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(I should say - I was compressing into two tweets, so a little detail is needed) 1) the mind's model of reality is relative, but we can only ever model reality

(I should say - I was compressing into two tweets, so a little detail is needed) 1) the mind's model of reality is relative, but we can only ever model reality as a whole inside of our own minds - reality as a whole is unknowable, even in principle. This doesn't mean we can't know, for sure, quite a lot about specific subsets of reality: "is there milk in the fridge?" has a good, precise answer, but "what's it all about then?" does not. But our answers to "what's it all out then?" shape our ideas about our lives, which in turn shape our behavior. So our answers to these "questions without answers" actually heavily impact our lives over the long run. 2) Meaningness is an aesthetic value in that it is perceived in things and situations, and can be created intentionally at times. The sense of purpose and significance, of rightness and beauty, may be fleeting, but they are as objectively real as musical harmony but with this principle applied across the entire field of awareness. A similarly broad concept might be "well-proportioned", which can apply to almost anything in almost any area, and "you know it when you see it." How's that?

klik99 6y ago
This is a good summary of what I understand about the work, though admittedly I haven't processed the whole thing. It's a fascinating read, though he spends more time talking about what meaningness is not rather than what it is. Let me preface the following: I've really enjoyed my time with this work and it's highly recommended if you're interested in these questions. We're all building up ad-hoc models of the world in our heads so I doubt anyone who takes these questions seriously would agree 100%. My problem with it is that it ignores the observer - we are pattern matchers and we're drawn to find patterns by biological processes. The pleasing aesthetic of meaningness is part of a neurological reward system to find patterns. We could think of meaningness in terms of information theory, but there are no true patterns that always repeat exactly, even patterns themselves are transient (the nebulous nature he refers to). That implies to me we're soft matching local patterns in an ultimately global noisey environment. I'm still struggling to see how meaningness is different than existentialism, and feel he straw-mans existentialism a bit to make it different than his own framework. I love the definition of meaningness, it's the most complete definition of that fuzzy feeling that we all get some times and I would expect it would have value in psychology or understanding brain structure, but I have doubts it "means" anything outside the context of our consciousness. But maybe that's outside the scope of this work, and he's not interested in meaning in a cosmic sense, but rather in the personal.

klik99 6y ago

This is a good summary of what I understand about the work, though admittedly I haven't processed the whole thing. It's a fascinating read, though he spends more time talking about what meaningness is not rather than what it is. Let me preface the following: I've really enjoyed my time with this work and it's highly recommended if you're interested in these questions. We're all building up ad-hoc models of the world in our heads so I doubt anyone who takes these questions seriously would agree 100%. My problem with it is that it ignores the observer - we are pattern matchers and we're drawn to find patterns by biological processes. The pleasing aesthetic of meaningness is part of a neurological reward system to find patterns. We could think of meaningness in terms of information theory, but there are no true patterns that always repeat exactly, even patterns themselves are transient (the nebulous nature he refers to). That implies to me we're soft matching local patterns in an ultimately global noisey environment. I'm still struggling to see how meaningness is different than existentialism, and feel he straw-mans existentialism a bit to make it different than his own framework. I love the definition of meaningness, it's the most complete definition of that fuzzy feeling that we all get some times and I would expect it would have value in psychology or understanding brain structure, but I have doubts it "means" anything outside the context of our consciousness. But maybe that's outside the scope of this work, and he's not interested in meaning in a cosmic sense, but rather in the personal.