CarbonIceDragon
@CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
- Comment on [title] 1 week ago:
Nihilism carries plenty of hope; it carries the hope that the values we make for ourselves, our subjective experiences, are the highest basis we have to judge ourselves on, that we are not a cog in somebody elses cosmic machine, or at least that if we are, that someone ultimately has no more valid a claim to us than we do. A universal meaning, if one exists, has a potentially infinite number of things that it could be, so if one exists, we almost certainly will fail to live up to it, despite any effort we make, and that notion I find horrifying. But you cannot fail if there is no goal, you can do what you want, and as humans are a social species, what we want, on average, is to live well, to be kind and experience kindness. Absent some other mission, this is what people try to do, without really needing to think too much about it.
I do not get this “nihilism means you feel everything is hopeless” notion, despite it being commonly repeated, because if nothing matters, nothing requires you to give up. There is no reason not to keep going, and since humans are ultimately wired to want and need and care about things, hope for the future is the default state. The people that tell you to not vote, or not be kind, or similar, on the grounds that things are all pointless, are not actually following nihilism, because they act as if that implies there is a universal mandate for inaction, not simply no mandate.
Beyond that, theres the matter that, well, I simply dont see a mechanism from which a universal meaning and purpose could arise (short of an actually omnipotent entity existing and using its power to decree such a purpose, but since I also believe such entities are self-contradicting and impossible, I cant accept that one). Purpose to my use of the term implies artificial creation to fulfill some role, an ultimate purpose then would somehow have to mean that the sum total of all things was created by some intelligent entity, except that entity would also be a thing that therefore would have to have retroactively created itself, which is paradoxical. Even if, for the sake of argument, I did think that the idea of a meaningless universe was mentally unhealthy, I cannot simply decide that idea is factually wrong simply because I didnt want it to be true, my brain just does not let me consciously change my beliefs without being convinced to the contrary like that. There are a great many things that I wish werent true, and yet think are regardless. This isnt one of them, but that isnt the reason I think it.
- Comment on [title] 1 week ago:
I fail to see how, true or false, that would be relevant.
- Comment on [title] 1 week ago:
Ah, then I see my point of confusion: I do not see “nothing matters” as a fundamentally undesirable position (actually kind of the reverse), so to me Donald’s statement does not read as despare at all, it just reads as a neutral explanation of his stance on it. As such, Mickey’s statement doesn’t read to me as absurdist reassurance, rather, Donald’s reads more as something an absurdist might say and Mickey’s response reads more as “how dare you believe that, that idea must be somehow made false even if it is true and I wish to use violence to bring that about”
- Comment on [title] 1 week ago:
What does that even entail though, you cant exactly force things to objectively matter if they don’t already, there’s no mechanism by which we could influence that. If you just assert values that you hold personally, you’ve merely created subjective meaning and done nothing relevant to nihilism’s truth value. Meanwhile If nihilism turns out to be objectively false, then you can’t fight it because it wouldnt even exist to fight. You can fight nihilists I guess, but then you’re in the generally disliked position of fighting people based on a belief of theirs that does not require them cause any harm to you or anyone else, because it doesn’t require anything at all.
Its about as bizarre a call to action as declaring that you dislike some branch of math and want people to help you fight it.
- Comment on [title] 1 week ago:
transhumanism isnt transcendent of material reality though, its literally just the idea of using technology, which runs on the rules of nature to modify humans into some more desired state, its not that it does impossible things so much as that the limits of what the material universe allows are actually much grander than our current abilities are up to.
- Comment on [title] 1 week ago:
That hypothetical doesnt really change what I said though. It would make the materialist position incorrect, but it still wouldnt be hypocritical because it would still be consistent with itself, and it still wouldnt give you any course of action with which to “fight” the nature of the universe.
- Comment on [title] 1 week ago:
Always hated this meme because Mickey’s dialogue is set up to give the confident and condescending “vibe” of correctness but actually makes no sense if you stop and think about it. "Trusting the chemicals in your brain to tell you they are chemicals " when declaring emotions to have material basis isnt hypocrisy, it’s self consistency, essentially the reverse of hypocrisy. And if the universe is just a material thing with no basis for intrinsic value, what even is there to “fight” about that? You cannot exactly punch the nature of reality into submission, or change the behavior of the universe through sheer force of will. And if you could, there isn’t even a reason given for why you would even want to do so, it’s just implied that human values and emotions being a result of material reality is undesirable because what? “chemicals bad” I guess?
- Comment on Cultural impact 1 week ago:
Honesty I thought the second was the best one. It’s full of plot holes sure, but the watery setting makes a series that primarily is tech-demo eye candy, even prettier.
- Comment on Mint 1 week ago:
Interesting, I didn’t realize there was more than one species, I had always figured that one blackberry population had been domesticated at some point and then bred into the different varieties out there
- Comment on Mint 2 weeks ago:
If I ever did get one, I’d probably want to grow it indoors anyway, if that’s even possible. I’m more a city person and dont especially desire living somewhere with lawn space to maintain
- Comment on Mint 2 weeks ago:
Wait, do blackberries also grow like weeds? I’ve never had much interest in gardening, but like the one plant I’d genuinely like to have, due to loving the fruit, would be blackberry
- Comment on of course it's by choice why would you even ask 3 weeks ago:
No, only like once or twice, but it sticks around in my head because I’m still not sure what the “correct” answer that doesn’t give a misleading impression and doesn’t require a longer-than-expected explanation is.
