliefs to save the others, I say! ;) But beware, there is a rocky road there, which you elect to base religion on: a very interesting blog post linked directly off of this one (http://meaningness.com/nebulosity-of-meaningness http://meaningness.com/nebulosity-of-meaningness) talks about "intense meaning" in the context of an affair.

gglitch 10y ago

The older I get, the more deeply weird and mystical this whole range of questions feels to me. It only recently occurred to me, for example, while reading about Whitehead's process philosophy, that even if he was right, and that by learning about process philosophy I'd discovered a radically different and more energizing explanation for what the fundamental nature of reality is, it just wouldn't matter; I couldn't produce a single example of how it would materially affect my life or my relationships, except possibly by making me one of those cocktail party bores who constantly talks about how amazing process philosophy is. Maybe someone else could/did produce something "meaningful," out of process philosophy, but for me, getting excited about process philosophy turned out to be fairly meaningless even if the idea itself is possibly-meaningful. Corollary: this may be one of the principle advantages to being able to make art, and especially narrative art: if I were a novelist, I might have been able to boil these process philosophy ideas down into some more humanistic narratives that actually would have some impact on some people. But I'm not, so the conclusion here is, the search for meaning may just be a red herring for me. Unfortunately, it may actually not be; hence the weirdness of it all: how would I know the difference, and what would happen then? And weirdest of all: what is happening in my mind that makes all of these questions feel so urgent all the time?

arthur_pryor 10y ago
i haven't read about process philosophy and don't really know about whitehead other than recognizing the name, but a couple possible things it could do for you based just on what you said above: * it could give you structural analogies and metaphorical tools for understanding other problems, the way any mathematical/artistic/philosophical discipline can. * you might not be able to create your own art from it, but you might better be able to understand someone else's art, which might indirectly lead to more meaning for you or someone else. people, like organizations, should do blue sky research. not everything that you learn has an immediately apparent application.
ashark 10y ago
The older I get and the more philosophy/literature/science I digest, the greater the urge to disconnect. Forget about the news, forget about history, forget about philosophy, forget about travel, forget about tech (for the most part). Throw out the macbooks and the TVs and my library. It's all brain-clutter. I could be growing flowers or napping in a hammock instead. I'm increasingly less convinced that satisfaction is ultimately aided by any of it. Probably that stuff was a useful stepping-stone to where I am, but it seems so much less important than it used to. I'm starting to wonder how akin knowing and finding answers are to various manifestations of pointless, restless acquisitiveness.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

Nihilism is a question about meaning, not an answer, so this author starts off in the wrong place by trying to find a meaning - as most do who take the moniker of "Nihilist." Seems like the author is taking the absurdist/existentialist solution of choosing what is valuable. In this case trying to tie a more complex understanding of individualist hedonism ("feeling" meaning) with some kind of combinatorial pluralistic hedonism. Pretty simply this is just a more verbose version of the existentialist hedonistic answer to the question of meaninglessness. To quote the author: I'm almost certainly reinventing the wheel Pretty typical really. Most people who truly embrace the absurd either don't seek meaning or have already killed themselves.

Chattered 10y ago
Camus would tell you that by killing yourself, you have utterly failed to embrace the absurd. I would say the same for anyone chasing scientific techno utopias.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  Camus would tell you that by killing yourself you have utterly failed to embrace the absurd As an absurdist (not a nihilist) of course he would!

charlieflowers 10y ago

As I first looked at this headline on the HN front page, it had a perfect "42" comments. (I hate to ruin it, but it was bound to happen anyway).

Gatsky 10y ago

I didn't find this to be a very useful article. It takes steps to create an abstract-symbolic definition of meaning, but doesn't develop it further and also doesn't use it again in the rest of the article. At least half of it could have been left out, therefore. The conclusion is also rather trite, and seems to adopt humanity's tendency towards techno-optimistic hubris as a proxy for meaning. The conclusion doesn't support the thesis that science can lead us to meaning. I can appreciate the complexity of human society by reading the Koran, or going to a death metal concert. I don't need science for that. Science is truly great, it is the most successful and useful paradigm for organising knowledge. But I don't think it is a path to meaning, no matter how much you romanticize it. It's just as likely to kill us all and destroy the planet as it is to save it, the former being considerably easier than the latter.

johnmarius 10y ago
"But I don't think it is a path to meaning." No, it's not the path to meaning, but it is one.
hxegon 10y ago
You might be romanticizing meaning itself there.

nedsma 10y ago

I recommend reading Schopenhauer's Studies in Pessimism and Wisdom of Life to anyone interested in open-minded treatise of the subject so individually complicated as the meaning of the one's own life. It may sound gloomy, potentially distressed, yet, it offers philosophy that you'll not find consoling, but very helpful as you're growing your own meaning.

kens 10y ago

The article measures meaning by the amount of directed connection to other meaningful things. Interesting that this is almost exactly the same as PageRank. I think there's actually a significant relationship here.

