But why do they care about the products? Because they (we) live for that blather to the degree that they (we) are not just animals. — old

The blather doesn't matter. We are here to support technology. People's enjoyments of the products of technology is just a way towards more technology. The MMs involved in making the technology get to participate in the great "real", while the rest can find their blathering amusements that come out of the tedious MMing of the MMers who find it meaningful and not tedious (apparently).

'Contributing to the system' pretty much means convincing someone to give you their money, a company or a customer. Some people get rich selling their own personality. They monetize the live narrative of their life, curated to emphasize a bittersweet glamour. A person can get rich selling detailed conspiracy theories. Technology is one product among others, despite its obvious importance. It's possible to be adored and even followed while being scientifically/technologically ignorant. I think you should add that to your calculations. — old

I get you, but all of this nonsense and unnecessary noise relies on the underpinnings of technology. How do they communicate their blather? From the products of the technocratic MMs. Their meaning is secondary- derived from the "real" ones.

If only their deep truths could have the prestige of shallow truths of sciences... — old

:rofl:

One has to specialize. So philosophy remains valuable as an attempt to make sense of the big picture and not drown in the details. — old

But the details are where the action happens. Keep your eyes on the details, make your 80k, live comfortably and the world turns. The people use YOUR minutia-mongering technological achievement, at the end of the day. There is meaning in that for the minutia-mongerer. Your equations COUNT. Specializing does not matter to the MM, they are problem-solving and immersed in their specialized world. That makes them content. That provides them meaning. That the world of numbers, the regularities of nature, and physical materials can come together to make devices, items, widgets, and products of use is where the meaning lies.

The tech people (in this context) are those who make millions selling shovels during a gold rush. Let others dig for Truth. The truth is that digging for Truth requires a shovel. — old

Yes, that is it. When you want to talk about "big boy" things, you talk about the "work" you do. The useful things you do that support the techno-industrial economy. You don't usually talk about your view on the metaphysics of mind or the underlying principles of reality (unless it is a scientific/technocratic topic and relates to your work...). The people who can churn out equations, manipulate scientific concepts, use complex tools to make more complex tools, those are the "real" ones. Everything else, is epiphenomonal to that. Using this computer for example says so. Driving to my destination says so. Gathering my food from a grocery store says so.. and all the rest of daily life.

Schools are not that efficient, but they are essentially designed to see who can perform science and math with ease, quickly, so that they can be put on a track to be the ones that count. The rest are there to support them, or provide the consumptive powers to organizations that will support them, so that they make more technology. The minutia-mongerers are the movers and shakers of the world. Their meaning comes from their doing, and what they do, effects billions.

If you don't minutia-monger, you are simply babbling fantasy nonsense and unnecessary noise out of your mouth hole. You are here to contribute to the techno-economic system. Otherwise, you are here to consume from it. The only ones who derive true meaning then, are the pragmatic-scientists who quietly churn out more scientific, applied mathematical, or technological advancements in their workplaces or other production locations.

A certain amount of identity-bolstering blather seems to be an important part of a balanced intellectual diet. Some kind of philosophical scaffolding seems necessary. An anti-religion is still a religion, that sort of thing. — old

But that's the thing! The minutia-mongerer doesn't care (or need!) intellectual underpinnings. His/her formulas and applications speak for themselves. That is what moves the world. That is actually doing the work. The printing press, not the content in them (unless it's about building things like printing presses). That is the useful stuff!

You presenting a position that is not your own, correct? — old

Yes, there is some strong cynicism here, but I'm trying to be convincing :smile:. However, what I am doing is similar to doing hard work out of spite of having to do the work; I admire the opponent enough to give him a fair shake, and perhaps can retain his position enough to make my point, in the long game using devil's advocate advocacy.

I think it's safe to say that religious people value their religion more than science and therefore give their religious authorities a higher status than physicists or instance. It's only a certain kind of a philosopher (something like a positivists or a pragmatist) who wants to dismiss non-science as 'blather and noise.' Or that's how it looks to me. I am open to correction. — old

But the pragmatist-scientist would just kind of have an amused chuckle and roll their eyes.. At the end of the day, religion doesn't make the human world do anything outside of the extremists and/or providing some people ways to alleviate boredom with the mundaneness of modern life. Rather, THEY (the scientist-pragmatists) are the ones who are deriving useful equations and concepts from the universe and applying it such that humans can use it to their wants and needs (through avenues of commerce and trade of course!). Look at extremist Islamic terrorism.. For all their talk about going back to the 600s, they use modern technological means to achieve it. Hypocrites to say the least. But that is the way technology dominates human pursuits. It is ready-at-hand, and people will take every opportunity to use it.

Aren't you forgetting what people use that stuff for? To surf porn, watch Peterson videos, see how Game of Thrones ends, or argue politics? Customized horoscopes, conspiracy theory videos, life hacks, interviews with rappers, funny sermons from John Oliver.

Speaking loosely, science is not the truths that people want. It's the truths that get in the way of what they want. It's the annoying truths that they have to deal with either directly or by paying someone to do so. What they want is poetic theories of everything made of words that guarantee them cosmic justice, an afterlife, the correctness or superiority of their values and politics, a deep explanation of why we're here and not just a description useful for prediction and control. And they also just want to be entertained with a good story, laugh at a good comedian, enjoy a song and dance from a pop star in his or her underwear. — old

Yes but that's what makes these guys superior. I call it "minutia-mongering". Those who not only tolerate, but REVEL in complex mathematical formulas, theories, and applicable functions of physical materials. These are ones doing the superior things. All else is blather and noise.

Let's take fdrake as another example of this reveling in what matters:

Riemann is constraining his discussion to metrics, means of measuring distances in continuous manifoldnesses, which ascribe distances independent of the location on the manifoldness. Note that this is a way of assigning a notion of size to a notion of geometry, rather than measuring a specific shape. This notion is what sets up the meaning of length in a geometry, rather than an instance of measuring any particular distance within it. To be sure, objects (sub-manifoldnesses, neighbhourhoods etc) will have their sizes expressible through this notion of size, but the notion of size itself is a characteriser of the geometry rather than of any particular shape.

