16 ms·

The most important philosophical lesson I've learned in life, is that it is important to take a step back once in a while (regularly!) and assess whether what y

by ep103 3y ago

The most important philosophical lesson I've learned in life, is that it is important to take a step back once in a while (regularly!) and assess whether what you are doing in life genuinely appears to be good or bad at a very surface, kindergarten level, as a reality check. There are just too many times you read through people doing horrific things throughout history, and if you read enough you can understand the viewpoints and the cultures that drove those people do to those things, but at the end of the day, I can't help but feel like: "why can't people just, from time to time, take a step back and think: really though, do I think this is right?" and then truly be willing to make the changes necessary to their life's choices if the answer is: "No". It doesn't matter if it is something as obvious as being a member of the einsatzgruppen, or just realizing that you're spending too much time at work when you need to be home with your family (or vice versa). People don't seem to do this nearly enough, and I've found that generally, its a more important moral signifier than the deep and complicated ideologies we mentally build for ourselves that gets us into these situations. So no. Even if the moral ideology of these monks is crystal clear, perfectly logical, and rationally perfect, at the end of the day, they've chosen suicide over finding a way to enjoy life. They've failed the kindergarten morality test.

hosh 3y ago
That's interesting you bring up this point, because it opens up a whole can of worms: - Why is suicide bad? - Why is there a presumption that this is your one and only life? - Why is there a presumption that life is made to be enjoyed? - Why is there a presumption that consciousness ends after life ends? - If death is inevitable, then couldn't suicide be broadly construed to pretty much ... just living? Believe it or not, these are thoroughly explored by monks and philosophers. Ironically, I think perhaps, you should take a step back and examine some of your own frame in looking at this. I'll start with this: there are more than one kind of motivation for ending one's own life. The most common one, which we call suicide, is usually done after giving up on life because there is overwhelming pain. There is a lively debate about this going on with regards to assisted suicide, including certain countries having passed legislation with state-funded assisted suicide. It's not that I agree with this kind of suicide, but rather, I think you are construing suicide far too broadly, conflating what the monks are doing with suicidal people overwhelmed with pain. What these monks are doing are not an attempt to kill themselves, because things are more difficult. If that were so, there would be no tradition of self-immolation. To give you a contrast, look at say, a modern -- still living -- teacher named Adyashanti. In the past year or so, he took a sabbatical from teaching due to his health condition, where he silently attends and lets his partner lead the teaching. And it may not seem like it when you hear him speak over the years, but he has been experiencing significant pain for years due to his ongoing health condition. It's the same realizations he has that allows him to carry on with his teaching despite experiencing that pain, as it does with the monks going through mummification or self-immolation.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > Why is there a presumption that this is your one and only life? > Why is there a presumption that consciousness ends after life ends? Because there’s no evidence to the contrary and Occam’s Razor as applied the plain observations of life and death suggests this is a reasonable base assumption. “The simplest explanation is usually best.”
  - msm_ 3y ago
    I mean we are on HackerNews, site filled mostly with rational, down to earth people. But there are billions people that believe in, for example, saints that can intervene in the earthly affairs. They also believe in multiple stories about miracles involving that saints after their death. I don't, but your razor doesn't work when one believes there is evidence to the contray. In fact, despite our bubble, way, way more people worldwide are religious than atheists. (and by the way, you only picked two out of many questions to answer)
    - pwgentleman 3y ago
      That seems to imply those billions of people religious are not rational, down to earth. Theism in itself is a simpler explanation for existence than atheism, and yet many rational people are atheists. Is it because they weighted all the possibilities or because they discarded the option a priori? We are all way less rational than we would like to believe.
      - unaindz 3y ago
        I would argue that theism is not just a simpler explanation but a more naive one. We could also explain computers as magic and it would be simpler than explaining it with electricity and math. No religions are based in any observable facts* and thus being naive explanations, indistinguishable from magic. * More like they are based on deprecated observable facts, at first the sun and nature, later man and it's dramas. Now we now the sun is just a big ball of gas and man is just a big brained mammal. That being said religion is just one area of many and you could be very rational in lots of them but be religious for whatever reason.
plugin-baby 3y ago
> assess whether what you are doing in life genuinely appears to be good or bad at a very surface, kindergarten level Tell me you’re vegetarian without telling me.
louison11 3y ago
You seem to promote self awareness yet are judging people and a tradition you know nothing about. I'm not pro or against what was just shared - mostly just like you slightly perplexed. And I think I understand where you're trying to get to with this - but I've noticed that when I think "people don't do enough of this," I'm often projecting what I'm actually not doing enough. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- adamisom 3y ago