Double_Cast 10y ago

Here's an observation of mine which Simler misses: I suspect that Meaning is the categorical dual of Power. In this context, Power is defined as "your influence on the state of world". Whereas Meaning is defined as "a phenomenon's influence on your state-of-mind and decision-making". E.g. when a Vietnam Vet looks at a War Monument, that's meaningful because it impacts his emotional state. Maybe his buddy Bubba Gump died in the war. Maybe he'll resolve to live life to the fullest and open a Shrimpin Business. Connections make it more likely that a phenomenon will impact your decision making, or carry an affect on something you value highly. The connections/gravitas hypothesis that Simler discusses is just a corollary.

jokoon 10y ago

One thought I have, is that human thinking is just one perspective which is limited to the realm of living thoughts. Meaning our thoughts are biased towards what we can see and think about, so we cannot see anything else. Human thinking has a limited range. That's always what I conclude when I hear about life or intelligent life in the universe. We are made of life, but intelligence may be specific only to the life on earth, or maybe there are other forms of intelligence that are so different from our own that we could not even recognize them as intelligent of even communicate with them. That's essentially what I think when I hear "we are a speck of dust in the universe". We're no just small and far from everything, we are not able to understand how our brain can be intelligent. That's why I'm a nihilist. I don't really see any interesting food for thought to chew on. What's "meaningful" is beyond our reach for now, and it will stay that way until our brain evolve, or we create AI smarter than us, or we just find ways to directly improve our intelligence (more neuron connections, neuro-stimulants or drugs, brain extensions, what have you).

seanp2k2 10y ago
Totally agree. IMO it's also be amazing if we could create an AI which could evolve itself to the point of understanding things we can't while understanding humans well enough to be able to explain those things in terms we could understand. Then again, maybe if it found out "higher" "actual" truths, it could see that possibly explaining those to humanity wouldn't be "good", and thus lie / withhold information for our own "benefit". And now we're back to morals and ethics.
- jokoon 10y ago
  Imagine if AI could just solve math or physics problems, or come up with theories.

jgrowl 10y ago

I half expected the page to blank.

pklausler 10y ago

I for one don't mind a large silent empty universe that's pretty to look at.

stared 10y ago

A great, and wise, reading! Excuse me for this less serious comment. Jokingly (but only a bit), I am waiting for "Show HN: Eigenmeaning" (or SimlerRank). Vide: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1820 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1820

GnarlyWhale 10y ago

A nice exploration of a typically domineering subject. I especially appreciate how starkly digestible the piece is in comparison to more formal philosophy works.

crasm 10y ago

I think the idea of meaning being contextual is spot-on. For instance, leaderboards and stats in gaming communities approach zero meaning to the world at large, but they're intensely meaningful within specific games themselves, and somewhat meaningful to gamers in general.

doki_pen 10y ago

Isn't existentialism the cure for nihilism? It doesn't matter to the universe, but it matters to ME. I exist. From this we are left with the heavy burden of deciding what we think is good and bad, right and wrong.

gp7 10y ago

Disclosure: I'm a big time nihilist and genuinely take questions like "does the morality of an action propagate at the speed of light," seriously which i encourage everyone who understands relatively to at least consider for a brief time I don't really agree with much in this post, principally because it's preoccupied by personal meaning, for the individual. Often when reading contemporary philosophical texts you come across this idea of neoliberal logic (try searching google for it as a phrase)--it is, I think, 90% of the time, a nonsense idea used to obscure a bad argument, but in this case I think it applies: it's an atomised way of thinking about people and how they relate to the world. You'll note towards the end that the list of examples given of meaningful objects/activities are all entirely social in nature; except perhaps one, a career, a notion very central to our (neoliberal!) age, which hides is social nature under a cloak of economic relationships. The mention of Marx's idea of alienation is therefore funny to me: although one can understand alienation as the ennui of rote labour, you should remember that the idea is rooted too in commodity fetishism. The mistaking of relationships between people as the relationships between commodities. Each of his examples are, in strange way, social "commodities": abstract objects that an individual "has", and whose use-value is defined from its abilities to grant "meaning" to her, and can be "exchanged" between other individuals so that you might benefit from a fulfilling father-son relationship, or between the collaboration between famous artists, or the networking with workers from a prestigious company. I say: it is the very relationships between people that are the generators of meaning, and (stands up on soapbox, music swells) that all meaning is rooted in social relationships between people, and that for anything to meaning anything whatsoever is necessarily proof of a relationship between you and some other person who may even be hidden from you. Reading an ancient text is a relationship that stretches back before you were even born: it's not an object that exists as a person does but is as real as a mathematical entity, and its understanding as a thing that can be conceived of in it's own right is the only way to build a worthwhile theory of meaning that is not just a handwavey precursor to information theory and problems of interpretation. Meaning is a relationship between people. For a better treatment on nihilism--which better reckons on the effect science has on philosophy, or more to say the direction philosophy must take in order to be relevant after the ruin science has made of it--I recommend the work of Ray Brassier, altho it is.. very technical. There's a good interview with him here http://www.kronos.org.pl/index.php?23151,896 http://www.kronos.org.pl/index.php?23151,896 and in particular the following quote still lights a fire in my timid heart: > Like Nietzsche, I think nihilism is a consequence of the ‘will to truth’. But unlike Nietzsche, I do not think nihilism culminates in the claim that there is no truth. Nietzsche conflated truth with meaning, and concluded that since the latter is always a result of human artifice, the former is nothing but a matter of convention. However, once truth is dismissed, all that remains is the difference between empowering and disempowering fictions, where ‘life’ is the fundamental source of empowerment and the ultimate arbiter of the difference between life-enhancing and life-depreciating fictions. Since the abandonment of truth undermines the reason for relinquishing illusion, it ends up licensing the concoction of further fictional narratives, the only requirement for which is that they prove to be ‘life-enhancing’. > I consider myself a nihilist precisely to the extent that I refuse this Nietzschean solution and continue to believe in the difference between truth and falsity, reality and appearance. In other words, I am a nihilist precisely because I still believe in truth, unlike those whose triumph over nihilism is won at the cost of sacrificing truth. I think that it is possible to understand the meaninglessness of existence, and that this capacity to understand meaning as a regional or bounded phenomenon marks a fundamental progress in cognition.