When you say the length of lines is independent of their position, what this means is that the distance notion applies the same everywhere in the space - there are no partitions acting on the size notion that create regions of distinct size ascriptions. To make this clear, consider two notions of interpoint distances in our usual 1 dimensional Cartesian coordinates, the real line:

(A):d(x,y)=(x−y)2−−−−−−−√(A):d(x,y)=(x−y)2
the usual distance notion
and:
(B):d2(x,y)={0↔x2+y2<1d2(x,y)=d(x,y)↔x2+y2≥1(B):d2(x,y)={0↔x2+y2<1d2(x,y)=d(x,y)↔x2+y2≥1

(A) computes the distance between the number 2 and the number 1, d(2,1) by sqrt (2-1)^2 = sqrt(1)=1, which is the usual distance between the numbers, and behaves exactly the same over the entire real line. (B) computes distances as 0 if x^2+y^2<1, and computes them exactly as in (A) if x^2 + y^2 is greater than or equal to 1. The picture here is that if we pick two numbers x,y that give a coordinate within the unit circle centred at the origin in the plane, the distance between them is 0, if we pick two numbers that give a coordinate outside of the unit circle, the distance between them is the usual distance on the real line. (A) is a metric in which the size of a line is independent of the position, (B) is a metric in which the size of a line is dependent upon the position.errata.

However, the distinction between this 'global sense' of the metric is that (A) operates on the entire embedding space whereas what Riemann's after is a localised version. In order to set up this localised version, however, we still need to have a localised coordinate system (n-ply extended magnitude) of appropriate dimension for the manifold (of n dimensions). — fdrake

You can have Plato or Crowley or Icke or Buddha or Schopenhauer or Peterson or Wittgenstein or... On other shelves there are machines that work whether you believe they work or not. They promise less but deliver what they promise to all consumers. People still prefer their Plato or Jesus or Trump or Warren to gadgets, but they all meet in their need for the gadgets, which they can then use to broadcast the superiority of their spiritual products on social media. — old

Yes the de facto fact is that all need technology. Those who can actually engineer, solve, and experiment in the science/technology realm are thus automatically doing superior things- the things that take principles of the physical world and apply to functional devices and processes.

From this perspective, the 'equations that work' are superior in a practical context to religious/philosophical musings. I probably don't care about my electrician's religion or philosophy. That's not what he's selling. Technology has a kind of independence from philosophy and religion that's being neglected here. On the other hand, if you are some other metaphysician tell me exactly what I need to hear to feel at home in the world, I and other consumers/voters might make you rich or elect your president. Maybe we'll even drink poison to catch a ride on a UFO. — old

But again, the electrician (or perhaps the electrical engineer) is the one that is called- that is doing work that is harnessing the physical processes. Isn't that objective understanding of something we all see is useful, works, and "does stuff" mean something? Aren't the ones engaged in these activities doing superior work to others that don't do stuff? The ones who can wade in the minutia of hard-to-grasp equations in order to bring about an outcome of precise explanatory or applicable power? Isn't that what "matters"? At the end of the day, we go to jobs that move technology and information to people, or that in (not so) indirect ways supports these technologies. The internet, the product, the device, the software, the hardware, and all that surrounds it to make it come about. THAT is what matters. Everything else is just noise. Whatever supports the circular flow of information for more novelty in engineering and scientific application is what matters, apparently.

In light of that, I think your analysis is actually off the mark, because the ‘gentlemen scientists’ of the modern epoch proclaimed loudly and often that the universe revealed by science was actually quite devoid of meaning, and that whatever meaning we might seek and find, was surely of the individual’s own devising. Of course, even today scientific intellectuals speak of the awe of the vistas that science delivers us, but the underlying sensibility is worlds apart from the grand tradition of philosophy. There, causation was understood as strictly ‘top-down’, and the attraction of mathematics and reason was the insights they provided into the incorruptible realm of the perfect Ideas. So whilst Platonism admired mathematics, it never depicted mathematical knowledge (dianoia) as the ultimate, but only a pointer towards the even higher truths of noesis. (My spell checker wanted to change ‘noesis’ to ‘onesies’, a type of pyjama, which is kind of like a cyber-Freudian slip. :-) )

But I do agree with your analysis of the subordination of science to ‘what works’. — Wayfarer

But what I mean by meaning, is in a way, a sense of superior understanding of the world, and the self-assurance that one is doing something that actually WORKS. By participating in the mathematical-science traditions, by understanding highly rigorous, complex models of the universe that actually WORK in predicting events in the universe, and that can be applied to technology in ways that innovate and can be used by people in functional ways, these people de facto are doing something more meaningful. There is no debate when it comes to someone who can create, derive, and solve complex mathematically-based problems that can be applied to scientific concepts and engineering, and can then be used to construct things that work and are useful and/or describe events with precision and accuracy using precise languages. Mastery of this, and participating in this, make it for them more meaningful. The meaning is in the mastery of the complexity, and knowing something that is difficult, providing them a "seat at the table" at what "really" matters, which is to say, what is useful and actually works.

After all, has the world ever been more crammed with opinion, opinion, opinion? Some 'metaphysically' minded science types may indeed wax poetic, but maybe a taste for facts as opposed to interpretation is more important here. The personality I have in mind and relate to no longer bothers with grand, vague narratives that can be debated endlessly. Why does it all mean? Don't know. Prolly nothin'. Let's build something cool. — old

Indeed this is very close to what I'm getting at. The de facto nature of being able to DO the hard maths and science that WORKS being deemed as superior and more meaningful in its default nature of de facto WORKING.