  Please don't "gotcha". This type of critique is lazy and flattens the interesting points raised in the parent. And: sometimes people are projecting, other times they're not.
- ep103 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ep103#35582936 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ep103#35582936
munificent 3y ago
I like this. At the same time, it can be challenging to apply in practice because you have to be mindful of the scope you are analyzing. Let's say you travel for work for a week. If you analyze just that week, it appears you are living your life completely out of balance. Don't get to see your family at all. No time spent with close friends. No opportunity to deepen ties to your local community. But if you only travel for a week and are otherwise home, and the career affords you the ability to take care of your family and community, then this is a reasonable trade-off. So you have to look at a larger timespan. But how large? A month? A year? What chronological scope is the right one to evaluate one's actions? Now consider the much harder scope: number of people. Humans are social creatures and almost nothing that we do can be evaluated in isolation. Willingly dying in a knife fight certainly fails the kindergarten test. But not necessarily if doing so protects your family from the attacker. But what kinds of sacfrifices do you consider reasonable and for which groups? Many jobs have some level of physical danger. Is it reasonable to take those risks for the benefit of the company? What harm would you accept to yourself to benefit your community? What about your country? Flying a thousand miles to a foreign country to shoot someone in the face who did you no harm certain fails the kindergarten test. But what if your country is at war with that person's country? How does the kindergarten test handle this scenario when it's a member of the SS during WWII versus someone in some other conflict? Morality is hard.
- ep103 3y ago
  Absolutely. We're on a forum that is largely composed of engineers, business strategists, and other types of work that encourage and reward thinking deeply about their respective topics. So I wanted to point out that human cognition is faulty. It is an important skill to be able to think 10 steps ahead in a chess game, but you have to remember that as much as we desire to be rational, we are imperfect rational creatures, and there's a percentage error on every one of those steps, as a result of our being human. To continue the example, its part of why chess is fun: you try to think X moves ahead, and realize that you miscalculated at step 3 when your opponent does something you didn't expect. The same thing applies to life in general. We build up ways of thinking about things over lifetimes of thinking deeply on subjects. But each layer of learning is built on a previous layer, and each layer has a percentage error. So it is important, from time to time, to stop and reassess. Is your current view of the world faulty? How might I be wrong? What if I am wrong? What would be the repercussions? Is my current way of thinking leading me to live the type of life I want to live? Is my way of viewing the world a positive or negative, for myself and for the people around me? If the answer to any of those answers is no, that's a good indicator that the compounded errors in your way of thinking have lead you down a bad path, and you should stop and reassess. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU And the thing is, that's not something that you can notice, unless you really take the effort to take a step back and re-assess, in part by asking such questions. We get so used to our current mode of thinking, whatever it is, that even if it has led us down dark and dangerous and self-destructive paths, it will feel normal at the time, unless one makes a conscious effort to re-asses from time to time, and really, genuinely, consider that our world outlook might really be deleterious or even outright wrong. Its what David Foster Wallace was talking about when he talked about his 'default human viewpoint', or 'this is water'. And one last thing, if you do do these re-assessments, then you have two options. You can stop and reassess your way of thinking, and look for the mistakes in your thinking and evolve (which is always a good thing to do, always, regardless of whether or not you are wrong to begin with, this is how we grow as people). Or you can choose to radically change your life outlook and philosophy, _even if you still believe your initial one was correct_, just because you think a different viewpoint might be beneficial. Because there are a wealth of different life philosophies that have been developed over the years, many of which have been deeply developed by myriads of intelligent people and refined throughout the ages. It turns out life is complicated, and the human brain isn't really capable of 100% understanding all of it, the best we can do is choose which lens we want to view it through. Learning how to view life through a different lens, if carefully chosen, is never a bad thing. So I don't know much about the self-sacrificing monks in the original post. Maybe such self-sacrifice was the right thing for them to do. And I am not trying to come out against suicide, there are plenty of times in life where such self-sacrifice is warranted or a downright honorable thing to do. But I sure hope that each of those monks, before they did it, took some time to really consider that even if this was the right move for them to take, they could still choose not to do so. My suspicion of the average person, is that once they get in that deep, they tend not to do so, even when they are facing their own death, or the taking of another's life. And I think that's a tragic flaw in humanity.