tanlermin 10y ago

Does this obviate the issue that one has to assign the definition of meaning somewhere in the graph? ie Meaning is subjective, and it has to be inserted to propagate down.

ihaveahadron 10y ago

I find this stuff interesting to read and think about. But I think that ultimately all arguments expressed about the subject in words are in the same category: works of fiction. In the end, things... are -- including all the different ways people describe, or attempt, to describe meaning. I would also add that I am logically correct about this, as things are in fact... are. Which is kind of a stupid thing to say but often times i think that stupid things being said in fact are smart things when they are said in a context of being a response to stupid things. Add #2: I also think that this falls under "philosophy" which is an academic discipline that became outdated and was superseded by science about a century ago now.

dahart 10y ago

I found it interesting to have a discussion about the meaning of life that mentions children and mentions marital affairs and concludes with the hope of science, and still never quite touches on our biological foundation. Shouldn't that be the jumping off point? All life is built to be physically and biologically dedicated to reproduction and the furthering of more life. "children create meaning for their parents because (in most cases) they outlive their parents and become part of their legacy." While true for (perhaps) most people, to me that seems to miss the mark a little, it feels slightly awkward to me. Children also create meaning for their parents because their parents satisfy their inherent biological mission to futher the species. Science has proven (as if we needed proof) that we have built in mechanisms that seek out and reward us for mating. It's the same reason affairs happen (another arrow, thus more meaning!): the biological mating mechanisms are strong enough to override our better judgements, we're driven to mate even if it has big risks.

gtirloni 10y ago
Yes. I have a hard time getting excited about children when the species survival is in no danger, family names care so little value these days (I will be dead anyway) and there is no guarantee your kid will be a good thing for the world (we hope they will and that would be our legacy). There is the argument that says children will make you see life differently but that requires a lot of faith. Will it? Can I see it differently without the cost of raising children? Anyway, I bet it's something a lot of people have thought about and come to terms with either choice. I still am unsure.

callmeed 10y ago

Related, one of my favorite joke twitter accounts is Nihilist Arby's: https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys

up_and_up 10y ago

> Existence, he says, is fundamentally playful If existence is playful it is not without meaning IMO. Its not nihilistic. Instead its more like a game, an adventure. The meaning of play is both for fun and also to learn new things. Play-based learning. To me this sounds more like the Hindu concept of "lila" or play/sport/spontaneous action rather than nihilism.

deleted 10y ago

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190807 10y ago

"As always, there are caveats. I have a degree in philosophy, but haven't read any of the classic literature on this subject, so I'm almost certainly reinventing the wheel. And although I lean heavily on what I've gleaned from Sarah, David, and Venkat, I'm not sure any of them would endorse what I've written here. You might want to think of it as my own funky synthesis — and if it comes up short, that's entirely my fault." Greatest and most self-aware disclaimer I've read in a long time.

ThomPete 10y ago

I always like to position nihilism like this: Just because there is no meaning with life does not mean there isn't meaning in life. You cannot be a nihilist by action only by intellect because you cannot not have a value system where somethings are prioritized over others. The very fact that you need to pee, don't want to die, love your kids and so on are all things that create this value system in life. Being a nihilist is mostly an analytical framework more than it's a way of life. The good thing is that those "in life" values we all come with are mostly enough to create stable societies and human lifes. Or put a completely different way. Nihilist do not find meaning with life, but plenty in life.

francasso 10y ago

I will put it "in vacca" but: I suggest LSD, for a new perspective on life.

mcguire 10y ago

I'm surprised no one has invoked Kant's categorical imperative. It doesn't directly address 'meaning'n but (a) the idea of a moral statement being necessarily true has implications for nihilism, and (b) the discussion in the thread touches often on moral philosophy.

AnthonyNagid 10y ago

Architect Christpher Alexander has developed a beautiful theory that is absolutely applicable to this topic (dare I say, second to none?) in his work 'A Pattern Language' and especially in his 'The Nature of Order' series. It's painful to think how little attention his work seems to get when you think of what could come from further exploration of the ground work he has laid in regards to understanding and creating meaning, that which comes from the heart and life preserving / nurturing processes.