It spooks me out to see these adults fawning about the beauty of the cosmos as if it "speaks" to them (through the "poetry of math" or some stupid shit like that), or has "secrets" that we must discover, or that only a select few "intellectuals" can truly understand what it all means. Did not the mystics believe that God spoke to them, that God held the all-important secrets, and that some truths were esoteric and hidden from the masses? — darthbarracuda

Nice Ligotti quote. Yes, you are getting close to my main point. There is also the nuance that being able to UNDERSTAND and DO the maths involved is in itself superior than all forms of knowledge. If you gave me an opinion on the metaphysics of matter and consciousness, it wouldn't matter to many of the mathematically-oriented. THEY create, derive, and solve equations relating to things that predict and have use. The fact that they can DO this with regularity and full comprehension makes it de facto superior. The actual DOING and KNOWING fully of what one is doing in hard-to-grasp concepts that are mastered and used to create new technologies or contribute to the research that can then be applied or used for predictive purposes- that is something these people will offer. They will by default win by the de facto nature of the ability to create things which "work", and are governed by principles that cannot be argued due to the fact that they in fact do work as technology. If I wax on about Schopenhauer, and fdrake waxes on about equations of probabilities that actually map to processes of entropy, and he can back this up with equations that "work", his is the superior topic by default.. at least to a cadre of people who may judge what is meaningful.

What they do is impressive. Whether it's the real shit is a matter of opinion. Some of them probably think so. And I respect them and work in that field myself. Is the inventor better than a great actor or doctor or reliable auto mechanic? I don't think so. An actor is as concerned with the details as an engineer. The difference is that success is more ambiguous in the aesthetic realm. Those who are paid well and admired in their own lifetime in the aesthetic realm are probably higher on the hog than a respectable but mediocre engineer. I don't see how it goes any deeper than that, though others might. — old

Nothing matters more than a mathematically derived formula that “works” in predicting a physical event or creating a useful technology. You can put that on a t-shirt!

But look at the complexity of statements like this:

Information and probability are dual notions; wherever you have a probability distribution you have an entropy. The connection between the two is particularly intimate for discrete random variables - like when there is a given probability of being in one of countably many eigenstates of an operator. Quantum entropy measures the degree of mixing in a state; how close it is to behaving in a singular eigenstate (unless I'm misinterpreting, I am both rusty and mostly uneducated here). Information measures are derivable from probability distributions, but the process of mapping a distribution to an entropy value is not invertible - so the two notions can't be taken as inter-definable. As in, if you have an entropy, you have a single number, which could be generated from lots of different quantum states and probability distributions.

I'm sure there are problems, but I think there are good reasons to believe that information is just as much a part of nature as wave functions. — fdrake

Doesn’t that count for something? Doesn’t the fact that the process to create a microchip being so complex yet some people can construct and engineer one mean something? All the people who can comprehend, analyze, and make new technologies, aren’t they the ones keeping society going? Aren’t the ones who make the very things we use, who can translate scientific principles into complex equations...aren’t they somehow doing the real shit? The shit that matters? The hard shit? Isn’t it the peoole who wheel and deal in equations and scientific complexities the real ones? Isn’t it the capitalist entrepreneur who bring the resources together..aren’t they the real ones, providing meaning with their USE and their grasp of mathematical and the complexities of scientific theory and application?

Look at what doesn’t matter. What isn’t even heard. This kind of stuff.

While much is made of Nietzsche’s Dionysian desires, it is the Apollonian maxim: know thyself, that is central to Nietzsche. But to know yourself you must become who you are. It is not about discovery but creation. Yet one does not create ex nihilo. — Fooloso4

That isn’t a complex equation, some idea contributing to inventing, not about the minute mathematically derived model regarding some complexity of the natural world or synthetically engineered device or process.

Evidence that we are not just biological machines driven by feelings that have been selected through evolution as a survival aid, evidence that there is a point in spending great efforts in understanding the world other than it being an instance of us being survival machines that attempt to understand so we can predict better and increase our chances of survival, evidence that there is a point in exploring the universe other than it being another instance of us being survival machines attempting to spread as much as we can like an invasive species, evidence that helping others feels good not just because evolution selected it as a trait that made our species survive, evidence that love isn't just another meaningless drive whose only purpose is to make us reproduce and preserve one another, evidence that there is more to existence than just it being one big survival game until we die, that we aren't just puppets controlled by our feelings whose only purpose is to keep us alive until we die. — leo

Its not all desire for survival- it is also desire to seek more comfortable and entertaining states. Survival, comfort, and boredom are the three great motivators in my book.

The absurdity of fixing the toolshed. Put the tools in the shed, work on the yard. The next day rolls around, and sip a mixed beverage on your porch, and read. Next day travel to workplace, do similar tasks, travel home. Next day repeat. Next day repeat. Every day brings with it a new way for our will to be applied, creating the absurd repetitive nature of daily life. Slightly different variations on the same theme over and over and over. It's got to be the vacation that brings the break in the monotony says the crowd. It's not the vacation. Life has always been repetitively instrumental for its own instrumentality. We developed language, concepts, and culture but it is the same rotating earth.

Yes, but what makes the other goals absurd? Behind every goal there is a feeling, a desire at the source that gives rise to the goal in the first place, the desire gives the meaning to the act. Helping people or looking for more comfort in itself is not absurd, it is only when these activities are put in relation with the fact that all they serve is to increase our chances of survival, and with the fact that the end result of all of this is to not survive anyway, that the whole of existence becomes absurd, as it is all one big effort to guarantee our survival and yet die in the end anyway. — leo

They are absurd in that we cannot escape our own need for need, and when seen as a whole, it is instrumental for more instrumentality. It is like seeing someone with wild gesticulations in a phone booth, without hearing what they are saying (pace Camus). The repetition of our actions, day in and day out, even the fact of the repetition of the planets rotation and orbit is absurdly repetitive. Survival is indeed repetitive, but so is the other main drives- comfort and entertainment. Here is an oldy but goody I wrote a while back about the neologism I made up called instrumentality:

Here is the idea of instrumentality- the absurd feeling that can be experienced from apprehension of the constant need to put forth energy to pursue goals and actions in waking life. This feeling can make us question the whole human enterprise itself of maintaining mundane repetitive upkeep, maintaining institutions, and pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice. There is also a feeling of futility as, the linguistic- general processor brain cannot get out of its own circular loop of awareness of this. Another part of the feeling of futility is the idea that there is no ultimate completion from any goal or action. It is that idea that there is nothing truly fulfilling. Time moves forward and we must make more goals and actions.

