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The URL currently shows an error page. Here is its archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20221225002720/http://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspirat

by nier 4y ago

The URL currently shows an error page. Here is its archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20221225002720/http://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hypercard/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221225002720/http://www.mondo2...

safety1st 4y ago
Came for Hypercard and was treated to a surprisingly cogent argument against existential nihilism in the first few paragraphs. Nihilism posits that our lives are intrinsically meaningless, because on a cosmic scale there is no such thing as meaning; it's a human construction, local to us, just something we made up. To my knowledge, few or none of the major philosophers ever really attacked the nihilist insight directly, they mostly accepted it and talked about different ways to cope. Bill Atkinson (while tripping on acid) posits that if life and consciousness are recurrent phenomena throughout the universe, our lives are quite meaningful in the sense that we are part of the progressive ordering of the universe (the apex of it based on our current understanding, in fact). Stars are a more ordered form of matter than the plasma which came into existence at the big bang, they give rise to solar systems, planets give rise to biospheres, biospheres give rise to consciousness, and consciousness gives rise to further forms of order... And if you believe in aliens :) it's all happening on a cosmic scale. It is an unfathomably large anti-entropic drama playing out across all of existence. Bit players we may be, but we are most certainly players who spend our lives either adding or removing order from the cosmos. If that's all true I find the nihilist insight far less believable. It would mean we are participating in the main thing the universe has been busying itself with since the start, which appears to be some kind of ordering and complexifying of itself...

by nier 4y ago

safety1st 4y ago

Came for Hypercard and was treated to a surprisingly cogent argument against existential nihilism in the first few paragraphs. Nihilism posits that our lives are intrinsically meaningless, because on a cosmic scale there is no such thing as meaning; it's a human construction, local to us, just something we made up. To my knowledge, few or none of the major philosophers ever really attacked the nihilist insight directly, they mostly accepted it and talked about different ways to cope. Bill Atkinson (while tripping on acid) posits that if life and consciousness are recurrent phenomena throughout the universe, our lives are quite meaningful in the sense that we are part of the progressive ordering of the universe (the apex of it based on our current understanding, in fact). Stars are a more ordered form of matter than the plasma which came into existence at the big bang, they give rise to solar systems, planets give rise to biospheres, biospheres give rise to consciousness, and consciousness gives rise to further forms of order... And if you believe in aliens :) it's all happening on a cosmic scale. It is an unfathomably large anti-entropic drama playing out across all of existence. Bit players we may be, but we are most certainly players who spend our lives either adding or removing order from the cosmos. If that's all true I find the nihilist insight far less believable. It would mean we are participating in the main thing the universe has been busying itself with since the start, which appears to be some kind of ordering and complexifying of itself...