Books

[mad bum]

Imagine reading.

[Moe Bitches]

I know. I actually have to read most of your posts.

[mad bum]

Fuck.

[rabidtictac]

I finished up Peter Watts' "Starfish" recently. It was ok. Blindsight is far and away the best novel he has written. Starfish was... Well, there's a 1-star review on Amazon saying something to the effect of "Peter Watts' nihilism is boring. He's constantly blathering about humans being meat machines and how there's no point to anything." That criticism is not unfounded. Starfish's underwater exploration segments are fascinating and exciting, but his tendency to blather about childhood traumas and the pointlessness of existence... I'll just say that he does this far better with Siri Keeton in Blindsight.

SpoilerShow

Peter Watts' nihilism certainly can be very obnoxious, and I say this as a nihilist. In my view, the point of nihilism is not that life is pointless or that we're all meat machines. I mean, no fucking shit! You've figured out some basic truth. The point isn't the truth. The point is what you do with that information. The question is, how should you live your life? Okay, so we're all meat machines, life is pointless blah blah. So if nothing matters, then what does matter? "Nothing" is a non-starter. It's a chickenshit way to avoid answering the question. What matters to you? Does it matter enough? What should matter to you? Watts is largely so preoccupied with sperging about how pointless life is and how conscious thought is an evolutionary outlier not necessarily suited for survival, that he rarely zeroes in on the Big Questions. Blindsight does tackle some of those larger issues, but Watts' laisse-faire bullshit still seeps in.

It's also especially dumb considering Peter Watts is an IRL turboliberal, so clearly he does believe in certain values.

[Kugelfisch]

Many use nihilism to look cool and aloof. That's just silly.
One can be aware that, all things considered, nothing has lasting meaning. Everything perished, all will be lost to time eventually and meaning is a human concept that has no objective truth to it.

Cool. Now what? Because that itself also doesn't matter. It's practically useless insight.
That you're basically a complicated, biological automaton doesn't actually matter. After all, if nothing matters, why would that be such a meaningful observation?

It's just as tiresome as the completely fabricated multiple universe faggotry. There is absolutely no basis to it and even if it was true it would have zero impact on this one. It's amazing how some smart people can convince themselves to waste their time with nonsense like that.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

It's a thing for self-styled gigabrains who think they have made this amazing discovery that will blow your mind.

"Did you know that nothing we do matters?!"

or to compare this with atheism:

"Did you know that God doesn't exist?!"

[Kugelfisch]

That's always part of it. One can't really be a nihilist but also believe in a god.

[rabidtictac]

It's just tiresome to see some sperge obsessing over the most superficial aspect of nihilism. Like an extreme type of philosophical myopia. "Did you know mario 2 is actually doki doki panic?" "Did you know that we're meat machines and nothing we do matters?" Shocking. Definitely worth devoting 20 novels to the subject.

[Le Redditeur]

It's the inability to separate the individual from the collective, plus no sense of scale. Sure, our actions mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, the Universe is too big, the world is too complex, etc. But you can't say the individual actions of single actors don't have consequences at some scale - sometimes it's global, like when the guy called Archie Duke killed an ostrich because he was hungry and started WW I, sometimes it's local because you helped someone, or maybe even yourself. The epicureans had some really good insights on how absence of a superior meaning doesn't mean you can't enjoy life to its best offerings.

[Kugelfisch]

That's why I called it useless knowledge. It has absolutely no consequences to your life or anyone around you.
Your actions have consequences directly affecting you and them and you don't get to ignore that.