Maybe a better word than absurd would be arbitrary. Your model of human motivation, relying on adaptive mechanisms underlying social intentions, presupposes an arbitrary origin of motives like empathy. Heidegger's approach ditches what I call the 'adaptive cobbling' account for a thinking of endless transformation of meaning. Rather than absurd or arbitrary, life is uncanny, anxious. — Joshs

It is the obligations of living that I find interestingly tragic. The obligations being any choice or decision to do anything. As Schopenhauer said- there is no "being", just "becoming", and I think that was echoed a bit in your Heidegger quote. We have to make choices at almost all waking moments. The trouble with being born, dealing with our own becoming- seeking comfort, seeking entertainment, seeking survival.

I like Schopenhauer, by the way, especially the essays and aphorisms. Recently I read Schopenhauer and the The Wild Years of Philosophy, which is pretty great. I enjoy various German philosophers who basically tried to make a rational, quasi-atheistic 'religion.' At the same time, none of them quite convince or convert me. So I don't have a system. — old

Understandable. I like Schopenhauer obviously, but I don't necessarily buy into his metaphysics, though I think his conclusions are pretty spot on.

I think you nailed it with its resistance to completely being collapsed into subjectivity in its outcomes and uses. While this doesn't give it an 'absolute' meaning, it's good enough often enough within the life of 'ultimately meaningless' mortals. At least in my opinion. I think we like building better and better mousetraps. Beavers probably like to build dams. Even this conversation seems to me like the attempt to build a better mousetrap. Ideas are a kind of technology. Exact, falsifiable, applicable ideas are the only ones of value, but they are perhaps the most reliable and esteemed. — old

I do like the idea that "ideas" are a kind of technology and building a better mousetrap. Even this philosophy forum can be seen as a strengthening of ideas through the dialectic process. Anyways, look at this example of scientific/technological complexity about how a computer processor is made: https://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/514-intel-cpu-processor-core-i7.html

Some people would point to the complexity, ingenuity, intelligence, and research that went into these technologies, and say that these are examples of meaning. The fact that we can create such a complex tool from our understanding of how the world works and apply it to make even more complex tools, is a reason many people hold for why life has meaning. Our ability to understand the universe in ways where we can predict, explain, and shape our environment must mean there is meaning to be had there. Other than the bare essentials of living, it is these "loftier" pursuits that tap into our scientific-mathematical understanding of the world that gives us some access to meaning. Or that's the argument. Look at those, even in this forum, who are discussing the complex problems of various scientific and mathematical equations. Is there something inherently meaningful in this? Does this ability to even comprehend the world in such a rigorously refined and exacting way, analyzing very difficult information in such a way, make life inherently more meaningful? The products of technology, and the minds behind it, must mean something, no? (I am being the devil's advocate here).

For some the 'inherent meaning' just is the 'useful information.' The utility is objective compared to that of art or music. For the most part my opinion isn't valuable to others who already have their own opinion. On the other hand, they might need a tech person to fix their internet so they can share their opinion or design a memory card so they can record their child's first steps on their smartphone. — old

You I think this should be explored. The notion that science is useful, makes it better in some value or axiological sense. I welcome any ideas relating to that theme. The very use of its products speaks for itself, despite what comes out of the mind. But is there something missing here from its supremacy by pragmatic default?

Is part of the charm of science is distance from the endlessly personal? I think so. Exact, testable knowledge can be created and shared. Relatively unambiguous progress is possible. In the world of Twitter and Facebook, it's nice that there's a realm where wishful thinking comes up against a resistance that filters out much of the delusion, confusion, and ambiguity. — old

Yes this too should be explored. What about science makes itself immediately something to be embracing as a topic of focus and reverence? Its resistance to completely being collapsed into subjectivity in its outcomes and uses. However, does this create a default meaning? Does this make it better in some way? Does it make those who are immersed in it better as a result? Is there something superior about it, more meaningful, etc.?

Yes you understand. The drive to help people seems just like another survival tool we are equipped with, it doesn't necessarily help directly the one helping survive but it does benefit those who are being helped, who can then engage in activities that would help themselves or the tribe survive. If we had zero drive to help others, we wouldn't be helped and we wouldn't survive as well.

In the end everything seems about survival. Only to die in the end anyway, and that's the absurdity. — leo

Well, yes and no. My main point there is that helping people is not the end in itself. Helping people so they can then pursue other goals outside of helping other people would make more sense. However, I broadened the idea a little and said even the other goals outside of helping other people are absurd as well. All human activities are absurd. It's built into our existence. The whole point of surviving, comfort-seeking, and entertainment-seeking that is.

Funny you mention suicide, I just wrote a bit about why actually committing suicide is a problem. It is rather living with the ideation of suicide that is more to the pessimist's point. I'll copy and paste what I wrote below:

Yes, a suffering conundrum in itself. The very thing that is going to give "relief" (death), also deprives you of the experience of the "relief" itself that is trying to be obtained. As E.M. Cioran put it: It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

Also, much of suicide is about the suicide ideation- the projection of the suicide, and the meaning of it for the person. It is a cathartic act for many. A long while back, I posted a little thought experiment:

What if a person was just fed up with life, and ready to jump in front of a train as a way to kill himself. Everything up to that moment was about how much life sucked, and how much he was going to rebel against the very thing was causing him this pain (life) by killing himself. He stands on the tracks, but right before the train hits him, someone shoots him dead instead. The same result of death occurred, but there is something different about it. In a way, the suicidal person was robbed of the act itself, which was symbolic. It was a cathartic act of rebellion. It was what it symbolized. It was that the person was taking the situation in his own hands, and giving the finger to life. It wasn't just that he was going to live no more, and have no more conscious experience. Rather, it was about him taking his life in his hands, rebellion, catharsis, and the meaning and context of his suicide as a final act to himself. So suicide is more catharsis for most. Unless precipitated by extreme torture, cultural practices (e.g. samurai), or terminal illness, most suicides due to depression/melancholy/life events not going right, etc. are about catharsis and the symbolic act itself. However, the outcome takes away the pleasure of the catharsis. So, most suicidal people are stuck in a loop of ideation rather than really committing to it, though that does happen from time-to-time as well.