by ep103 3y ago

hosh 3y ago

That's interesting you bring up this point, because it opens up a whole can of worms: - Why is suicide bad? - Why is there a presumption that this is your one and only life? - Why is there a presumption that life is made to be enjoyed? - Why is there a presumption that consciousness ends after life ends? - If death is inevitable, then couldn't suicide be broadly construed to pretty much ... just living? Believe it or not, these are thoroughly explored by monks and philosophers. Ironically, I think perhaps, you should take a step back and examine some of your own frame in looking at this. I'll start with this: there are more than one kind of motivation for ending one's own life. The most common one, which we call suicide, is usually done after giving up on life because there is overwhelming pain. There is a lively debate about this going on with regards to assisted suicide, including certain countries having passed legislation with state-funded assisted suicide. It's not that I agree with this kind of suicide, but rather, I think you are construing suicide far too broadly, conflating what the monks are doing with suicidal people overwhelmed with pain. What these monks are doing are not an attempt to kill themselves, because things are more difficult. If that were so, there would be no tradition of self-immolation. To give you a contrast, look at say, a modern -- still living -- teacher named Adyashanti. In the past year or so, he took a sabbatical from teaching due to his health condition, where he silently attends and lets his partner lead the teaching. And it may not seem like it when you hear him speak over the years, but he has been experiencing significant pain for years due to his ongoing health condition. It's the same realizations he has that allows him to carry on with his teaching despite experiencing that pain, as it does with the monks going through mummification or self-immolation.

sokoloff 3y ago
> Why is there a presumption that this is your one and only life? > Why is there a presumption that consciousness ends after life ends? Because there’s no evidence to the contrary and Occam’s Razor as applied the plain observations of life and death suggests this is a reasonable base assumption. “The simplest explanation is usually best.”
- msm_ 3y ago
  I mean we are on HackerNews, site filled mostly with rational, down to earth people. But there are billions people that believe in, for example, saints that can intervene in the earthly affairs. They also believe in multiple stories about miracles involving that saints after their death. I don't, but your razor doesn't work when one believes there is evidence to the contray. In fact, despite our bubble, way, way more people worldwide are religious than atheists. (and by the way, you only picked two out of many questions to answer)
  - pwgentleman 3y ago
    That seems to imply those billions of people religious are not rational, down to earth. Theism in itself is a simpler explanation for existence than atheism, and yet many rational people are atheists. Is it because they weighted all the possibilities or because they discarded the option a priori? We are all way less rational than we would like to believe.
    - unaindz 3y ago
      I would argue that theism is not just a simpler explanation but a more naive one. We could also explain computers as magic and it would be simpler than explaining it with electricity and math. No religions are based in any observable facts* and thus being naive explanations, indistinguishable from magic. * More like they are based on deprecated observable facts, at first the sun and nature, later man and it's dramas. Now we now the sun is just a big ball of gas and man is just a big brained mammal. That being said religion is just one area of many and you could be very rational in lots of them but be religious for whatever reason.

plugin-baby 3y ago

> assess whether what you are doing in life genuinely appears to be good or bad at a very surface, kindergarten level Tell me you’re vegetarian without telling me.