- Comment on of course it's by choice why would you even ask 3 weeks ago:
I always feel a bit weird if the question of “are you single by choice?” comes up, cause like, I didn’t choose to be aro/ace, my brain just happens to be that way, so technically I feel like the answer is “no”, but if you answer that with no I worry people will mistake that for " not single by choice because of being unlikable in some way and therefore unable to find someone despite one’s efforts". But then one could also argue that I could technically still decide to look for a partner anyway despite not actually wanting one, so it would be a choice, but if you dont get to choose what you want, does it really count? And then the concept of determinism and if choices even truly exist at all enters my head and I just give up and say something like “it depends on what you mean by that.”
- Comment on cool cool cool 1 month ago:
People post this expecting it will make death more comfortable, but all it does is make contemplating the past less so.
- Comment on Maturing 1 month ago:
Are psychedelics really this popular, or is lemmy just full of people that like them? I had assumed they were a rather niche thing, but the sentiment towards them here today (and not just this post either) seems notably positive, though the descriptions people give sound existentially horrifying to me. Then again, I get anxious enough towards drugs that Ive not even tried alcohol let alone anything less common, so maybe I’m just the weirdo here.
- Comment on Best or Worst case scenario how do you see the Lugi Mangionne case playing out? What do you think about him now being a millionare ? 1 month ago:
I highly doubt a dem president would commute his sentence if he’s found guilty, for one thing, anyone with the resources to mount a successful presidential campaign, dem or otherwise, is almost certainly going to be wealthy enough to personally sympathize more with CEOs than with people that cant get healthcare. Consider how panicked some of the CEOs and their ilk supposedly got right after the shooting, and consider that thats exactly the kind of person that a dem president, or at the very least their friends and associates, would likely be.
- Comment on Killing the intellectual future of Iran. Science has no borders. 1 month ago:
A failed state doesn’t just imply the fall of a government, it refers to a degradation of the conditions of a country such that effective governance by anyone is impossible for a period. Think like has happened in Somalia, or Haiti. I’m not going to claim that the Iranian government is a particularly admirable one, but that kind of condition would be even worse for the people living there, and the chances of that process resting in something significantly better when the country finally recovers again aren’t terribly high.
- Comment on Who’s that pokemon? 1 month ago:
For anyone legit curious, the animal she’s holding appears to be a tegu, they’re a type of lizard from south america
- Comment on Chelyabinsk liked your Post 2 months ago:
- Comment on Chelyabinsk liked your Post 2 months ago:
The issue with solar for stuff on the moon is that it’s night is very long compared to earth, so anything you power with it needs to be able to shut down (and also get very cold without powered heaters) without harm over that time, or have a comparatively large amount of energy storage. Unless you’re at one of a handful of spots at the poles where the sun almost never fully sets.
- Comment on What is the probability that the atoms that I am made of once formed someone's penis? 2 months ago:
In regards to the second part, I’d point out that earth isnt a closed system, and small amounts of new matter are constantly ending up on earth. Think things like meteors (if i remember correctly, a few dozen tons of them fall on earth daily) the very thin traces of gas in space (it’s not a actually a perfect vacuum) and certain types of cosmic radiation that happen to consist of atoms. As such, I’d imagine it’s unlikely we’d ever get every atom on earth having once been part of one.
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 2 months ago:
Its worked out fine for me thus far, but given that one of the selling points for how expensive it is is reparability, and I’ve only had it a few months, I don’t think I can yet give a useful review beyond that it works as a phone, at least for the hardware.
A handful of quirks from the operating system (most annoying being that the option to paste stuff has a visual bug that makes the little popup button for it not appear, though it still works if I just tap where it should be), but nothing I’ve not been able to figure out with at most a quick internet search. Might not work out for everyone though as some apps (only a small handful of the ones ive tried, but still) dont fully work, so how viable the OS is will depend on if one absolutely needs one of the ones that doesn’t or not.
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 2 months ago:
Not had it for long, but a fairphone 6 (the version thats sold in the US that comes with /e/OS instead of regular android).
- Comment on Wonder what their cousins liked to snack on... 2 months ago:
Funny thing about crocodilians, they look a bit lizardy, but theyre closer to birds than they are to lizards
- Comment on SBA #61 2 months ago:
Still might be the initial expectation depending on what mr krabs here thinks of vore.
- Comment on Talk about hat hair... 2 months ago:
Hadn’t considered that you can just glue fabric together, I suppose that might be something to try if I start feeling crafty at some point. As for matching the hat material, it’s just what I’m picturing in my head, not convincing ears but just some ear shaped stylized part of the hat, like from that same grey zigzag patterned material seen here for example, whatever that’s called.
- Comment on Talk about hat hair... 2 months ago:
I don’t mean like to give the illusion of being real ears, just as a stylistic element. And for whatever reason, Id like ones that look like they fit as part of the hat, like maybe that same grey patterned material but with some pink triangles in the front to suggest the inner part without going too detailed
- Comment on Talk about hat hair... 2 months ago:
Would take some sewing knowledge I’d figure, especially to make it structurally work so that they stand up, and finding ears the same material as the hat so that they look like they fit might be difficult
- Comment on Talk about hat hair... 2 months ago:
I dont wear hats generally, but I got it into my head a few months ago that a cool hat to wear, for my weirdo taste in fashion, would be that style of cap, but with cat/animal ears integrated into it. Tried looking for one because I figured with the internet being what it is it surely must be out there, but no, couldn’t find it. Only could find a different style of cap done up that way that I don’t think looks nearly as nice as the style here.
- Comment on (serious) What would we be losing in a world where most people didn't own a car? Please read the OP before posting. 2 months ago:
I mean, they did say “most people didnt own a car” rather than “road vehicles don’t exist”. That removes the more serious of those concerns I think, because the existence of delivery vehicles, freight trucks, moving vans, or even vehicle rental services for the occasional road trip doesn’t depend on a majority of people owning a car personally.