It is as if there was no meaning to everything we feel other than the fact it has been helpful for us to survive, as if feelings and beliefs were just another traits selected through competitive evolution, with only those who have feelings and beliefs useful for survival who get to live and reproduce, and all the others who get to die. I guess there is a reason most people don't think too much, because when they do it doesn't tend to end well for them. — leo

You seem to hitting upon the well-trodden concept of absurdity :smile: . I sometimes call this concept "instrumentality". That is to say, we do to do to do to do. There is nothing beyond the repetitive motivations of survival-seeking, comfort-seeking, and entertainment-seeking (stemming from our baseline feelings of boredom). We fetishize the idea of COMPLETION. Completion in nirvana, completion in a godhead/religious ends, completion in self-actualization, completion in knowledge, completion in consumption, completion in pleasure, completion in social roles. However, life doesn't care about your completion, it simply continues, and the vicious circle keeps churning. These ends take place in a socio-cultural setting, where social institutions have been set up so that your vicious churning circle of instrumentality can pull "levers and switches" to ensure that it interacts with other churning circles of instrumentality to keep it all going, reproducing and maintaining more and more churning circles of instrumentality/absurdity.

Helping people is an apt example. Let us say that we believed helping people is the highest good we can do. To that end, everyone in the world decided to maximize as much time helping other people as possible. Life itself would be absurd for the individual. Helping people for simply the sake of helping people, in itself makes no sense as it NEGATES the very reason for helping people. The very reason for helping people is not so they can then help other people at all times, and those people help other people at all times, etc. but rather so that the people being helped can then enjoy their individual pursuits and goals (whatever that may be). Simply helping people is not the full story of the ethical value of helping people, rather it is helping people, so that they can pursue other stuff, otherwise it is an absurdity of simply helping, so others help, so others help, etc.

However, circling back to the completion idea, the other goals and desires and pursuits (other than helping people.. the individual ends and goals people have of all varieties) are also absurd. There is a constant repetitive nature of human reality. We are self-aware of it. We set various goals in order to ballast the ship- to appease our nature to survive in a social context. pursue comfort in a social setting, and to seek entertainment in a social milieu. It all goes back to that pendulum swing which can be characterized as the vicious churning circle of the absurd.

Perhaps a better question is that of suicide. Is your life worth ending? But worth it to whom? You destroy what could benefit by the act, and almost certainly it wont be worth it for the others that know you. — Inyenzi

Yes, a suffering conundrum in itself. The very thing that is going to give "relief" (death), also deprives you of the experience of the "relief" itself that is trying to be obtained. As E.M. Cioran put it: It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

Also, much of suicide is about the suicide ideation- the projection of the suicide, and the meaning of it for the person. It is a cathartic act for many. A long while back, I posted a little thought experiment:

What if a person was just fed up with life, and ready to jump in front of a train as a way to kill himself. Everything up to that moment was about how much life sucked, and how much he was going to rebel against the very thing was causing him this pain (life) by killing himself. He stands on the tracks, but right before the train hits him, someone shoots him dead instead. The same result of death occurred, but there is something different about it. In a way, the suicidal person was robbed of the act itself, which was symbolic. It was a cathartic act of rebellion. It was what it symbolized. It was that the person was taking the situation in his own hands, and giving the finger to life. It wasn't just that he was going to live no more, and have no more conscious experience. Rather, it was about him taking his life in his hands, rebellion, catharsis, and the meaning and context of his suicide as a final act to himself. So suicide is more catharsis for most. Unless precipitated by extreme torture, cultural practices (e.g. samurai), or terminal illness, most suicides due to depression/melancholy/life events not going right, etc. are about catharsis and the symbolic act itself. However, the outcome takes away the pleasure of the catharsis. So, most suicidal people are stuck in a loop of ideation rather than really committing to it, though that does happen from time-to-time as well.

I think in this existence we have found ourselves in an intractable predicament. We find ourselves embodied as this animal with perpetual biological, social, esteem, and existential needs. These needs present as pains, discomforts, restlessness, or in some sense the sensation of 'I am not satisfied/content'. The discomfort and dissatisfaction we feel motivates us to meet these needs. While meeting these needs we experience various flow states, 'losing ourselves' in our sensations (eg, hunger hurts so we eat, and then 'lose ourselves' within the meal). We call this pleasure, and conclude life is good. We 'gift' this life to the non-existent (nonsensically), choosing to create children. Or just mindlessly lose ourselves within the pleasure of sex, and by consequence human existence proliferates. — Inyenzi

Yes, good description of the phenomenology of the human predicament.

Even these questions and thoughts arise out of that same sense of "I am not satisfied/content", but rather than relating to some bodily pain or discomfort, it is in overall relation to the existence/existential situation we find ourselves in. I feel uneasy, not content nor satisfied with this life and it's structure. The issue is that when we feel the discomfort of hunger, we seek food. But when we are not satisfied with the structure of life itself (part of which includes the presence of hunger), what do we seek? And even if we do find something that alleviates our discomfort (eg, relationships, community, religion, lofty goals), it's not as if we are escaping the same feel discomfort -> seek its alleviation -> loss of self within alleviation of discomfort -> wears off ->back to discomfort cycle. It's a predicament. — Inyenzi

Indeed, this is the pendulum swing that Schopenhauer characterized as Will, but can simply be called the human predicament. That is why I think antinatalism is not important for its outcome necessarily, but also for its therapeutic value. It is rebellion against this predicament. It is first recognizing it for what it is, which you characterized quite nicely, and then taking a rebel stance against it. If humans recognized this communally, I think there is some therapeutic value in this. Antinatalism/pessimism as therapy- not simply misanthropic discontent. That is missing the mark of its view and stance that is taken from this view.