louison11 3y ago

You seem to promote self awareness yet are judging people and a tradition you know nothing about. I'm not pro or against what was just shared - mostly just like you slightly perplexed. And I think I understand where you're trying to get to with this - but I've noticed that when I think "people don't do enough of this," I'm often projecting what I'm actually not doing enough. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

adamisom 3y ago
Please don't "gotcha". This type of critique is lazy and flattens the interesting points raised in the parent. And: sometimes people are projecting, other times they're not.
ep103 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ep103#35582936 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ep103#35582936

munificent 3y ago

I like this. At the same time, it can be challenging to apply in practice because you have to be mindful of the scope you are analyzing. Let's say you travel for work for a week. If you analyze just that week, it appears you are living your life completely out of balance. Don't get to see your family at all. No time spent with close friends. No opportunity to deepen ties to your local community. But if you only travel for a week and are otherwise home, and the career affords you the ability to take care of your family and community, then this is a reasonable trade-off. So you have to look at a larger timespan. But how large? A month? A year? What chronological scope is the right one to evaluate one's actions? Now consider the much harder scope: number of people. Humans are social creatures and almost nothing that we do can be evaluated in isolation. Willingly dying in a knife fight certainly fails the kindergarten test. But not necessarily if doing so protects your family from the attacker. But what kinds of sacfrifices do you consider reasonable and for which groups? Many jobs have some level of physical danger. Is it reasonable to take those risks for the benefit of the company? What harm would you accept to yourself to benefit your community? What about your country? Flying a thousand miles to a foreign country to shoot someone in the face who did you no harm certain fails the kindergarten test. But what if your country is at war with that person's country? How does the kindergarten test handle this scenario when it's a member of the SS during WWII versus someone in some other conflict? Morality is hard.

ep103 3y ago
Absolutely. We're on a forum that is largely composed of engineers, business strategists, and other types of work that encourage and reward thinking deeply about their respective topics. So I wanted to point out that human cognition is faulty. It is an important skill to be able to think 10 steps ahead in a chess game, but you have to remember that as much as we desire to be rational, we are imperfect rational creatures, and there's a percentage error on every one of those steps, as a result of our being human. To continue the example, its part of why chess is fun: you try to think X moves ahead, and realize that you miscalculated at step 3 when your opponent does something you didn't expect. The same thing applies to life in general. We build up ways of thinking about things over lifetimes of thinking deeply on subjects. But each layer of learning is built on a previous layer, and each layer has a percentage error. So it is important, from time to time, to stop and reassess. Is your current view of the world faulty? How might I be wrong? What if I am wrong? What would be the repercussions? Is my current way of thinking leading me to live the type of life I want to live? Is my way of viewing the world a positive or negative, for myself and for the people around me? If the answer to any of those answers is no, that's a good indicator that the compounded errors in your way of thinking have lead you down a bad path, and you should stop and reassess. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU And the thing is, that's not something that you can notice, unless you really take the effort to take a step back and re-assess, in part by asking such questions. We get so used to our current mode of thinking, whatever it is, that even if it has led us down dark and dangerous and self-destructive paths, it will feel normal at the time, unless one makes a conscious effort to re-asses from time to time, and really, genuinely, consider that our world outlook might really be deleterious or even outright wrong. Its what David Foster Wallace was talking about when he talked about his 'default human viewpoint', or 'this is water'. And one last thing, if you do do these re-assessments, then you have two options. You can stop and reassess your way of thinking, and look for the mistakes in your thinking and evolve (which is always a good thing to do, always, regardless of whether or not you are wrong to begin with, this is how we grow as people). Or you can choose to radically change your life outlook and philosophy, _even if you still believe your initial one was correct_, just because you think a different viewpoint might be beneficial. Because there are a wealth of different life philosophies that have been developed over the years, many of which have been deeply developed by myriads of intelligent people and refined throughout the ages. It turns out life is complicated, and the human brain isn't really capable of 100% understanding all of it, the best we can do is choose which lens we want to view it through. Learning how to view life through a different lens, if carefully chosen, is never a bad thing. So I don't know much about the self-sacrificing monks in the original post. Maybe such self-sacrifice was the right thing for them to do. And I am not trying to come out against suicide, there are plenty of times in life where such self-sacrifice is warranted or a downright honorable thing to do. But I sure hope that each of those monks, before they did it, took some time to really consider that even if this was the right move for them to take, they could still choose not to do so. My suspicion of the average person, is that once they get in that deep, they tend not to do so, even when they are facing their own death, or the taking of another's life. And I think that's a tragic flaw in humanity.