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This is good. Reminds me of my observations on Hugh Everett's life and my conclusion to believe in anti-solipsism. http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/

This is good. Reminds me of my observations on Hugh Everett's life and my conclusion to believe in anti-solipsism. http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_first_antis.php http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_first_ant... I'd encourage Paul to take the next step, and realize that not only are you nothing, what you do really doesn't matter at all (Perhaps very difficult for Paul to believe, given his accomplishments! But true anyway) Once you realize you're nothing, and what you do in life won't really matter -- life is fundamentally and irrevocably absurd -- then you can really be free to make the most with what you have. Because just realizing you transcend labels doesn't take the existential pressure off until you realize you also transcend existence itself -- you are truly and deeply nothing. At that point, you realize that the decisions a person makes is the only thing they truly own. This is the beginning of freedom. It all sounds a lot like existentialism 101. Good stuff!

pygorex 15y ago
If a person is "truly and deeply nothing" then how is that person making decisions? I can understand feeling like nothing - but something has to exist to have a feeling of nothingness in the first place.
- alnayyir 15y ago
  Pop philosophy doesn't stand up to that kind of logical scrutiny. It's usually bike shed painting rationalized by ego or emotion. I love the near-perfect unintentional parody of the Jewish tale of three old men arguing over who was most unworthy.
- DanielBMarkham 15y ago
  I do not mean "truly and deeply nothing" in some sort of sense that it is impossible to perceive you, or in the sense that somehow you should be depressed. I meant "nothing" in the sense that in the cosmic scale of things, no matter what you do, nobody will ever remember it and it will make no significant difference ten thousand years after you are gone. Yes, in a very temporary way, you have the properties of existence, but the time-frame is so narrow, your impact so minuscule, that the limit approaches zero. I'm not sure if there is some other word for it -- nothing seemed the most appropriate. This is not nihilism. As I said, understanding the astonishingly small (and basically non-existent) nature of your life is one of the necessary steps to understand what it really means to exist in the first place. That is, as Paul says, if you think you are X or Y, then you are never freed to be a better version of yourself. This is because you are comparing yourself to some external standard that you can never be. Likewise, if you think that somehow "being a better person" is a journey that leads you somewhere that has lasting consequences you are also lying to yourself -- it really doesn't matter. What you need to understand that it is the daily decisions to be a better person that matter, not the comparison between yourself today and some future state that you are headed towards. This is the same mistake that Paul describes, only he is talking about comparing yourself to some label, while I am talking about comparing yourself to some future version of yourself that you are headed towards. Does that make sense?
Dn_Ab 15y ago
If you truly believed and accepted that what you do in life does not matter then you will also believe that whether you live or not does not matter. And you will also believe that whether other people live or not does not matter. Your philosophy is dangerous because you do not make what you are trying to say clear. Your message "look beyond meaning" I agree with. But it is clouded by and runs counter to most of what you wrote. to people without the context of your thoughts. It took effort to extract the message in order to ensure I was replying to what you wrote. My top paragraph was my initial reaction. Note that even whether your decisions are yours or not does not matter. You can draw evidence from philosophical, to genetics or neurobiology to show why you may not be choosing. But so long as you make them in a way that you think leads to the best you it does not matter.

pygorex 15y ago

If a person is "truly and deeply nothing" then how is that person making decisions? I can understand feeling like nothing - but something has to exist to have a feeling of nothingness in the first place.

alnayyir 15y ago
Pop philosophy doesn't stand up to that kind of logical scrutiny. It's usually bike shed painting rationalized by ego or emotion. I love the near-perfect unintentional parody of the Jewish tale of three old men arguing over who was most unworthy.
DanielBMarkham 15y ago
I do not mean "truly and deeply nothing" in some sort of sense that it is impossible to perceive you, or in the sense that somehow you should be depressed. I meant "nothing" in the sense that in the cosmic scale of things, no matter what you do, nobody will ever remember it and it will make no significant difference ten thousand years after you are gone. Yes, in a very temporary way, you have the properties of existence, but the time-frame is so narrow, your impact so minuscule, that the limit approaches zero. I'm not sure if there is some other word for it -- nothing seemed the most appropriate. This is not nihilism. As I said, understanding the astonishingly small (and basically non-existent) nature of your life is one of the necessary steps to understand what it really means to exist in the first place. That is, as Paul says, if you think you are X or Y, then you are never freed to be a better version of yourself. This is because you are comparing yourself to some external standard that you can never be. Likewise, if you think that somehow "being a better person" is a journey that leads you somewhere that has lasting consequences you are also lying to yourself -- it really doesn't matter. What you need to understand that it is the daily decisions to be a better person that matter, not the comparison between yourself today and some future state that you are headed towards. This is the same mistake that Paul describes, only he is talking about comparing yourself to some label, while I am talking about comparing yourself to some future version of yourself that you are headed towards. Does that make sense?

Dn_Ab 15y ago

If you truly believed and accepted that what you do in life does not matter then you will also believe that whether you live or not does not matter. And you will also believe that whether other people live or not does not matter. Your philosophy is dangerous because you do not make what you are trying to say clear. Your message "look beyond meaning" I agree with. But it is clouded by and runs counter to most of what you wrote. to people without the context of your thoughts. It took effort to extract the message in order to ensure I was replying to what you wrote. My top paragraph was my initial reaction. Note that even whether your decisions are yours or not does not matter. You can draw evidence from philosophical, to genetics or neurobiology to show why you may not be choosing. But so long as you make them in a way that you think leads to the best you it does not matter.