IF we abandon intent-driven moralism in favor of a sense-making ethics, we no longer assume that two parties agree on what quantities are being weighed, and we thus no longer assume they agree which direction the scale is being tipped and by how much. Does the homophobic moralist value the freedom of choice of the gay person less than a non-homophobic moralist? Do they appreciate the gay person's suffering less than the non-homophobe? Or do they lack a bio-sociological undestanding of the gay person's behavior as non-dysfunctional? — Joshs

I think you are assuming that I think people who don't agree with antinatalism have bad intent. I don't necessarily think that. Rather, as you are sort of saying, I think they haven't seen it from the view that I am taking. They will say the same of me. However, at the end of the day, if my view is carried out, no procreated person will actually suffer, where in there's, someone always will. Those are just facts, whether it is weighted one way or the other how much suffering should be considered. Anyways, I don't see the other person as the enemy or bad. Part of my antinatalism stems from a rebellion of sorts manifested in an ethics about "being born". It is part and parcel of the larger view of our human predicament. Antinatalism in that regard is like existential therapy for one's already being born in to the human predicament.

Sorry if this is a tangent, but it will be quick. Also, my question is not sarcastic or snarky, nor intending to be derogatory. Just the one glaring question that always seems to jump out at me when I read about anti-natalism. Why don't anti-natalists promote suicide? The paragraph above explains why they don't promote murder, but gives no reason why all these "suffering" people don't just end the suffering they so adamantly seek to save potential others from. If there is no reason to be born in the first place, why exist just to suffer? — ZhouBoTong

Again, that is Benatar's point that there is a difference in decisions related to starting a life and continuing a life. There are different considerations and weights as to the goodness and badness of life. If one is born, one tends to develop a personality that also develops preferences-fulfilled, desires had, good experiences, etc. We are also creatures that mainly fear the unknown and possible pain associated with death. For these reasons- continuing to live is distinctly different from starting someone else's life. Starting a life deals in circumstances where there is no actual person- no actual person that is actually deprived, no actual person that needs or wants. When someone is already born, then it is simply making do. We create goals, we pursue wants and desires, we do that pendulum swing between survival, comfort, and entertainment within a socio-cultural background. The antinatalism position does not entail a promortalism position.

The problem I have with utilitarian ethical formulas is that it assumes human conflict and violence is a function of having the wrong intent. I beleive that even if we could imagine a future where everyone followed the proper ethical intention to the letter, such as avoiding suffering, it would make no significant dent in the amount of conflict in the world
That's because social strife and abuse is not about intent but the gap between ways of sense- making. Our failure to act 'ethically' is the result of our struggles in construing the other's worldview from their perspective. No amount of prorer intent or focus on suffering will solve this problem. Only progress at subsuming another's scheme of understanding as a variant of our own will free us from the need to blame t he other for their 'bad intent', , the current example being the alleged failure to prioritize suffering,(which just perpetuates the problem).. — Joshs

I thought most utilitarian ethical formulas were consequential not primarily intent-driven? Anyways, AN sort of bypasses all of this. If no one is born, there is no one to live in a world of conflicting views that cause strife. Life in general has an aspect of conflict built into it. Daily life can be full of it. No new person, means no actual person who must deal with all of this built in conflict and strife. Why expose more people to this strife then? Well, the answer has to do with what I was saying in my previous post about people putting an X agenda above suffering of the procreated individual. Somehow the goal of going through the life itself overrides consideration of harm. Why does a person need to go through this in the first place though, when they didn't even exist to need to go through this? There has been no good responses to this, and there will be no good responses to this without walking into the conundrum of the X agenda on behalf of the procreated person overriding considerations of suffering.

The implicit premise is that (1) we prevent something because it is bad (2) suffering is bad. If suffering is not itself intrinsically bad, there's no obligation. — aporiap

Firstly, as I've said before, I think you're discounting that negative hedonic utilitarianism [the basis for the whole anti-natalist position] is itself a cultural construct. You'd be committing a naturalistic fallacy if you think just because suffering is uncomfortable it is forthrightly bad, and thus an unborn person is better in that state because it prevents him from suffering. — aporiap

Secondly my point there was countering the intuition based argument for the asymmetry of suffering/pleasure. It seems the only basis is that we have an intuition that preventing suffering is an obligation while promoting pleasure is not, but I am stating here that there are people with intuitions that promoting pleasure is something that you should promote and that they feel a kind of compassion or sympathy for people who aren't in that state. — aporiap

Benatar does a good job separating ethical decisions related to starting a life vs. continuing a life. He sees these two decision matrix as requiring different weights for good and bad. For something that does not exist yet, no one is actually deprived. This is an important point. No actual person is around to miss out on anything. It is only in the parents' head. However, if born, an actual person will be born to suffer.

Now, to your point about suffering not being bad. There are certain limits to ethical claims. I can't go any further than saying that to expose someone to harm for some agenda (reason) is wrong to do to a person. No person needs to go through X agenda (that is deemed valuable), such that it incurs harm in the process IF it didn't need to be exposed to the harm, nor obtain the agenda in the first place.
If the person already existed, this might make sense since an actual person exists to be the benefit of some "greater good" had through suffering. But to create something so it goes through this "greater good" process of suffering/adversity for higher good, is akin to creating a problem so that it can be solved. No one needed to go through it in the first place. The obligations and sufferings of life, do not need to be had by anyone. No one is harmed, no one is actually deprived (except in the mind of the already living as a projection).

I can't go much further than trying to convince you that to create a situation where you are exposing someone to all forms of harm in order for them to go through some agenda/adventure/process is using them for the already-living's projection of what should be obtained. Suffering should be all that counts in ethics. Everything else is control, manipulation, and bestowing burdens to be overcome, for the edification of the already-living. Nothing noble happens by going through the process of life and then dying. It is simply a person exposed to harm that did not need to be.

hey should be defined in reference to some goal or [in the general human sense] with respect to whether something leads one closer to 'well being' or whether it leads them away from that. — aporiap

This "should" seems a moot point in light of the fact that in the case of whether to procreate someone, that person doesn't need to exist in the first place in order to be lead to "well being". In fact, that is part of the AN's point. There is no need to create someone for an outside agenda that then needs to be followed by the very person which was created for that reason. It's like giving a problem to someone because you like seeing them solve it.

