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A related point is made in Michael Huemer's _In Praise of Passivity_, where it is used to argue that almost everyone would be better off simply not getting invo

A related point is made in Michael Huemer's _In Praise of Passivity_, where it is used to argue that almost everyone would be better off simply not getting involved in political processes like voting at all. [1] I think it generalizes to most domains. Rigorous knowledge in any domain is both difficult to obtain, and it usually commands a small premium compared to the other things you could have sunk your time and attention into. I see at least two options for getting around this: - Wirehead yourself into thinking truth is beauty and beauty truth, and then tilt at what many others will consider windmills (the fools!). At its best this is probably what folks like Isaac Newton were up to. - Go all in on the profit motive, embrace competition as a refining fire to force you to be more rigorous or go broke trying. This reduces the problem to knowledge being "just" really hard to obtain. There may well be more, those are just the two most obvious ones to my eyes. [1]: https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media/files/Studia_Humana/Studia_Humana-r2012-t-n2/Studia_Humana-r2012-t-n2-s12-28/Studia_Humana-r2012-t-n2-s12-28.pdf https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media/files/Studia_Humana/Studia_Hum...

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
I can’t think of anything worse than those approaches It’s pessimistic at the extreme and throws one’s hands up to nihilism I prefer pushing through that nihilism and into realizing that absurdity of the universe is not a fixed barrier but a challenge to solve for the entirety of the universe
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  I guess that's a third approach you can take, if you're already a nihilist on some level. I'm not, so I find the message of finding niches people haven't pushed hard enough into to make the world a better place (and maybe make some money while you're at it) to be pretty uplifting.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

I can’t think of anything worse than those approaches It’s pessimistic at the extreme and throws one’s hands up to nihilism I prefer pushing through that nihilism and into realizing that absurdity of the universe is not a fixed barrier but a challenge to solve for the entirety of the universe

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
I guess that's a third approach you can take, if you're already a nihilist on some level. I'm not, so I find the message of finding niches people haven't pushed hard enough into to make the world a better place (and maybe make some money while you're at it) to be pretty uplifting.