[spinoza's good is attaining freedom by managing passions; maslow's self actualization; societal stability; etc]. — aporiap

All of these schemas you mentioned not needed if people were not born. These are after-the-fact positions. A non-existent entity doesn't need to manage passions or self-actualize if not born. To be born in order to do these things would be using someone for this agenda, which seems odd to me. Like a journey that is inevitable for someone that didn't in fact have to be forced on that journey.

I actually think many people do think the lack of an ability to experience pleasure [hell, even experiencing at all] is a wrong - it's what motivates my friend to get on my ass about not putting myself out of my comfort zone - because apparently I'm missing out. — aporiap

Again, this doesn't make sense in the light that no one inevitable;y has to exist to experience anything in the first place. This is all after-the-fact of already being procreated and then trying to find cultural values to buy into to make do. First the schema needs to be agreed to be right by the individual, and then it is carried forthwith. Of course various individual personalities and temperaments may find these schemas not for them and switch to other ones. Or, the person simply falls into modern default mode- cobbling together the various cultural environs and values immediately at hand (pragmatic hedonism if you will the modern "default mode" of most).

They are clearly operating under utilitarian assumption - that I'm not experiencing as much pleasure as I could because I'm limiting myself... a potential human would be limited in just the same way. Would you not say they intuitively feel missing out is a wrong in itself? If so then how is intuition alone enough to justify the asymmetry? — aporiap

No, a non-existent potential person is not actually missing out. That is our projection on to a non-entity. However, if born, there is guaranteed suffering for that now procreated actual person. The projection of "missing out" is simply a misconception that anguishes an already existing person. The actual suffering that the procreated child will experience is actual and real though. Projected suffering for the already existing can be mitigated by the actual person who is already born.

Also, this projected feeling of "missing out" for the as yet not existing person, can also be taken to absurd lengths. If taken to the logical extreme then we can say the billions and trillions of yet to be born people are missing out. But that is silly. Even more absurd would be that it is people's duty to those billions of non-existent people to keep having more people to reduce those non-existent people's "pain" of not existing and missing out. Obviously that makes no sense.

Ok. If a moderator thinks it belongs there, I’m fine with it.

Profound boredom is akin to world-weariness. It’s like things are on repeat and no novelty gets rid of the feeling. I think it is a baseline emotional state. What the mind gets to without the goal-oriented attention, flow state feeling, or feeling of peace.

It seems to me though that you havent addressed this phenomenon that most people do mean by boredom, and that is the experieince of a disturbing loss of meaning.Thats the interesting feature of what most people think of as boredom, not meaningfully contemplative and peaceful experience. — Joshs

Yes this would be my response but you already stated it. :up:

I don't think that anyone here has actually denied that this is true about humans, most have accepted it to be true. Whether it is a self applied defense mechanism or even some sort of hard wired "suck it up" behavior we cannot be sure, but yes humans have this ability. It is incredible. — Sir2u

I like the use of "suck it up" here..you hear that so much in various direct and indirect ways. Just another value to be enculturated from social cues.

So why do you think is it not possible for them to understand their own likes and dislikes? Could it not be simply because we are not able to understand them that they appear not to be self conscious? — Sir2u

Because they don't have the meta-cognition for this. To know one's own likes and dislikes (and not just "dislike" in the moment as a primary perception) is to have a model of self, which as far as we know really requires language. That is not to say that there are not rudimentary traces of this in great apes and some other animals, but I would still not call that developed enough. Our species happened to evolve in the unique trait of linguistic mental capacities which then ratcheted the brain in a co-evolution of sorts to have abilities that co-opted this capacity with more plasticity, episodic memory, and learning (which allowed for more cultural input rather than hard-wired or rudimentary learning techniques). Anyways, just like we can make a substance that looks and acts like a spider web, we can't spin a web ourselves. That's just not what our species was adapted to do. The language centers and co-opted centers that evolved with/from this were taken from more primitive centers I agree (i.e. mirror neurons, FOXP2 gene, the neocortex development, the brocas and wernikes region, etc.).

Are you afraid of that stress, think it shoudnt be there , surprised or disappointed by it? Piaget would argue that the stress diminishes in proportion to progress in our worldviews. It allows us to more and more effectively anticipate the world, and particularly the world of other human thinking and norms. Stress isnt just finding ourselves on the outs with respect to other persons' outlooks and norms, its our inablity to understand why they hold the views they do. — Joshs

There are just certain undesirable tasks for the individual. One has to get through this somehow. This can be taking on values to lower the dislike for it, getting around the dislike, etc. etc. But the fact is that we KNOW we dislike, and that adds another layer to it.

It doesn't really matter- the outcome is about the same. Disliking and coping with it. Disliking and KNOWING that we dislike, and then having to be habituated enough, or incorporate whatever values to keep going- this is another layer of negative stress on the individual human. I remember a quote for Office Space for example, where Peter Gibbons wanted to be hypnotized so he didn't really know that he was working while he was at work- like instantly being in a flow state with no effort. Anyways, I am not saying that is exactly how animals must perceive (we can never really know) but something akin to that in the idea that they don't know they are disliking as they are disliking (if they can even "dislike" in the way a linguistic-conceptual animal like us can). They the job done through hardwired responses or reward response systems which allow for little understanding that they are responding to a reward response system. I know you want to derail this part into the topic of "animals know they dislike" and make misapplied analogies to animal behavior that are not the same, but that isn't quite the point here really.

Rather, it is that we humans deal with the fact that we can know we dislike and then basically have to decide if we want to deal with the stress of even lesser options or going through the unliked situation anyways- despite our UNDERSTANDING of our OWN dislike.

In a more general sense, negative affects like fear, guilt and sadness signal aspects of our construed world that lie outside of the range of our system's ability to assimilate them, where the world no longer makes sense to us as it did previously and we need to creatively reform and broaden our categories of understanding. — Joshs

Yes, again a lot off stress on the individual.

You’re assuming that individual survival is the main aim here, not to mention an individual life free of stress, harm and negative experience. — Possibility

Indeed I do. Your "aim" seems to be a bit elusive, but I am sure it has something to do with species-survival through group enculturation and values. The individual works on behalf of the group and the group reinforces the individual, and everything is strengthened.. Something along those lines right? The "systems view", so to say. It's almost by saying it, it feels the superior approach to that antiquated individualist.. Balance, group, system, mutual reinforcement, just have that ring of truth to it, doesn't it?

Alas, my ethical purview ends at the individual. Our first person point of view, is all there is in terms of what feels, what experiences, what copes. The group may be a concept used for this or that motivating value, but it is the individual where it all takes place- the enculturation, the motivation, the effort, etc. Going back to my antinatalist ideas, I do not believe in using individuals and their experiences as a way to further the agenda of a third-party- immediate group or otherwise. Individuals may be used as a way to strengthen the group, and the individual does indeed live in a group, but this doesn't mean the individual isn't harmed, stressed, or otherwise from experiences dealing with the group. Zeroing in on the topic at hand- the individual experiences the negative evaluation of dealing with a certain task, and having to cope with it using whatever values and ideas to get through the task.

Indeed, the individual being stressed on behalf of the group is problematic for me. Unlike (what appears from) other animals, who do not have the level of self-reflection and then a need to use values and ideas to overcome dislike- individual humans can understand they dislike a situation and use values, habituation, and the like to try to deal with it an ameliorate it to get through it, especially if other options are seen as even less attainable and this is judged the "best" option for that moment.

When we narrow or limit our focus, certain actions appear stressful, harmful or negative to the system. When we broaden our awareness of ‘the system’ to include loved ones, community, nation, humanity or life as a whole, then the value of these actions becomes more apparent. — Possibility

But it is the individual who is actually experiencing the stress, harm, and negative experiences. To broaden awareness is again more coping strategies and values to motivate to keep going, and does not really resolve the issue as much as show yet another example of how buying into the values of the group, enculturation, etc. is used to help people keep going. It also doesn't really solve the fact that we are aware of disliking tasks related to the very mechanism for survival.

We know that equilibration in dynamical systems is a spiral movement in which a given state of equilibrium is disrupted, leading to the eventual formation of a higher and more stable state of equilibrium. Our capacity to not only follow rules but at certain points to find ourselves alienated from those rules would seem to be the way we manifest the dialectical vector of human becoming. — Joshs

That's great and all said objectively and with a scientific style, but being the actual human that goes through this "dialectical vector of human becoming" can be quite stressful, harmful, and negative in general, whether it is good for the system as a whole or not.

I think a larger point here is that values, habituation into certain values, and other cultural norm are more important to human survival than people might initially think. But it is not just this point, which sociological-based models already account for in studying the human animal, it is the point that due to our freedom of choice, we can individually choose to not opt into the group values that were laid down and reinforced in order to get people to do stuff.

It is just interesting to note that individuals can decide they don't like something that is the very program used by the species to make sure survival takes place. You can say that perhaps this allows for improvement as resistance and dislike lead to possible changes. That may be an answer as to how this works without collapsing, but even if that is the outcome, the affect and toll on the individual who must bear the dislike still exists. @Possibility@Bitter Crank@Joshs@T Clark@Sir2u

So when we choose to perform a task even if we don’t like it, what is our awareness of alternative choices, and how do we currently see each of these choices impacting on a present/future, autonomous/interconnected or individual/diverse awareness of self? And when someone complains about a task they don’t like, yet choose to perform, what are they saying about the broadness of their current awareness of self? How conscious are they currently of the complexity and dimensions of their experience? How deeply are they thinking about it? — Possibility

I'm not sure how to answer your question. Can you phrase it differently or elaborate?

I would say that the amount of mental energy one has to apply to keep from leaving the unsatisfactory work place and highly unappealing tasks probably exceeds the mental energy required to do the job. — Bitter Crank

Yes, interviews, anxiety over uncertainty, etc.

Having a job is beneficial when one needs an income, obviously. An income allows one to be housed, clothed, fed, amused, and so forth--even if minimally. But we don't suffer from a lack of those things until they are actually gone. So, until we are destitute we can't balance the wretchedness of a job against the wretchedness of homelessness, hunger, and ratty clothing. — Bitter Crank

True enough, but I contend it is a choice, just weighing one less shitty (but still shitty thing) against another shittier thing. While other animals seem to not give a shit whether they give a shit, we deal with our own understanding of how we feel at any given time about a task or event (and nod to @Joshs that this can change and unfold over time).

What we do, when we have a job we hate, is direct about 50% of our processing facilities to minutely analyze and re-analyze the cost benefits of the job, and direct the other 50% of our processing power to doing the job well enough to keep it. — Bitter Crank

:rofl: That sounds about right.

Obviously we are enculturated. If we weren't thoroughly enculturated, we wouldn't be hired to do even stupid boring jobs, and we wouldn't be compensating all over the place trying to justify our esteemed selves being stuck in such a sucky job. — Bitter Crank

Exactly.

So, we lie to ourselves and others about what we are doing. We pretend we are not doing something abysmally bad as what we are doing. We deceive. We dissemble. We fake it.

We might resort to stealing from an employer who, and/or whose job, we really hate. Probably not grand theft, but something. We want to think that our reward (whatever is lifted) is their punishment. We might drop incorrect information into the database, lose important pieces of paper, and so on. We might, horrors of horrors, just do very little and wait for them to fire us. It might take a month before they notice how unproductive we are, and in the meantime, 4 more weekly paychecks have been received.

We will, of course, focus attention on our lousy pay - reward. — Bitter Crank

The enculturation of self-motivation to be productive. Isn't the self-respect of the working class hero, something to be, sort of thing simply a value to get by? How is it we need to reassure by enculturated means? What does that mean that we are the only animal that can survive this way? Knowing the situation, possibly evaluating it badly, weighing worse options, and motivating self to go forward. Isn't this a bit trudgey and inefficient? Does that put us in a state of suffering other animals don't experience?

When it comes to robbing banks, for instance, one needs to be meticulous and ruthlessly realistic. — Bitter Crank

Many old school business owners are meticulous in making sure they take as much advantage as they can of workers, sizing up personalities to see how much they can take without resistance, seeing how low a pay they can work, and seeing how much the worker will take on the interests of the business as their own interests..but these are sort of separate but tangential issues.